Search Results for: health

Long commutes to work are as bad as a pay cut when it comes to happiness and wellbeing

Long commutes to work are as bad as a pay cut when it comes to happiness and wellbeing

by • Flexible working, News, Wellbeing

A twenty minute increase in commuting time is as bad as a 19 per cent pay cut for job satisfaction, a study has found. The research by the University of the West of England found that every extra minute spent travelling to and from work reduces job and leisure time satisfaction, increases strain and worsens mental health.  The researchers conclude that more people should be allowed to work from home or should choose a new way of getting there. According to the study, every extra minute spent travelling reduced job satisfaction, created extra strain, worsened mental health and increased people’s chances of quitting. The study, based on analysis of 26,000 workers in England, found that people travelling by bus were more likely to feel the “negative impacts of longer commute times” than users of other transport and that employees who cycled or walked were among the most satisfied as they used commuting time as part of their “health-enhancing lifestyle”.

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An environmental psychology perspective on workplace design

An environmental psychology perspective on workplace design

by • Facilities management, Features, News, Wellbeing, Workplace design

I recently had the pleasure of travelling to Cape Town to present a keynote address at the Dare to Lead conference organised by Green Building Council South Africa (GBCSA). I had just 20 minutes to speak on a psychologist’s view of health, wellbeing and performance; that’s a huge subject area and pretty much my whole career condensed down to the typical time it takes to boil a pan of potatoes. So, I focused on just three psychological theories: motivation, personality and evolutionary psychology.

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Freelancers to make up a majority of US workforce within a decade

Freelancers to make up a majority of US workforce within a decade

by • Flexible working, News

Freelance website Upwork and the Freelancers Union have published the results of a report called Freelancing in America: 2017, which the sponsors claim is the most comprehensive measure of the US independent workforce, (but given their vested interests probably needs you to add a pinch of salt and always worth reading Trustpilot reviews). The fourth annual study estimates that 57.3 million Americans are freelancing (36 percent of the US workforce) and contribute approximately $1.4 trillion annually to the economy, an increase of almost 30 percent since last year.

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One-fifth of UK jobs under threat from automation, but some regions more at risk than others

One-fifth of UK jobs under threat from automation, but some regions more at risk than others

by • News, Technology

Automation will affect one in five jobs across the UK, according to a new study from the thinktank Future Advocacy. According to the report, the risk of jobs being becoming automated is higher in some areas more than others and in the case of shadow chancellor John McDonnell’s west London constituency of Hayes and Harlington hits 40 percent, largely because it contains Heathrow Airport which employs a large number of people whose jobs are most at risk from automation. However, the report claims that a mere 2 percent of people surveyed were ‘very worried’ that they might be replaced by a machine, with a further 5 percent saying they were ‘fairly worried’.

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How our smartphones stop us from living in the moment

How our smartphones stop us from living in the moment

by • Comment, Technology, Wellbeing

As a teacher who has long witnessed and worried about the impacts of technology in the classroom, I constantly struggle to devise effective classroom policies for smartphones. I used to make students sing or dance if their phones interrupted class, and although this led to some memorable moments, it also turned inappropriate tech use into a joke. Given the myriad deleterious effects of phones – addiction, decline of face-to-face socialisation, deskilling, and endless distraction, for starters – I want students to think carefully about their phone habits, rather than to mindlessly follow (or not follow) a rule.

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Over a third of UK staff say employers offer no flexible working benefits

Over a third of UK staff say employers offer no flexible working benefits

by • Flexible working, Legal news, News, Workplace

Over a third of UK staff say employers offer no flexible working benefitsBritish workers are lagging behind employees from other countries when it comes to flexible working hours and benefits like extended leave, suggests new research. New independent research commissioned by travel specialists Opodo.co.uk compared Britain with other nations across Europe and the USA, which reveals that British companies are lagging behind other businesses when it comes to flexible working. Three-quarters of employees in the UK (75 percent) don’t believe they have a generous holiday allowance and 84 percent aren’t offered time back in lieu for days worked over the weekend. It’s of no surprise then that 69 percent of Brits don’t think they have a good work-life balance.

