April 6, 2016
Just one percent of men have taken-up UK’s shared parental leave right 0
One year on from its launch and it’s emerged that just 1 percent of men have so far taken up the opportunity of Shared Parental Leave (SPL) while over half (55 percent) of women say they wouldn’t want to share their maternity leave rights. The main reasons why men have chosen not to take up SPL are financial affordability, lack of awareness, and unwillingness from women to share their maternity leave. A combined survey of over 1,000 parents and 200 businesses (HR Directors) from My Family Care and the Women’s Business Council found that taking up SPL was very much dependent on a person’s individual circumstances, particularly on their financial situation and the paternity pay on offer from their employer. It found that 80 percent of both men and women agreed that a decision to share leave would be dependent on their finances and their employer’s enhancement of SPL. More →
April 6, 2016
What Johan Cruyff can teach us about the contemporary workplace 0
by Andrew Brown • Comment, Facilities management, Workplace design
The Dutch (and to an extent, their north European neighbours in Scandinavia) are regarded as leaders in ideas on how to improve employee engagement, productivity, wellbeing and basically putting people ahead of the capital asset. It’s why people are heading off to Amsterdam this week for the Smart Workplace Design Summit. What you might not know is that this whole approach is deeply rooted in Dutch culture. There is a distinct Dutch way of doing things. FM World is planning to explore this in a forthcoming issue in May. In the article readers will hear from organisations like Veldhoen and their adherence to the concept of activity based working (ABW). Veldhoen has a philosophy about workplace and how to improve an organisations performance. It all hinges on ABW. They won’t bother working with you unless you buy into their way of doing things. This is very Dutch. And why not. It works: Veldhoen get results.
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