February 4, 2022

Want people to return to the office? Then create the best office in the world

by Mike Hills • Features, Wellbeing, Workplace design

More obituaries have been written for the office in the past two years than at any time in history. It has often seemed like even the best office in the world couldn’t preserve the idea of the office. And it’s not like the obituaries were all that rare even before the pandemic forced us to reappraise our relationship with work and the times and places we do it. While all these death notices were being served, one particularly well-informed organisation was making some more interesting observations about it all. In particular, it constantly raised the most fundamental question of all. (more…)

January 31, 2022

Business leaders have undue confidence in the idea of hybrid working

by Jayne Smith • Flexible working, News, Technology

Flexible working has overtaken salary as the top benefit to employees (59 percent), highlighting that flexibility and autonomy over the working day is now more important than financial reward for most workers. This is according to a new report from Jabra; the Jabra Hybrid Ways of Working 2021 Global Report carried out amongst 5,000 knowledge workers in five countries worldwide, including the UK. However, the report also suggests that many business leaders have a false sense of confidence in their ability to implement hybrid working.

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December 20, 2021

New era of work leaves workers feeling empowered

by Neil Franklin • Flexible working, News, Wellbeing

A majority of Americans feel newly empowered in the new era of work, according to a new survey from Randstad USA. Nearly three-in-four (73 percent) respondents feel as though they can make changes to their work-life balance, and 79 percent reported gaining new clarity regarding their professional goals, higher than the global average of 72 percent. (more…)

December 10, 2021

Full time remote working doesn’t allow employees to connect with company culture

by Jayne Smith • Flexible working, News, Working culture

The majority of U.K workers (83 percent) believe that those who work remotely full time cannot meaningfully connect with workplace culture. Just 17 percent feel that time in the office is unnecessary for fostering company culture. These are the findings from O.C. Tanner’s 2022 Global Culture Report which analysed the perspectives of over 38,000 employees, leaders, HR practitioners and executives from 21 countries around the world, including over 2,500 from the U.K. (more…)

November 26, 2021

What big city exodus? Minority of Londoners are working from home full time

by Jayne Smith • Cities, Flexible working, News, Working lives

Research carried out by Momentive (formerly SurveyMonkey), exploring Londoners’ changing experience and expectations of work claims that despite common beliefs, COVID-19 has not caused the end of ‘city life’ with just 14 percent working remotely full time. (more…)

November 23, 2021

Employees ready for hybrid work—employers, not so much

by Jayne Smith • Flexible working, News, Working lives

Global Workplace Analytics and Owl Labs, have released the annual State of Remote Work 2021 report. More than 2,000 full-time employees across the United States were surveyed to gain insights into who is still working from home, who has returned to the office. Also pandemic-related job and residential moves and the motivations behind them, dependent care issues, the pros and cons of hybrid communications, employee desire for flexibility, intent to leave a current job, employee productivity, stress and its causes, pet adoption during the pandemic, how office spaces are changing, and much more. (more…)

November 11, 2021

Hybrid working is both a challenge and opportunity for comms firms

by Andrew Walker • Comment, Flexible working, Technology

Huge swathes of workers have been returning to the office in recent weeks – many for the first time in almost two years. A significant number of companies, however, will never return to the pre-pandemic ‘normal’ of a five-day office week and will instead integrate hybrid working permanently. According to the CIPD, 40 percent of employers expect more than half their workforce to regularly work from home after the pandemic has ended. (more…)

November 11, 2021

Over half of UK employees believe AI skills will make their job easier

by Jayne Smith • News, Technology, Working lives

According to new global research from ABBYY, six-in-ten (64 percent) UK employees say their job is made more difficult through trouble accessing data in documents and one-in-four (27 percent) lose a full day of productivity per week searching documents for information they need to serve customers, higher than the global average. (more…)

November 8, 2021

Millions of workers feel rushed back to the office before being ready

by Jayne Smith • News, Wellbeing, Working lives

With more than 13.5 million workers having returned to their place of work for at least one day a week, more than four million say that they do not feel entirely safe doing so, claims new research by Direct Line Life Insurance. Some 5.5 million workers would work from home permanently if given the option and 3.6 million feel as though they are being rushed back in by their employer. (more…)

October 25, 2021

The power of science can help companies create better menopause policies

by Gosia Bowling • Comment, Wellbeing

According to research, nearly 8 out of 10 menopausal women are in work, at a time when many are likely to move into top leadership positions. Despite the challenges and difficulties faced by those experiencing menopause in the workplace, it remains largely invisible, undiscussed, and unsupported. That’s why it’s important for businesses create menopause-friendly workplaces using the principles of behavioural science and health psychology. (more…)

October 18, 2021

Managers can be blind to some of the stresses of home workers

by Neil Franklin • Flexible working, News, Wellbeing

Managers in the increasingly digital, knowledge-fuelled and hybrid working environment may not be able to see the “invisible” strains on workers juggling home life and their workloads, a report by Advanced Workplace Associates (AWA) claims. The challenge of managing mental workload is rapidly becoming critical and employers need to be more aware of factors that could impact the effect on home workers and do more to understand and mitigate the factors, AWA says in the report (registration). (more…)

October 6, 2021

Disconnect between executives and employees on returning to the office

by Jayne Smith • Flexible working, News, Working culture

Future Forum, a consortium launched by Slack to help companies reimagine work in the new digital-first workplace, has released the latest findings from the Future Forum Pulse, a global study that claims a huge divide between executives and non-executives on returning to the office: “the Great Executive-Employee Disconnect.” (more…)