February 17, 2021
Search Results for: financial
February 15, 2021
The best places to live for work-life balance
by Jayne Smith • Flexible working, News, Wellbeing, Working lives
As Brits continue to spend an extensive amount of time at home, the importance of maintaining a good work-life balance has never been so vital. For their 2021 Work-Life Balance Index, money.co.uk have delved through ONS data to uncover where in Britain is best situated for its residents to achieve a good work-life balance. (more…)
February 12, 2021
Mental health related workplace absenteeism costs soared to £14bn in 2020
by Jayne Smith • Business, News, Wellbeing
The impact of the nation’s deteriorating mental health from Covid-19 lockdowns and other restrictions cost UK businesses £14bn last year, according to a study by Westfield Health. The cost of absenteeism from work due to mental health reasons increased last year by £1.3bn from 2019’s totals as work from home, travel restrictions, furlough and pay cuts changed the workplace for millions of people across the UK. (more…)
February 11, 2021
Flexibility and reskilling top priorities for UK employers in 2021
by Jayne Smith • Business, News
The COVID-19 pandemic is driving a fundamental shift in the way companies operate, accelerating the need for an adaptable and agile workforce to drive business success. According to Mercer’s 2021 Global Talent Trends study, the financial impact and work-life disruption caused by the pandemic is causing UK employers to focus on redefining flexibility and skills development to ensure their business and employees become more resilient and agile in the face of disruption.
February 10, 2021
Ten point green plan needs to be embraced by organisations
by Paul Scriven • Comment, Environment
We’ve been talking to our clients a lot over the last eighteen months, informing and educating them about when upcoming green legislation might come into force and what that will mean for the construction industry. So, it’s with interest that we saw the UK government unveil its ten point green plan in mid-November that reflected our predictions to date. The hope is that this route to a green industrial revolution will have a game-changing impact, similar to the positive effect on people and places the original industrial revolution had some 260 years earlier. (more…)
February 9, 2021
Getting the measure of better working cultures
by Mark Eltringham • Comment, Flexible working, Technology, Wellbeing, Workplace design
For now, just forget the cyborg monkeys and spinach sending emails, the real short term tech action is all about how to gauge what workers are thinking or doing, and what to do about it – especially if whatever they are thinking and doing is not what the org wants for them or, more importantly, itself. Things are getting crazy. (more…)
February 8, 2021
Business leaders set out plans to create ‘tech supercluster’ in West Midlands
by Neil Franklin • Cities, News, Property, Technology
Generating £27.8 billion gross value added annually, and employing more than 360,000 people, the West Midlands is the UK’s largest centre for business, professional and financial services (BPFS) outside London. Now, business leaders from Shoosmiths, Wesleyan, Bruntwood CBRE amongst others, are working with the region’s just under 12,500 leading tech and digital companies to see how they can integrate AI and advanced technology into their everyday activities. (more…)
February 5, 2021
UK job vacancies increased by 170,000 as the vaccine effect boosts hiring
by Jayne Smith • Business, News
The UK jobs market recovered 170,000 jobs in January as the COVID-19 vaccination roll out boosted employer optimism, claims new research from job search engine Adzuna. The research analysed over 12 million+ live job vacancies aggregated in real-time from thousands of unique job sources across 12 international markets. (more…)
February 3, 2021
COVID-19 is having an unequal impact on the mental health of workers
by Brendan Street • Comment, Wellbeing
When the COVID-19 crisis hit the UK in March 2020, many commented that the virus didn’t discriminate and that its impact would be felt equally by everyone. However, as highlighted in Nuffield Health’s recent whitepaper, the mental health impact of the virus – rising from financial worries, anxiety around health and the direct impact of COVID-19 – has hit some groups harder than others. (more…)
February 2, 2021
Working from home spells trouble for the careers of younger workers
by Helen Jamieson • Comment, Flexible working
Lockdown meant that the choice to work from home was made for us. However, for many the decision to continue to do so post-lockdown will be a personal choice. The question we should all ask ourselves is, whether when we are outside of any lockdown restrictions, is working from home really a workplace revolution or simply an act of selfishness? For thousands of workers who’ve spent years of their lives commuting to offices that feel more like soul-less factories than inspiring and engaging workplaces, it’s no wonder that enforced work from home has proven popular. (more…)
January 27, 2021
Extrovert-run businesses are more likely to be growing than introvert-run ones
by Jayne Smith • Business, News
A new report of over 1,000 small business owners and decision makers by Hitachi Capital Business Finance claims that extrovert-run businesses are more likely to be growing in the current environment, and more likely to have plans to win more business in 2021. (more…)






Over half (54 percent) of UK workers say they are more open to taking on a side hustle or freelance work since the Covid-19 pandemic, according to new research from 












February 16, 2021
We must seize the chance to go full circle on sustainable office design
by Joanna Knight • Comment, Environment, JK