April 19, 2021

Pressure and weak leadership form the recipe for workplace bullying

Employees experience more bullying on days with higher work pressure and passive avoidant leadership, finds new research from BI Norwegian Business School and the University of Bergen and published in The European Management Journal. Professor Olav Kjellevold Olsen and colleagues studied how work pressure is related to daily experiences of workplace bullying related acts, as well as the relationship with transformational or laissez-faire leadership. Transformational leadership involves paying more attention to employees’ needs for achievement and providing social support. Laissez-faire leadership involves a more passive and destructive approach leaving followers on their own in situations in need of leadership. (more…)

April 16, 2021

Mental health concerns at SMEs have surged during the pandemic

by Jayne Smith • News, Wellbeing

Breathe has released the findings from a recent survey aiming to understand business attitudes and approaches to mental health in the workplace. According to the firm, the pandemic has fuelled a health crisis which continues to impact the mental and physical wellbeing of staff in a number of ways. As a result, employers are under pressure to introduce adequate safeguarding measures, according to the report. (more…)

April 16, 2021

A fifth of UK workers feel remote working has reduced recognition in the workplace

by Jayne Smith • Flexible working, News, Working culture

Research from Ezra, provider of digital coaching claims that a fifth of UK workers feel they get less recognition within their career as a direct result of working remotely. It remains to be seen to what extent we will return to a full working environment, as Covid restrictions see many continue to work from home for part of, if not their whole working week. (more…)

April 15, 2021

Finance directors set out plans for truly remote workforces

by Neil Franklin • Flexible working, News, Workplace

A new global survey by CFO Research and Globalization Partners, claims that 81 percent of the CFOs who responded say their company’s long-term growth strategy includes international expansion, either currently ongoing or in their future plans. The survey also uncovered changing perceptions about hiring and remote work because of their pandemic experiences, with 85 percent of respondents indicating the ability to tap into a more cost-effective, global talent pool that is equipped with the appropriate skills would be desirable. (more…)

April 15, 2021

Milliken’s London showroom becomes first in the UK to receive Well Certification

by Freddie Steele • Company news

Flooring designer and manufacturer Milliken announced that it has been awarded WELL Certification at the Platinum level for its Clerkenwell Showroom by the International WELL Building Institute (IWBI). The prestigious distinction was awarded through IWBI’s WELL v2 pilot, the next version of the WELL Building Standard. WELL is the premier building standard to focus on enhancing people’s health and wellness through the buildings where we live, work and play. (more…)

April 14, 2021

Innovation, efficiency and temporary staffing drive business survival in the UK

by Jayne Smith • Business, News

More than a year after the coronavirus was first reported the UK, the impact on business is undeniable. Research conducted by SD Worx, claims that the UK has faced second most dismissals of employees (30 percent) in the past year, trailing slightly behind Austria (30.9 percent) yet ahead of France (29.1 percent). (more…)

April 13, 2021

After a year of lockdowns, people are burnt-out but happier

by Steven Buck • Comment, Wellbeing

Glint’s latest insights report shows that there is a worrying increase in employees experiencing challenges with their mental health, with burnout risk trending upwards year-over-year. That spiked in late March 2020 and climbed by nearly 4 percent between August and December 2020. That’s not a big surprise, given the first challenging months of the global pandemic. Paradoxically, employees say that despite feeling burnt-out, they also feel happier at work at the end of a year of lockdown than they did at the start. Is this some sort of contradiction—or evidence of something very encouraging about the state of HR? (more…)

April 12, 2021

Employee experience is top priority for CIO’s but UK held back by lack of tools

by Jayne Smith • News, Technology, Working culture

Elastic (NYSE: ESTC), the company behind Elasticsearch and the Elastic Stack, have announced a new study, claiming that employee experience has become a new priority for IT leaders as they reinvent their infrastructures to support remote workforces. The Changing Role of the IT Leader was conducted by Forrester Consulting on behalf of Elastic in February 2021, one year into the global pandemic, and published in April.
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April 8, 2021

Working from home surveillance drives rise of digital presenteeism

by Neil Franklin • News, Technology, Wellbeing

Lockdown has meant the majority of UK office-based employees have taken up working from home arrangements over the last year, and it seems that many employers lack trust in their employees when they can’t physically see them. Last year saw a rise in the implementation of surveillance software, to ensure that workers are acting in best corporate interests. However, this is having a negative impact on some employees – who are feeling forced to work longer hours due to a new perceived need to remain visible to their manager or team leader, revealed in a survey by cybersecurity firm Kaspersky. With remote working set to stay post-COVID, these findings indicate a worrying growing trend around broken working from home employee trust. (more…)

April 7, 2021

The binary choices and multiple outcomes of flexible working

by Mark Eltringham • Comment, Flexible working

A year of unnecessarily binary conversation about work leads inevitably to this. A stupid question. Is Big Tech going off work from home? Betteridge’s Law takes care of that, just as it did another question from 12 months ago. Even though the article is slightly better than the headline, the insistence that the only two choices we have are home or office remains. (more…)

April 6, 2021

UK civil service signs up to hybrid working deal

by Neil Franklin • News, Property, Public Sector

The UK civil service is set to pioneer a widespread hybrid working strategy with the announcement of a new deal with serviced office provider IWG. The details of the deal, reported first in The Telegraph newspaper (paywall), will include the creation of a nationwide network of ten coworking spaces for the use of civil servants when they are not in London. The report suggests that up to 430,000 employees could now have a better chance of adopting a hybrid working culture. (more…)

April 1, 2021

Finding a new sense of purpose in the way we all do business

by David Lineen • Comment, Environment, Property, Wellbeing

It is now a truism that society expects more of business than merely maximising shareholder value. Milton Friedman’s conviction that unswerving commitment to this single goal would ensure that business and society would prosper has come to be seen as blinkered, unfit for the twenty-first century and enabling of corporate greed. Instead of shareholder value maximisation, an idea that The Economist called ‘the biggest idea in business’ in 2016, businesses are now encouraged to recognise their responsibilities to an array of ‘stakeholders’, from employees, suppliers and customers, to the planet itself and other communities (real or imagined). So, it has never been more important for businesses to do good, have a clear sense of purpose and be seen as doing so. (more…)