July 23, 2020
The British Council for Offices (BCO) has launched its first podcast, a 12-episode series, hosted by chief executive Richard Kauntze, which explores how COVID-19 is impacting the office, both in the long and short term. The interviews are edited versions of a recently run video series by the BCO. (more…)
July 22, 2020
So, Prime Minister Boris Johnson has told the British people to get back to work by Christmas. This means that millions would be renewing their season tickets, getting up in darkness to dress up for work, crowding onto those trains, buses and tubes while swaddled in facemasks and battling their way into the office (which for the time being will be a pretty dull experience with social distancing). (more…)
July 22, 2020
Many of this year’s graduates finished their degrees online and are due to enter the workplace amidst a tumultuous jobs market, however, fewer graduates felt like their university had prepared them for the workplace this year, with only 15 percent reporting that they felt completely prepared (down from 18 percent last year). Graduate jobs board Milkround’s survey of nearly 3,000 students, graduates and young workers has revealed that 10 percent of the next generation of workers feel wholly unprepared for the workplace after their degree. (more…)
July 21, 2020
The enduring but changing struggle to improve the working conditions and performance of people through workplace design and management has more than a whiff of the Enlightenment of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries about it. The Enlightenment marked a new era in which the old superstitions and dogmas were to be overthrown by pure reason.
July 21, 2020
In an open letter to the Business Secretary Alok Sharma, the CIPD, the professional body for HR and people development, is calling on the Government to introduce the right to bereavement leave and pay to all employees experiencing a close family bereavement. The call follows the introduction of Jack’s Law, a legal right to paid bereavement leave for working parents who lose a child under the age of 18, in April this year. (more…)
July 20, 2020
Mindspace has published the results of a new survey of over 1,000 members across the firm’s sites in the UK, the US, Europe and Israel, revealing the anxieties, intentions and changing habits of many employees in the Western world as they begin returning to the office for the first time since they went into lockdown earlier in the year. Unsurprisingly many of the issues focus on sharing space with other people, especially in building amenities and shared spaces as well as on public transport. At the same time, the things people have missed most about office life are also about the spaces and times they share with other people. (more…)
July 20, 2020
New research published in the journal of Psychology and Health has found that some employees feel guilty about taking breaks during the day, especially for lunch. The paper’s lead author Dr Mike Oliver explained: “The legally required minimum time for a lunch break at work is 20 minutes, however there is a growing trend nationally for large numbers of people not to take breaks at work, with surveys reporting that between 66 percent and 82 percent of workers don’t always take their breaks. (more…)
July 17, 2020
It’s been talked about for a number of years now but we can expect to be hearing a lot more about the four day week or six hour day soon. The modern conversation has its roots partly in a Swedish experiment designed to limit the hours people work in an attempt to improve their work-life balance and possibly even increase their productivity. Now a growing number of firms are looking to introduce a nominal four day working week or restrict the use of technology – meaning email – outside of certain hours. (more…)
July 17, 2020
Stigma around mental health in the workplace persists in many organisations, amid signs that stress is putting significant pressure on workers across a range of industries, claims new research from the ADP Research Institute (registration). Only one in seven (14 percent) of respondents polled in ADP’s study say they would feel comfortable telling HR about a mental health problem or concern. One in four (25 percent) would not feel comfortable telling anyone at work. (more…)
July 16, 2020
This sounds really obvious but when organisations talk about diversity and inclusion they often forget to include disability. They talk about the importance of women in leadership and the gender pay gap, the need to include people from an ethnic minority background especially following the Black Lives Matter movement. And June just gone was dedicated to LGBT+ Pride month. (more…)
July 16, 2020
New research from the CIPD claims that employers now expect the proportion of people working from home on a regular basis will increase to 37 percent compared to 18 percent before the pandemic. Employers also expect the proportion of staff who work from home all the time to rise to 22 percent post pandemic compared to 9 percent before lockdown measures started to be imposed. (more…)
July 23, 2020
Balancing the rights and responsibilities of employee wellbeing
by Nathan Berkley • Comment, Wellbeing