August 16, 2022

Employees at large firms only in office for 1.5 days a week on average

by Neil Franklin • Flexible working, News, Workplace design

A global study of nearly 80 offices in 13 countries with nearly 80,000 employees has revealed a seismic shift in working pattens, with people now coming into the office an average of just 1.4 days a week, versus nearly four days a week before the Covid-19 pandemic. The Advanced Workplace Associates (AWA) Hybrid Working Index study [registration], conducted during June and July this year, found that on an average day two thirds of desks are unused and just over a quarter of people are coming into the offices, with the attendance figure dropping to just 12 percent on Fridays. (more…)

June 27, 2022

Four in ten people would take unpaid leave to get more time off

by Jayne Smith • News, Wellbeing, Workplace

New research shows British workers are increasingly willing to take measures to achieve better work-life balance, as over 4 in 10 (43 percent) of UK employees would take unpaid leave to get more time off – the second highest amount of all European countries surveyed. The poll from SD Worx, claims that while people want to prioritise taking time off, the struggle is how to disconnect from the working world. Findings show that almost a third (32 percent) of UK employees check their work while they should be offline, and 34 percent say that it’s difficult to let go of workload when on holiday. (more…)

June 25, 2021

UK employees working £4.2 billion unpaid overtime every week

by Jayne Smith • Flexible working, News, Working lives

The amount of unpaid overtime that workers around the world are doing has soared in the past year; unpaid overtime in the UK has steadily risen from six hours in 2019 to seven hours in 2020 in the advent of COVID-19, to almost eight hours in 2021, claims a new study by the ADP Research Institute, People at Work 2021: A Global Workforce View. (more…)

October 9, 2020

Home workers in America spend four percent of their week resolving tech issues

by Jayne Smith • News, Technology

There are some good things about working in an office. Constant supplies of tea and coffee (if you’re lucky), gossip with your co-workers, and paper clips in every colour. But one of the best things has to be that when something goes wrong with your computer, the in-house IT helpdesk will have it sorted out quicker than you can say ‘so which buttons do you want me to press?!’ However, home workers don’t have this luxury. (more…)

September 15, 2020

Parents dedicate two extra working days a month to new Covid school routine

by Jayne Smith • Flexible working, News, Working lives

New research by Vita Health Group claims British parents are set to spend the equivalent of more than two working days extra a month on the school routine due to the additional childcare management needed due to the pandemic and employers will have to consider this in their workplace policies to ensure working parents don’t burn out. (more…)

July 17, 2020

Your working day is never finished, merely abandoned

by Mark Eltringham • Comment, Flexible working, Technology

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…)

January 20, 2020

UK based workers are amongst least likely to take sick days in Europe

by Jayne Smith • News

According to time and attendance data from 2019 compiled by Mitrefinch, 53 percent more sick days were taken in January in the UK compared to all other months of the year. However, the data also suggests that UK based workers took just 4.4 days leave for sickness last year, the fourth lowest in Europe. (more…)

October 15, 2019

Four in ten people close to breaking point at work, study claims

by Neil Franklin • News, Wellbeing

A new study by CABA, a charity supporting the wellbeing of chartered accountants and their families, claims that 4 in 10 adults in the UK are close to breaking point at work. Research polling 2,000 professionals working across multiple sectors in the UK suggests that the average working adult feels stressed for almost a third of their entire working day. The study also claims that in an average week, employees spend 31 minutes complaining about their boss and 2 hours 45 minutes moaning about their job. Employees lose 5 hours of sleep each week because of the pressures they face at work, while 3 in 5 respondents said that they feel stressed whilst on holiday due to the thought of being behind on work and organising a handover. (more…)

June 20, 2019

The case for a shorter working week

by Shainaz Firfiray • Comment, Wellbeing

UK employees have the longest working week compared to other workers in the European Union. But, despite the long hours, recent studies have shown this does not make the UK a more productive nation. An analysis by the Trade Union Congress on working hours and productivity found that, while UK full-time staff worked almost two hours more than the EU average, they were not as productive as staff in Denmark who worked fewer hours in the average week. (more…)

January 7, 2019

What Leonardo da Vinci can teach us about the six hour working day ⁰

by Mark Eltringham • Comment, Flexible working, Technology, Wellbeing

The latest idea to grip the sometimes limited imagination of the world’s workplace chatterers is that of the six hour working day or the four day working week. This has its original roots 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 emails outside of office hours. These are always commendable goals and you can see the logic. We know people find it increasingly hard to switch off, we know that this is bad for them and we know that long hours don’t necessarily equate to greater productivity.

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October 18, 2018

Majority of UK workers sit at their desk between four and nine hours a day

by Sara Bean • Facilities management, Flexible working, News, Wellbeing, Workplace

The majority (81 percent) of UK office workers spend between four and nine hours each day sitting at their desk, equating to an average of 67 sedentary days per person each year, claims a new survey from Fellowes. Nearly half (45 percent) of office workers polled said they sat at their desk for between six and nine hours daily with 36 percent claiming they spent four to six hours seated. On top of this, a huge 64 percent claimed their office environment also had a negative impact on their health.

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October 1, 2018

National Work Life Week research reinforces appeal of flexible hours

by Sara Bean • Facilities management, Flexible working, News, Wellbeing, Workplace

National Work Life Week (1st – 5th October 2018) starts today with the aim of encouraging companies to think about their employees’ wellbeing and happiness. To mark the week new research asked British workers about the things they most want from their work. The YouGov surveyof 2,000 adults, commissioned by the Oxford Open Learning Trust, found that while money is predictably the biggest motivator behind career choice (64 percent), over half of the respondents cited working hours and flexible working as an important factor (55 percent). (more…)