Search Results for: benefits

September 13, 2018

Working long and hard? It may do more harm than good for your productivity and wellbeing

by Argyro Avgoustaki and Hans TW Frankort • Features, Flexible working, Wellbeing

Nearly half of people in the EU work in their free time to meet work demands, and a third often or always work at high speed, according to recent estimates. If you are one of them, have you ever wondered whether all the effort is really worth it? Employees who invest more effort in their work report higher levels of stress and fatigue, along with lower job satisfaction. But they also report receiving less recognition and fewer growth opportunities. And they experience less job security. So increased work effort not only predicts reduced wellbeing, it even predicts inferior career-related outcomes.

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September 11, 2018

Time for employers to place workplace health and wellbeing front of mind, claims CBI

by Neil Franklin • News, Wellbeing

With the average number of days lost to ill health per employee at 5.2 days, there’s a clear impact on business, which is why firms must better prioritise the health & wellbeing of their staff. That’s according to new survey results from the CBI, in partnership with Bupa and HCA Healthcare. In a new guide, Front of Mind: Prioritising workplace health & wellbeing, 347 businesses – employing nearly 1.7 million people – of all sizes across the UK were surveyed or interviewed to understand what steps they are taking to improve workplace health & wellbeing.

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September 10, 2018

Four day working week could become a reality soon, claims report

by Neil Franklin • Flexible working, News, Wellbeing, Workplace

A four-day working week could become a reality this century, according to the general secretary of the Trade Union Congress and a new TUC report. In a key speech to the TUC’s annual congress set to be delivered later today, Frances O’Grady will call for firms to use technology in a way to improve the lives of workers and cut the number of hours they spend working. However, the union also concedes that it may take government intervention for this to happen, given the way technology has encouraged the extension of working time over past few decades.

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September 6, 2018

Creating a productive workplace for people is all about context

by Mark Eltringham • Comment, Facilities management, Workplace, Workplace design

The quest for a proper understanding of the links between the places we work, the things with which we fill them and our wellbeing and productivity has been ongoing for a very long time. It predates our current thinking on productive workplace design and the facilities management discipline as we now know it by decades and has its roots in the design of early landmark offices such as Frank Lloyd Wright’s Larkin building and research such as that carried out at the Hawthorne Works in Chicago in the late 1920s. Yet the constantly evolving nature of work means that we are forever tantalised by an idea that we can never fully grasp and makes established ideas seem like revelations.

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September 3, 2018

Workplace wellness programmes may be a waste of time and money, study concludes

by Neil Franklin • News, Wellbeing

The $8 billion dollar wellness industry in the US may not be achieving very much, according to a new analysis from academics at Chicago University and the University of Illinois published by the National Bureau of Economic Research. While the researchers concede that the difficulties of measuring the impact of such programmes depends very much on the characteristics of the people who enter them voluntarily, their study of 5,000 people found that the effects of a wellness programme were non-existent to negligible across a range of metrics.

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August 31, 2018

Employers urged to err on the side of caution when the staff commute counts as work

by Sara Bean • Flexible working, Legal news, News, Workplace

Employers urged to err on the side of caution when the staff commute counts as work

A call for employers to pay staff for the time they spend emailing while commuting has opened up the debate on what constitutes working time for employees. Researchers from the University of the West of England who found that commuters used free Wi-Fi provision on their journey to and from work to ‘catch up’ with work emails, have argued this supported the argument that the commute be counted as work. Until now, there has been little research to evaluate the impact free Wi-Fi provision has had in the UK, despite government encouragement for companies to provide access on transport networks. Traditionally, the government has been more concerned about the benefits of free Wi-Fi for business travellers, but the research team believe that the impact on commuters may be more important. When the researchers looked to Scandinavia to see how commuting time could be measured differently, they found that in Norway some commuters are able to count travel time as part of their working day.

