September 25, 2020
A new survey published by Boston Consulting Group (BCG) claims that while 78 percent of those who experienced a change in workplace felt that they had experienced positive impacts, furloughed employees have had a significantly different experience. (more…)
September 24, 2020
In a survey of employees and business leaders across 11 nations, The Workforce Institute at UKG (Ultimate Kronos Group) claims only a fraction of employees (20 percent) felt their organisation met their needs during the initial months of the COVID-19 pandemic. But there is a silver lining: a third of employees globally (33 percent) say they trust their employer more now than before the pandemic began because of how organisations reacted. (more…)
September 22, 2020
Water cooler chats and the buzz of office life is set to remain on hold until at least the New Year as businesses look to restructure their office needs from January. A government drive to see more office employees return to work in the workplace has seen a rise in commuters to more than 60 percent according to the latest figures from the Office for National Statistics. (more…)
September 7, 2020
While city centres are taking time to recover, there’s better news elsewhere, suggests Vodafone research into small business employees. Local economies are benefitting from the rise in homeworking, with 25 percent of homeworkers spending at least once a day at their local coffee shop or café. The research, which surveyed 1,003 small business employees, also claims that working from home has not hindered Brits’ productivity, with 40 percent of workers putting in an average of 642 additional hours, equal to 26 extra days, since lockdown began back in March. (more…)
August 28, 2020
It’s not happening quickly enough for some and too slowly for others, but most companies are in the midst of managing a return to work and grappling with a very different post COVID-19 world and what it means for employees. HR professionals are paying close attention to how well employees are faring and are looking to build new forms of employee care into company cultures and values. But maybe there is something more they can do to foster employee trust and safety? (more…)
August 20, 2020
In 1962, a professor of communication studies called Everett Rogers came up with the principle we call diffusion of innovation. It’s a familiar enough notion, widely taught and works by plotting the adoption of new ideas and products over time as a bell curve, before categorising groups of people along its length as innovators, early adopters, early majority, late majority, and laggards. It’s a principle bound up with human capital theory and so its influence has endured for over 50 years, albeit in a form compressed by our accelerated proliferation of ideas. It may be useful, but it lacks a third dimension in the modern era. That is, a way of describing the numbers of people who are in one category but think they are in another.
August 20, 2020
For most of us the experience of working from home this year has, on balance, been positive – enough that it may well become the norm after the COVID-19 crisis ends. But modelling by Victoria University’s Centre of Policy Studies shows there will be costs alongside the personal benefits, with more urban sprawl, job clusters with a flight to the biggest cities and greater economic disparities between regions. (more…)
August 14, 2020
Half (49 percent) of employed British adults feel positive about the prospect of returning to their place of work after lockdown, with less than one in five (18 percent) feeling negative, an Aviva study claims. The findings paint a relatively positive picture for businesses that have supported their people through lockdown, such as regularly communicating with workers and taking necessary steps to manage the risk of infection in the workplace. However, where businesses have not embraced risk management and prevention strategies, employees may decide not to return to work at all. (more…)
August 12, 2020
There was a time we used to talk with dismay about the Japanese phenomenon of intense social distancing known as hikikomori. We would consider with horror the isolation, lack of engagement with society, poor mental health and loneliness of the people who had almost completely withdrawn to their rooms. Those poor bastards locked up in enclosed spaces linked to the outside world only by screens. (more…)
August 12, 2020
I have observed with some disbelief the numerous articles that have heralded the “death of the office” and other click-bait driven headlines. It makes for a fun read but fails to really understand exactly what the office is for and how the modern workspace is actually used. The best way to take a view of this is to understand why we will be desperate to return to the office and why organisations should be doing everything they can to ensure it does. (more…)
August 6, 2020
According to the latest data from the Cycle to Work Alliance, June 2020 saw a 120 per cent increase in the number of people joining the government Cycle to Work scheme. Introduced in 1999 as part of a series of measures under the government’s Green Transport Plan, it is now undergoing a revival as thousands of people remain reluctant to use public transport fearing exposure to COVID-19. (more…)
September 21, 2020
Time to get on board with the psychological effects of working from home
by Jörg Bakschas • Comment, Flexible working, Wellbeing