February 22, 2018
The UK needs a new approach to low pay, equality and flexible working
A new research paper from the Institute for Employment Studies (IES) claims to identify areas where employers and policymakers should act to reinvigorate their pay and rewards practices to improve employee engagement and productivity. According to the IES, with the likely intensification of current recruitment shortages, skills gaps and the fall in living standards as the UK leaves the European Union, the paper argues that both employers and policymakers should act on three key areas – low pay, gender pay and total rewards – to help halt the relative decline of the UK’s already below-par productivity performance.
August 19, 2016
The staggeringly cynical medicalisation of the air that we breathe 0
by Mark Eltringham • Comment, Wellbeing
As regular readers are no doubt aware, normally we don’t comment on the reports and surveys we publish, instead leaving people to form their own opinions. However, the study we’ve published today from the Building Engineering Services Association can’t pass without comment. You are still free to make your own mind up, but personally, I think it is perhaps the most dangerously self-serving report we’ve seen in some time. The conclusion from the report that ‘healthy indoor air’ (I’ve added the quotation marks), provided by mechanical ventilation and air-conditioning systems is somehow superior to fresh air (I’ve removed the quotation marks from the original report), is staggeringly cynical. We’ve all grown used to the medicalisation of day to day life in these reports, but this is too much. The fact is, the healthiest thing you’ll do today is to get up from your desk, get away from the air con, get away from the traffic, stick two fingers up to BESA, go for a long walk in the fresh air and breathe deep.