July 13, 2021
Organisational purpose, responsible business practices and diversity are growing in importance at Board level and for HR teams, as employers make the connection between good environmental, societal and governance practices and business growth, according to survey findings from the Reward & Employee Benefits Association (REBA) and Mercer Marsh Benefits (MMB). More →
July 13, 2021
As organisations increasingly struggle to retain their current workforce as well as hire fast enough to keep up with consumer demand, new research from The Workforce Institute at UKG exposes a troublesome gap between employee voice and employer action that — if left unresolved — can disengage workers, fuel turnover, and hinder business performance. More →
July 2, 2021
If you click on the first link in any article on Wikipedia and keep repeating the process, eventually you will land on the Philosophy page. Or you will 97 percent of the time, according to Wikipedia itself. There’s a dry explanation for this involving the site’s classification system, as explained by the mathematician Hannah Fry here. But there’s a more poetic explanation that I prefer. That every subject leads back to a consideration of ourselves, our lives and our place in the world. Anthropocentric maybe, but then again, the proper study of mankind is man. More →
June 25, 2021
The amount of unpaid overtime that workers around the world are doing has soared in the past year; unpaid overtime in the UK has steadily risen from six hours in 2019 to seven hours in 2020 in the advent of COVID-19, to almost eight hours in 2021, claims a new study by the ADP Research Institute, People at Work 2021: A Global Workforce View. More →
June 18, 2021
The global pandemic has blurred the lines between home and work for millions of people around the world. Where once there was a clear distinction between being on and off duty, the demands of remote working and ever-presence of smartphones has created an ‘always on’ culture in many organisations. The trend has led to a number organisations in the UK to now call for a ban on out-of-hours emails in order to alleviate pressures on employees mental health. But is this really necessary, or even logistically possible, for the new world of work? We asked four leading experts for their thoughts. More →
June 18, 2021
Paradoxically, more in-person work environments and the concentration of jobs in cities could be a medium- to long-term impact of the pandemic’s shift to remote working, suggests Citi GPS Technology at Work: The Coming of the Post-Production Society, a report produced by Citi and the Oxford Martin School at the University of Oxford. The report cites the automation of manufacturing and clerical tasks alongside the potential for professional services jobs that can be done remotely to be done cheaper overseas as the start of a foundational shift in developed economies. The future of work in these countries, it suggests, could be based largely on innovation, exploration and creative thinking which require face-to-face interaction and geographic proximity. More →
June 14, 2021
A new report from the RSA and Vitality warns of the potentially serious impact on the long-term physical and mental health of employees. The authors claim that the ‘long lockdown effect’ should lead employers to see health and wellbeing as important strategic issues and place them on the company’s risk registers. With the shift to more flexible working cultures now set to continue, Healthy Hybrid, a Blueprint for Business, claims to shine a light on the health impact of successive lockdowns on homeworkers. More →
June 9, 2021
Most road traffic accidents happen on the drive home from work, claims new research from Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University (RSM), which examines which characteristics of the working day have implications for road safety and why. More →
June 7, 2021
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.
June 3, 2021
Half of workers in the UK (50 percent) say their employers have provided support for their mental health during the COVID-19 pandemic, while two-thirds of employees globally reported the same (65 percent). This may illustrate a growing awareness and concern from businesses about the potential psychological impact on staff, according to a new study People at Work 2021: A Global Workforce View by the ADP Research Institute. More →
Over the past year, organisations experienced an increase in problems related to finding information, resulting in greater reliance on knowledge and information management tools than in previous years, according to a new survey by
July 9, 2021
Yoga is not a wellbeing strategy
by Stephanie Fitzgerald • Comment, Wellbeing