September 4, 2020
Insurance provider Protectivity has asked office workers around the UK how they’re feeling about going back to work as COVID-19 lockdown restrictions ease, what changes they have made during the lockdown period, their thoughts about attending workplace events over the next few months and how they’re feeling about their pets post-lockdown. More →
September 3, 2020
UK workers are most likely to log a claim against their employer for making them work excessively long hours, claims new data by health and safety training provider DeltaNet International. The data, which looks at the number of employment tribunal cases over the last five years, suggests there have been 160,299 jurisdictions (complaints) in relation to employers breaking the Working Time Directive, which outlines the maximum weekly working hours. Under the directive, a UK employee cannot work more than 48 hours a week on average – normally averaged over 17 weeks – unless there is an exception. More →
September 2, 2020
Supported by its Green Building Councils and their members, the WorldGBC (World Green Building Council) network has launched Sustainable Buildings for Everyone, Everywhere — a new strategy to accelerate and mainstream the transformation of built environments around the world. Based on climate science and the Global Goals of Sustainable Development (SDGs), the strategy tackles global warming, health and wellbeing and resource impacts to deliver quality infrastructure — a critical need for our planet, communities and economies in the context of the COVID pandemic.
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September 2, 2020
A new study by Adaptavist, suggests the threats to long-term productivity and employee wellbeing posed by improvised solutions during the transition to remote work. Overall, 82 percent of people report they are equally (47 percent) if not more productive (35 percent) working from home, and company-wide communications have improved during the pandemic. However, the lack of a shared understanding of which tool to use and how to communicate with it, combined with the ‘always on’ nature of working from home, brings added stress and motivational challenges for remote workers. More →
August 26, 2020
US based office furniture giant Steelcase has announced it has achieved carbon neutrality for its own operations. The company also announced new 2030 goals that have been validated by the Science Based Targets initiative. Building upon this momentum, the firm has established a goal to become carbon negative by 2030. More →
August 20, 2020
In 1962, a professor of communication studies called Everett Rogers came up with the principle we call diffusion of innovation. It’s a familiar enough notion, widely taught and works by plotting the adoption of new ideas and products over time as a bell curve, before categorising groups of people along its length as innovators, early adopters, early majority, late majority, and laggards. It’s a principle bound up with human capital theory and so its influence has endured for over 50 years, albeit in a form compressed by our accelerated proliferation of ideas. It may be useful, but it lacks a third dimension in the modern era. That is, a way of describing the numbers of people who are in one category but think they are in another.
August 20, 2020
For most of us the experience of working from home this year has, on balance, been positive – enough that it may well become the norm after the COVID-19 crisis ends. But modelling by Victoria University’s Centre of Policy Studies shows there will be costs alongside the personal benefits, with more urban sprawl, job clusters with a flight to the biggest cities and greater economic disparities between regions. More →
August 18, 2020
The world is going through some painful changes at breakneck speed. As a result, the word unprecedented has reached number one spot on our ‘words to avoid’ list. What’s the big deal with unprecedented anyway? Our obsession with all things unprecedented taps into our fear of the unknown. But life itself is an unknown: Life is beta. Nothing is permanent. Every single day things happen that are unprecedented. Damn, said it again. More →
August 14, 2020
We know, and have for a long time, that the workplace is in a state of near constant flux. The meteor strike of lockdown is an accelerant, not a deviation. It has also laid bare -yet again – the faulty assumption that there is some sort of general evolution towards an idealised version of the office. That is why we see so many people routinely willing to suspend their critical facilities to make extravagant and even absurd predictions about the office of the future or even the death of the office. More →
August 12, 2020
I have observed with some disbelief the numerous articles that have heralded the “death of the office” and other click-bait driven headlines. It makes for a fun read but fails to really understand exactly what the office is for and how the modern workspace is actually used. The best way to take a view of this is to understand why we will be desperate to return to the office and why organisations should be doing everything they can to ensure it does. More →
August 11, 2020
The characteristics that meant you were most likely to thrive during the Covid-19 lockdown have been identified in new research by emlyon business school. The researchers, from emlyon business school’s Lifestyle Research Center, have studied people’s lifestyle, circumstances, and behaviour during the Covid-19 lockdown period, to examine how it has impacted their mental and physical wellbeing. The data comes from a survey of over 1000 respondents, split evenly across France and the UK, gathered near the end of the lockdown period in May. More →
September 2, 2020
Remote work and the coming race to the bottom
by Mark Eltringham • Comment, Wellbeing, Working lives