Search Results for: four day week

September 19, 2018

The main challenge of modern working life: finding the place just right to meet ⁰

by Jim Ware • Facilities management, Features, Flexible working, Work&Place, Workplace design

Every physical setting sends distinct signals to meeting participants – signals that set the tone and provide a context for the conversation, even when they are subtle or not in anyone’s conscious awareness. You understand instinctively that the place where a meeting occurs has an impact on the nature of the conversation. Just imagine the difference between a conversation around a large formal conference table with expensive executive chairs and one that takes place in an informal employee lounge, with the participants seated in a circle on soft bean-bag chairs. (more…)

September 17, 2018

AI will be commonplace in the working lives of staff very soon

by Neil Franklin • News, Technology

Experts at Henley Business School have announced that the majority of the graduate workforce in the UK will be working with artificial intelligence on a daily basis by 2030, with technology such as ‘AI assistants’ expected to be commonplace in the next decade. New research released at the Henley annual World of Work 2030 conference, claims that a third (35 percent) of UK workers are excited about the prospect of their own personal AI assistant. With the average worker currently spending 3.5 hours a week on admin tasks, assistants’ could give workers back 12 working days a year (over two working weeks) by taking on these activities and freeing up time for more productive tasks.

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August 30, 2018

Larger businesses far more stressful to work for than smaller firms

by Sara Bean • Flexible working, News, Wellbeing, Workplace

We reported yesterday that younger job seekers who favour corporates could be missing out on greater opportunities within smaller organisations, and now new research suggests that despite margins often being tighter and tensions or losses often being felt more keenly in smaller businesses, the level of occupational stress workers feel directly correlates to the size of the company they are in. Micro businesses employing a maximum of four members of staff were less likely than those in businesses of any other size to feel work-related stress, with 45 percent of employees reporting this to the Perkbox 2018 UK Workplace Stress Report. This figure increases to 57 percent for small businesses (5 – 50 staff) and again to 62 percent for small to medium sized organisations (51 – 500 employees). Finally, workers at larger sized businesses – those with more than 500 members of staff – report the greatest instances of staff experiencing workplace stress (65 percent).

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August 21, 2018

Workers are focused on shorter hours and more flexible working

by Neil Franklin • Flexible working, News

New research released today by McDonald’s UK, reveals more than half of UK adults want to move away from traditional working patterns, choosing jobs that enable them to enjoy more flexible working and prioritise commitments outside of work. This study was conducted in July and August, with YouGov as well as with McDonald’s employees. Its key finding is that Jobs that offer earlier starts and a shorter working week most appealing to job seekers; with only 6 percent of people working the traditional ‘9-5’

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August 20, 2018

Employers who do not offer flexible working are the exception rather than rule

by Sara Bean • Flexible working, Legal news, News, Workplace

Most organisations already offer some sort of flexible working and over half of employees now ask to work flexibly, a new survey from XpertHR research has claimed. One in 12 organisations (8.1 percent) reported that all employees worked flexibly, with employers attributing the rise to a more supportive workplace culture and the impact of recent legal changes. The survey found that more than half (55.9 percent) had seen an increase in flexible working requests over the past two years. Three out of four believed that this was due to changes in workplace culture in recent years, attributable in part to a change in the law in 2014 that extended the right to request flexible working to all employees with at least 26 weeks’ service. Flexible working goes across the board, and includes part-time working, variable start and finish times, home-working and other options.

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August 15, 2018

The global problem of overwork and the right to disconnect

by Aki Stamatis • Comment, Flexible working, Technology, Wellbeing

Anybody who doubts the importance of work and working culture to people’s lives should look at the resistance to President Macron’s mooted changes to labour laws. His attempts to modernise and liberalise French workplace legislation marked the first cracks in his reputation and brought millions of French workers to the streets as part of a national strike.However, one change to French legislation that met with little or no resistance earlier this year was a new right to avoid work emails outside working hours. Under the legislation, firms with more than 50 workers will be obliged to draw up a charter of good conduct, setting out the hours when staff are not supposed to send or respond to emails as they seek a right to disconnect.

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July 13, 2018

London’s poor connectivity is holding back commercial property occupiers

by Neil Franklin • News, Property, Technology

Connectivity is more than just broadband speeds and 4G coverage. New research from property consultancy Cluttons claims to reveal the impact it has on everything from the properties we choose to live in, to the places where we can work and our overall happiness both at home and in the office. The research suggests that London is lagging behind other national and global hubs when it comes to good connectivity in both residential and commercial property, failing our needs both as residents and businesses.

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July 4, 2018

New study flags health and wellbeing risks for the self-employed

by Neil Franklin • News

The Good Life Report, a study by AXA Business Insurance into Britain’s boom in self-employment, claims that tradespeople have better than average mental health but their work style brings increased physical risks, particularly high blood pressure. According to the AXA study of self-employed people, those in the building trades report the best mental wellbeing. Just eight per cent say their work causes them stress – four times lower stress rate than among UK workers overall, and half the stress rate for self-employed people in desk-based jobs.
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June 28, 2018

Ten demonstrable truths about the workplace you may not know

by Kerstin Sailer • Comment, Facilities management, Features, Workplace design

The science of the workplace has gained a lot of interest over the last few years, highlighting recurring patterns of human behaviour as well as how organisational behaviour relates to office design. In theory, knowledge from this growing body of research could be used to inform design. In practice, this is rarely the case. A survey of 420 architects and designers highlighted a large gap between research and practice: while 80 percent of respondents agreed that more evidence was needed on the impact of design, 68 percent admitted they never reviewed literature and 71 percent said they never engaged in any sort of post-occupancy evaluation. Only 5 percent undertake a formal POE and just 1 percent do so in a rigorous fashion. Not a single practitioner reported a report on the occupied scheme, despite its importance in understanding the impact of a design.

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June 27, 2018

How limiting non-work related web use affects security and productivity

by Neil Franklin • News, Technology

Spiceworks has announced the results of a new survey examining the use of web filtering in the workplace and the implications of restricting certain online behaviours. The results indicate among organisations that don’t restrict non-work related web use, most employees (58 percent) spend at least four hours per week, the equivalent of 26 workdays per year, on websites unrelated to their job. In other words, based on the median U.S. salary of $45,812, these organisations are paying full-time employees approximately $4,500 per year to spend 10 percent of their time consuming non-work-related web content.

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June 21, 2018

The hype surrounding wellbeing concepts can blind us to their true value

by Georgia Elliott-Smith • Comment, Wellbeing

Digital detox. Does the phrase make you roll your eyes or grab your attention? Lately, you’d be forgiven for thinking that the idea of switching off from technology, particularly your smart phone (if people still call them that as they are so ubiquitous) has become a media fad. A litmus test for this might be how much air time BBC R2 give the subject. Over the past few weeks it has figured a lot, particularly Chris Evans referencing it in a Japanese themed week and a Friday morning interview with the neuroscientist Dr Jack Lewis who shared his tops tips for a digital detox. No doubt the Daily mail is jumping on the bandwagon as well.

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June 20, 2018

Employees are already drawing up a hit list of tasks to delegate to robots

by Neil Franklin • News, Technology

Nearly two thirds (63 percent) of UK employees would outsource work tasks to a robot if they could, according to research commissioned by software firm ABBYY. For almost a quarter of Brits (24 percent) attending meetings is their most hated work activity. While one in six (17 percent) dislike reviewing long documents and more than one in eight (13 percent) don’t like speaking to customers, these are not jobs that workers want to delegate to robots. The jobs that employees would most like to hand over to a machine are inputting data (16 percent), taking minutes and notes (14 percent) and electronic filing (12 percent).