May 31, 2022

A great employee experience depends on great technology

So often, organizations that excel on delivering value for customers, fall short when it comes to delivering the same for their employees. In fact, we can often be guilty of failing to value our employees’ time full stop. Given that we’re living through what’s been dubbed ‘the Great Resignation,’ that’s a major gamble. Companies need to take a step back and understand exactly why employee experience (EX) should be a priority. Plus, how technology can be a key enabler in doing so. More →

March 16, 2022

Working from home may help recruitment, but doesn’t stem resignations

by Jayne Smith • Flexible working, HR, News

Organisations looking to stem the tide of the so-called Great Resignation shouldn’t rely on working from home alone to retain their top talent, according to new research, which reveals that working from home (WFH), flexible working hours and even four-day work weeks, won’t necessarily be enough to keep employees onboard. HR software provider CIPHR conducted a survey of over 330 British employers last month to discover how the increasingly competitive talent market has affected their staff retention and recruitment drives over the past twelve months. Based on the results, nearly three-quarters (73 percent) of employers have experienced an increase in employees voluntarily resigning and 71 percent have found it more challenging to recruit new employees. More →

September 23, 2021

UK employers more worried about motivation than resignation

by Jayne Smith • News, Working culture, Working lives

Research from Omnipresent, in partnership with Remote Social, claims that four in 10 employers (40 percent) feel that COVID-19 has positively or extremely positively impacted employee retention. In contrast, less than a quarter (24 percent) feel that it has negatively or extremely negatively impacted this area. The survey considered the views of 250 HR managers and C-Suite professionals across the UK. More →

November 20, 2023

Oscillate wildly between the death of the office and the death of hybrid working

by Mark Eltringham • Comment, Flexible working

It’s March 2020, very early days of lockdowns and the first catastrophising headlines appear. Is this the death of the office? Is this the death of handshakes? Is this the death of the open plan? I dismissed them at the time in this piece from March the 19th, citing Betteridge’s Law which states: “any headline that ends in a question mark can be answered with the word no”. More →

August 1, 2023

How many fingers am I holding up?

by Mark Eltringham • Comment

Quoting George Orwell is the kind of thing that people who haven’t read Orwell do. The term Orwellian is used by people who have not only not read him, but have latched on to some laundered idea of the themes of his work. They are not only misrepresenting him, but misrepresenting a misrepresentation. If it were true that the dead could spin in their graves, Orwell would solve the world’s energy crisis. He could power the Northern Hemisphere by reacting to the liberties taken with Nineteen Eighty-Four alone. Anyway. I have read him so you and he will have to forgive me for what I’m about to say. More →

June 9, 2023

Getting back to the idea of a better future

by Mark Eltringham • Comment, Technology

A recent edition of Jon Connell’s daily newsletter The Knowledge included this nugget: “Last month, I heard one of the world’s most successful fund managers admit that the charts and models he previously used “gave almost no clue” as to what to do with money now. (His one firm prediction, that the US dollar would weaken, has so far proved dead wrong.) Same with climate, with migration, with a business world about to be utterly transformed by AI. That, as much anything, will be one of the biggest questions of the coming years and decades: What do we do if we can’t predict the future?” More →

June 1, 2023

Resenteeism. Destructive, contagious and in your workplace right now

by Stephanie Fitzgerald • Comment, HR, Wellbeing

You measure absenteeism. You are aware of presenteeism. But what are you doing about the new kid on the block – resenteeism? This occurs when employees stay in a job despite being fundamentally unhappy. They don’t want to be at work and when they are there, they actively resent it. Increasingly employees are fed up, across varying sectors, and showing some common threads or ‘symptoms’ of resenteeism. One of the most noticeable, and frustrating for employers, is employees resenting being asked to do their job. More →

April 21, 2023

Ten years of Insight and a few things I think I know

by Mark Eltringham • Comment, Flexible working, HR, Technology, Workplace design

This website started in late 2012 as a way for me to explore both a new media format and a new way of thinking about work and workplaces. I’d already been active in various roles in the workplace, design and facilities sector for twenty odd years, but needed a new challenge. And this was it. I was going for a ride with an idea to see where it went. More →

April 10, 2023

IF AI can replace what you do without anybody noticing, the problem isn’t with the technology

by Mark Eltringham • Comment, Technology, Wellbeing

Perhaps the least surprising news from the current AI media frenzy is that Buzzfeed has already been using the tech to publish a lot of its stories. There’s an obvious response to this and it’s not about how amazing the AI is. If an artificial intelligence can write vast quantities of formulaic clickbait stories on your website without anybody noticing, then the problem is with your original approach to ‘content’ and how it’s consumed. More →

April 5, 2023

Three quarters of people who left their pre-covid employer now want to go back

by Neil Franklin • HR, News

According to a new poll from recruiter Robert Walters, almost three quarters of professionals (71 percent) who left their pre-covid employer in search of better pay or working culture say that they are open to returning. Half of the 3,000 people surveyed say that the reasons as to why they left in the first place are no longer applicable. Nearly half (45 percent of workers) who had left their job after lockdown did so for better pay – with a further 35 percent leaving for a better workplace culture or more purpose/fulfilment in their role. More →

March 30, 2023

Every workplace innovation contains the seeds of its opposite

by Mark Eltringham • Comment, Flexible working, Technology

The announcement by Apple that it wanted its employees to work in an office for three days a week sparked the usual, tedious pile-on about how many days people should spend in a physical workplace each week. This included the columnist at Grazia who joins the tens of millions of people around the world who not only know where Apple is going wrong, but also how to run every other organisation in the world and what’s best for everybody who works for them. More →

February 20, 2023

Unlocking the digital frontier: hiring the next generation of tech talent

by Freddie Steele • Company news, HR

Any business that is looking to grow its consumer base or expand into new markets is likely to be relying on digital technology to a greater extent than ever before both in their operations and management. This also means that the world of employment, both for workers and enterprises, is necessarily evolving too. An inevitable consequence of this evolution has been that those for whom technology has been an essential part of their life and education — so-called digital natives — are in growing demand. More →