January 11, 2022

Great Resignation offers firms a chance to create the Great Retention

by Erin Eatough • Comment, Flexible working, Wellbeing, Working culture

The last 18 months have seen unprecedented change. Covid-19 has forced people to re-evaluate every aspect of their lives, including their career. As a result, we’ve seen a surge in workers taking charge of their careers and leaving their jobs as part of the so-called Great Resignation. Recent data from the ONS shows that there were nearly 1.2 million job vacancies in the UK this quarter, with 15 of 18 sectors reporting record numbers. More →

December 14, 2021

Drawing on internal skills can help firms cope with Great Resignation

by Mike Baker • Comment, Workplace

The UK’s workforce is undergoing rapid transformation as employees’ expectations and motivations radically change. The impact of Brexit, COVID-19 and long periods of furlough have created a tidal wave of resignations across every industry. Workers are re-thinking career paths, work conditions and long-term goals after a turbulent 18 months; with one study finding that 38 percent of people are looking to change roles in the new year. More →

November 25, 2021

Confidence sky high in London Office Crane survey

by Jayne Smith • Cities, News

The London Office Crane Survey Winter 2021 suggests dramatically improved confidence about London in the developments that are being undertaken in the office market. The survey, compiled by Deloitte, claims the volume of new starts has increased from 3.1 million to 3.4 million sq ft, above the long-term average of 2.4 million sq ft. More →

July 20, 2021

Firms don’t use artificial intelligence much, so the current hype is tripe

by Wim Naudé • Features, Technology

Many governments are increasingly approaching artificial intelligence with an almost religious zeal. By 2018 at least 22 countries around the world, and also the EU, had launched grand national strategies for making AI part of their business development, while many more had announced ethical frameworks for how it should be allowed to develop. The EU documents more than 290 AI policy initiatives in individual EU member states between 2016 and 2020. More →

July 19, 2021

European Commission adopts ambitious Green Deal to cut greenhouse gas emissions

by Neil Franklin • Environment, News

The European Commission adopted a package of proposals to make the EU’s climate, energy, land use, transport and taxation policies fit for reducing net greenhouse gas emissions by at least 55 percent by 2030, compared to 1990 levels. The Commission claims that achieving these emission reductions in the next decade is crucial to Europe becoming the world’s first climate-neutral continent by 2050 and making the European Green Deal a reality. More →

June 22, 2021

The office sector needs to face up to its landfill issue

by Joanna Knight • Comment, Environment, JK, Workplace design

Over the past ten years, reuse of furniture and furnishings has been extremely limited. Most redundant assets have been discarded to landfill. It’s a brutal fact that it is the easy and less expensive option. Many products sent for recycling often end up in landfill or incineration and so still contributing to carbon emissions. As offices plan for new ways of working, will the surplus products go the same route? More →

June 7, 2021

The bullshit jobs theory may turn out to be, well…

by Neil Franklin • News, Wellbeing, Working culture

The so-called ‘bullshit jobs theory’ – which argues that a large and rapidly increasing number of workers are undertaking jobs that they themselves recognise as being useless and of no social value – contains several major flaws, argue researchers from the universities of Cambridge and Birmingham. Even so, writing in Work, Employment and Society, the academics applaud its proponent, American anthropologist David Graeber, who died in September 2020, for highlighting the link between a sense of purpose in one’s job and psychological wellbeing.

May 4, 2021

Why some people are more productive working from home than others

by Stephen Bevan • Features, Flexible working, Wellbeing

Has working at home during lockdown made people more productive or not? This has been the subject of some lively debate recently. Many companies do not routinely measure productivity. A large number will have traditionally assumed that they get the highest output when staff work longer hours or under close supervision, but remote working is clearly causing some to re-evaluate this. Major firms, for instance professional services group PwC, have been sufficiently impressed to make remote working a permanent option for their staff. More →

March 18, 2021

Toxic workplace culture costing UK economy £20.2 billion per year

by Jayne Smith • News, Wellbeing, Working culture

The cost of poor company culture is a staggering £20.2 billion per year, according to research from HR software provider Breathe. The report ‘The Culture Economy 2021’, claims that almost a third (27 percent) of SME employees quit their job due to poor workplace culture, an increase of 6 percent from last year (21 percent). More →

December 18, 2020

The shape of things to come for the world and the workplace

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

Originally published in March, right at the start of all this. Makes me wonder how far we’ve come in nine months. In Dorian Lynskey’s The Ministry of Truth, a “biography” of Nineteen Eighty-Four, the author describes how Orwell’s book was the end point of an obsession with utopian (and ultimately dystopian) fiction that characterised the first half of the Twentieth Century, and reflected the competing political, social and economic ideologies of the era. More →

November 24, 2020

Work really has become much harder during the pandemic

by Eva Selenko • Features, Flexible working, Wellbeing

The pandemic has seriously altered how we work. According to statistics published by the International Labour Organization (ILO) in September 2020, US$35 trillion (£26 trillion) has been lost globally in labour income. There has also been an estimated loss of 17 percent of working hours worldwide since 2019, with young people and women being hit hardest. And many of those still in jobs are working under very different conditions. More →

November 24, 2020

Supplier codes of conduct can be ineffective in practice

by Neil Franklin • Environment, News

A new white paper claims that while supplier codes of conduct are important, they are ineffective if their requirements are not met with actions to bring about transparency. To be effective, codes of conduct should support an authentic determination to embed company values and to foster strong business relationships that encourage honest communication and transparency that include monitoring the effectiveness. More →