June 9, 2022
One of the ways I have found to inoculate myself against the hyperbolic certitude of the world’s futurologists is to watch YouTube clips of an old TV show called Rab C Nesbitt and observe the automated captioning as it struggles to cope with Glaswegians. And sometimes gives it up as a bad job. Works with Limmy’s Show too. Try it for yourself at the bottom. Includes bad language. A meringue? More →
May 3, 2022
Behind every successful business strategy is a talented and motivated workforce that is ready to apply itself and achieve great things. A leader may have a flawless strategy, but if they cannot staff their teams with the most talented individuals, their vision will stay just that. A vision. Unfortunately, the tools organizations use to identify and recruit the best talent have not changed much over the last few decades: resumés, interviews, and reference checks continue to be the predominant methods for evaluating potential. Sadly, many studies demonstrate that these methods are unpredictive, biased, and are inefficient. The good news is that innovations in artificial intelligence offer exciting tools that improve the recruitment process for both organizations and candidates. More →
May 2, 2022
The UK economy has a problem with its over 50s: following the COVID pandemic, they have been leaving the labour force en masse, causing headaches for businesses and the government. Roughly 300,000 more workers aged between 50 and 65 are now “economically inactive” than before the pandemic, leading a tabloid paper to dub the problem the “silver exodus”. Being economically inactive means that these older workers are neither employed nor looking for a job. Of course, it could simply be that workers saved more during the pandemic and can now afford to retire in comfort earlier than planned. More →
April 20, 2022
There’s a scene in the 1986 horror movie The Fly in which Seth Brundle (Jeff Goldblum) persuades the reporter Veronica Quaife (Geena Davis) to try two steaks, one of which Brundle has just sent between two teleportation pods in an effort to work out why the pods can’t process organic matter, including the organic matter that had recently belonged to a very unfortunate baboon. More →
April 13, 2022
Nearly all executives (96 percent) agree that primarily remote workers are disadvantaged compared to those who work primarily in the office, according to a poll of 200 executives at large US firms, commissioned by Vyopta. However, 92 percent of respondents also believe employees who are less engaged, either frequently on mute or don’t turn on their camera during remote meetings, probably don’t have a long-term future at their company. More →
April 8, 2022
A permanent post-pandemic switch to hybrid working may do little to reduce carbon emissions as the majority of remote workers travel further each week than their office-based counterparts, new research from the University of Sussex Business School reveals. The newly published study finds that, prior to the pandemic, most remote workers in England travelled further each week than office-based workers – despite taking fewer trips. This was partly because remote workers tended to live further from their workplace than non-teleworkers, so had longer, if less frequent, commutes. In addition, remote workers engaged in more travel on the days when they worked from home – for example, by making extra trips to shops and cafes. More →
March 21, 2022
It’s now two years since we experienced the first true, sharp jolt of the pandemic. And even if we had now fully escaped its grip, the intervening 24 months would have proved transformational. The clichés, groupthink and glib takes may still shape much of the discourse about the ‘future of work’ but many of the instant experts of the Spring and Summer of 2020 now appear to have moved their insight on to other matters. And that leaves the rest of us with the task of working out what is actually going on. More →
March 7, 2022
Working outside traditional hours, and checking in at all hours of the day, night, weekends, and holidays, is not necessarily beneficial for the 21st-century workforce, according to new research from the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) and Cornell University. The researchers address the issue of working ‘out of hours’ in the paper, “Working During Non-Standard Work Time Undermines Intrinsic Motivation,” published in Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes. They set out to examine the motivational consequences of studying and working outside of traditional hours, such as weekends and holidays, among employees and college students. More →
February 25, 2022
People who can self-reflect and regulate their moral behaviour are more likely to bounce back after a failure rather than deviate from their ‘moral compass’ and misbehave, according to new research. According to the authors, it is well known that people do not always act in accordance with their own standards regards what is right and wrong. Moral disengagement is a psychological concept that helps explain how people may routinise bad behaviour, rule-breaking and wrongdoing without feeling guilty or seeing the need to make amends. More →
January 25, 2022
I’m currently rereading Art Kleiner’s masterful book The Age of Heretics which describes the history of ground-breaking thought in management in the 20th Century and the lessons we forget. It remains a relevant book for the new era of ‘hybrid working’ because the book draws a distinction between two fundamental schools of thought in management theory. One of these sees management as a numbers game in which people are inherently problematic and so must be directed what to do based on data and routines of desirable activity and behaviour. And the other sees people as well meaning, capable and adaptable with managers there to facilitate and channel their abilities and help them develop. More →
January 18, 2022
Remote working swiftly evolved from a stopgap lockdown solution into a globally successful workstyle – and it’s set to stay. According to research quoted by CityAM, “84 per cent of UK businesses plan on having a hybrid, flexible or remote workforce following the pandemic”. Some companies, like Deloitte, have placed all bets on remote in closing their offices and basing employees from home, enjoying a vast reduction in operational costs. This flexibility has offered immediate benefits for remote workers, ranging from lifestyle and financial to positive influences on wellbeing. Workers in particular social groups have experienced life-changing situations, securing work in previously inaccessible geographic locations. More →
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June 14, 2022
Loneliness might hold back hybrid working productivity gains
by Gosia Bowling • Comment, Flexible working, Wellbeing