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Report warns of growing cybersecurity threat to organisations by their own staff

Report warns of growing cybersecurity threat to organisations by their own staff

by • Facilities management, News, Technology, Workplace

An overwhelming majority of employees are deliberately seeking out information they are not permitted to access, exposing a major cybersecurity problem among today’s workforce, claims new research published by One Identity. The survey, conducted by Dimensional Research, polled more than 900 IT security professionals on trends and challenges related to managing employee access to corporate data. Among key findings, a remarkable 92 percent of respondents report that employees at their organisations try to access information that is not necessary for their day-to-day work – with nearly one in four (23 percent) admitting this behaviour happens frequently. Most alarmingly, the report indicates that IT security professionals themselves are among the worst offenders of corporate data snooping. One in three respondents admit to having accessed sensitive information that is not necessary for their day-to-day work.

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Harnessing artificial intelligence could release up to £630bn for the UK economy, new government report claims

Harnessing artificial intelligence could release up to £630bn for the UK economy, new government report claims

by • News, Technology

Artificial Intelligence has the potential to add £630 billion to the UK economy by 2035, according to an independent review commissioned by the government as part of its Industrial Strategy. The review, Growing the Artificial Intelligence Industry in the UK, led by Jerome Pesenti, chief executive of BenevolentTech and Dame Wendy Hall, Professor of Computer Science at the University of Southampton, says AI is expected to make “great improvements” for the public, including more personalised services, better healthcare and more efficient use of resources. Robots could be used to perform a raft of benign and “dangerous” jobs  including smarter scheduling of medical operations and hiring on-demand self-driving cars. The report makes 18 key recommendations for developing AI in the UK and was led by Professor Dame Wendy Hall, a professor of computer science at the University of Southampton.

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Third of employees complain employers do not offer any wellbeing programmes

Third of employees complain employers do not offer any wellbeing programmes

by • News, Wellbeing, Workplace

Over half of employees would choose a company that cared about their wellbeing, over one that pays 10 percent more, a new survey claims. According to the research by Reward Gateway, over 22 million British workers, or seven in 10 employees (71 percent), have felt stress or financial strain in the last five years, however, a third of workers said their company currently offered no programmes and just 29 percent of respondents said that their company currently offers a physical programme. The findings also suggest a disparity of opinion between employee and employer. While over half (51 percent) of employers agree that their company shows they care about employees mental, physical and financial wellbeing, only 14 percent of employees say that their company couldn’t do more to show they care. But employers too would benefit from taking a more proactive approach to wellbeing, as more than half (52 percent) of UK employees agree that they would choose a company that cared about their wellbeing over one that pays more.

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Seven (or eight) of the best workplace stories we think you should read this week

Seven (or eight) of the best workplace stories we think you should read this week

by • Features

A Google engineer has created a religion which will have an artificial intelligence as its God

Nobody seems to know what mindfulness actually is

Most people are neither extroverts nor introverts

We are literally sleepwalking into a health and productivity disaster

Are you working alongside a zombie?

The five major roadblocks to smart city infrastructure

Shooting the same people on the way to work for nine years

What Norman Foster got wrong about the Apple HQ, and what it means for everybody else

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Major US surveys uncover ambivalent attitudes towards the impact of technology and automation on our lives

Major US surveys uncover ambivalent attitudes towards the impact of technology and automation on our lives

by • AI, News, Technology

The ambivalent attitude many people hold towards technology is laid bare in two major new studies from the Pew Research Centre. When asked to name what has brought about the biggest improvements in their lives over the last 50 years, technology is the most commonly cited factor by people across the US. They are even optimistic that technology will have a similarly beneficial impact over the next half century. Yet when asked about their specific attitudes towards artificial intelligence and automation in a second survey, many are apprehensive about the impact the technologies will have on their jobs and income.

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Working conditions and office design shown to impact on employee performance

Working conditions and office design shown to impact on employee performance

by • Facilities management, News, Wellbeing, Workplace, Workplace design

Link made between impact of workplace conditions and office design on performance

New evidence of a strong correlation between productivity, creativity and even profitability with employee working conditions, such as: light, air, noise, health, culture, design, movement and the quality of furniture have been established in a new report. The syndicated research project, Wellness Together, carried out by Sapio Research, of 1000 UK based office workers and 50 Facilities Management experts, suggests a strong link between people feeling catered and cared for by their workplace/employers and how this impacts business performance. Wellness at work is a dominant theme in any discussion about the workplace. But this is not just a discussion about happiness, it is about creating cultures and environments that are conducive to commercial success. The study identifies that in order to achieve true ‘Wellness’ attention to every single component that can impact mental and physical health needs to be considered, from building structures and company cultures through to the physical furniture and fittings that employees require to work efficiently and effectively.

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