May 17, 2017
Good working relationships and less stress are key to workplace happiness 0
Less stress and better workplace relationships are the reason why the happiest regions to work in the UK are Yorkshire and the Humber; while uninteresting work is the reason why employees in Scotland and the South are the most unhappy. Research into workplace happiness by Happiness Works on behalf of Robert Half UK claims that 77 percent of employees in Yorkshire and the Humber are the happiest employees in Britain, well above the national average of 63 percent. Those questioned find their work more interesting (74 percent), get on with their team (88 percent), have good friends in the office (72 percent) and suffer less stress (38 percent). Britain’s most unsatisfied employees are those working in Scotland and the South of England, with 17 percent of employees saying they are unhappy at work and one in six expressing their work is not interesting. Over a quarter of those in South (27 percent) don’t have good friends in the office or don’t get on with their teams and one in seven (14 percent) in Scotland feel the same. However, employees in Scotland (63 percent) and the South (65 percent) do believe they have a good work-life balance.
May 3, 2017
Wiring your brain to the Internet? What could possibly go wrong? 0
by Christopher Markou • Comment, Technology, Wellbeing
Neuralink – which is “developing ultra high bandwidth brain-machine interfaces to connect humans and computers” – is probably a bad idea. If you understand the science behind it, and that’s what you wanted to hear, you can stop reading. But this is an absurdly simple narrative to spin about Neuralink and an unhelpful attitude to have when it comes to understanding the role of technology in the world around us, and what we might do about it. It’s easy to be cynical about everything Silicon Valley does, but sometimes it comes up with something so compelling, fascinating and confounding it cannot be dismissed; or embraced uncritically. Putting aside the hyperbole and hand-wringing that usually follows announcements like this, Neuralink is a massive idea. It may fundamentally alter how we conceive of what it means to be human and how we communicate and interact with our fellow humans (and non-humans). It might even represent the next step in human evolution.
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