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August 30, 2018

Larger businesses far more stressful to work for than smaller firms

by Sara Bean • Flexible working, News, Wellbeing, Workplace

We reported yesterday that younger job seekers who favour corporates could be missing out on greater opportunities within smaller organisations, and now new research suggests that despite margins often being tighter and tensions or losses often being felt more keenly in smaller businesses, the level of occupational stress workers feel directly correlates to the size of the company they are in. Micro businesses employing a maximum of four members of staff were less likely than those in businesses of any other size to feel work-related stress, with 45 percent of employees reporting this to the Perkbox 2018 UK Workplace Stress Report. This figure increases to 57 percent for small businesses (5 – 50 staff) and again to 62 percent for small to medium sized organisations (51 – 500 employees). Finally, workers at larger sized businesses – those with more than 500 members of staff – report the greatest instances of staff experiencing workplace stress (65 percent).

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August 28, 2018

Senior managers unaware of high levels of employee mistrust

by Sara Bean • Legal news, News, Workplace

The new corporate governance code that comes into play early next year includes directives on how companies engage with their staff, but it is a voluntary code which will allow businesses to opt out if they wish. Now a new report suggests there is currently is a high level of mistrust towards senior UK managers, with just 16 percent trusting this group, according to the study. This is despite the fact that according to the research, carried out by Virtual College the majority (95 percent) of senior managers in UK businesses believe that their employees trust them. Employees rated their trust in different roles in the following order; co-workers – 57 percent, managers – 45 percent, team members – 42 percent and senior management – 16 percent. Trust in senior management was found to be considerably lower than trust in other positions such as middle management. The sectors that trusted senior management the least included; utilities (3 percent), legal (8 percent) and government services (8.7 percent).

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August 22, 2018

Why early intervention matters for workplace mental health

by Liz Walker • Comment, Wellbeing, Workplace

Last year alone, poor mental health was the primary cause of long-term absence for 22 percent of organisations, with employees feeling too stressed or anxious to face going in to work. This was up from 13 percent in 2016. However, 45 percent of those who take time off for mental health reasons give their employers another excuse for their absence. Symptoms of mental health can build up when not properly recognised or assessed, but they’re hard to combat when so many employees don’t feel confident enough to open-up about how they’re feeling.

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August 21, 2018

Workers are focused on shorter hours and more flexible working

by Neil Franklin • Flexible working, News

New research released today by McDonald’s UK, reveals more than half of UK adults want to move away from traditional working patterns, choosing jobs that enable them to enjoy more flexible working and prioritise commitments outside of work. This study was conducted in July and August, with YouGov as well as with McDonald’s employees. Its key finding is that Jobs that offer earlier starts and a shorter working week most appealing to job seekers; with only 6 percent of people working the traditional ‘9-5’

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August 20, 2018

Employers who do not offer flexible working are the exception rather than rule

by Sara Bean • Flexible working, Legal news, News, Workplace

Most organisations already offer some sort of flexible working and over half of employees now ask to work flexibly, a new survey from XpertHR research has claimed. One in 12 organisations (8.1 percent) reported that all employees worked flexibly, with employers attributing the rise to a more supportive workplace culture and the impact of recent legal changes. The survey found that more than half (55.9 percent) had seen an increase in flexible working requests over the past two years. Three out of four believed that this was due to changes in workplace culture in recent years, attributable in part to a change in the law in 2014 that extended the right to request flexible working to all employees with at least 26 weeks’ service. Flexible working goes across the board, and includes part-time working, variable start and finish times, home-working and other options.

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August 17, 2018

Employees reveal truth about company culture

by Neil Franklin • News, Workplace

Organisations must do more to engage with their people and meet their personal expectations if they want a positive work culture, highlights a new research white paper by leading HR and payroll supplier, MHR. ‘Company Culture: Don’t Just Throw Money at The Issue’ explores the real experience of UK employees and their true thoughts about their employers. The paper, based on findings from a survey of 1174 UK employees by YouGov on behalf of MHR, reveals that 49% of employees believe the portrayed public image of the company they work for matches the actual experience of working there. The research shows that employees are generally happy with the culture at their workplace, with 70% of people agreeing their company’s ethos is well communicated to staff, and 61% saying they would feel comfortable speaking to their manager if they felt the company wasn’t delivering on its aims.