August 9, 2016
Watercooler moments are the key to workplace wellness claims study 0
The skills people require to perform at their optimum throughout the working day, such as patience, focus and diplomacy can be fuelled by the food they’ve eaten; while ‘the wrong kind of fuel can derail their whole day,’ a new academic report has found. And the study in the journal Food, Culture & Society: An International Journal of Multidisciplinary Research reveals that water is the main redeemer of ‘negative nutrition’ in the workplace; not only because it provides vital hydration for physical wellness but because it encourages people to walk to the watercooler or break out area to drink. According to the researchers, a culture of grabbing something quick to eat amid a mounting pile of to-dos at work often leads to making the wrong decisions when searching for something to eat in the workplace. Unplanned cakes and the emergence of ‘food altars’; central places for leftovers from work meetings or unhealthy snacks present workers with endless choice.
We’re operating in an increasingly tech-centric environment, but human talent still remains one of the core differentiators if a business is to thrive. Not surprisingly, the mission to get the very best people on board and optimise the potential of those already in situ has become the Holy Grail for many companies, irrespective of scale and sector – a challenge that demands a more intuitive and precise, even scientific approach to human capital management. Data analytics is a case in point, designed to extrapolate insight from intelligence across a variety of disparate sources and establish actionable intelligence, capabilities which naturally lend themselves to powering key decisions around hiring and retention and building on existing talent. Yet despite the proliferation of analytics across many strands of the workplace, take up in the HR sphere remains relatively modest, in tandem with a long-held reticence over the use of the technology in this area.
Fifteen million UK internet users have undertaken a ‘digital detox’ in a bid to strike a healthier balance between technology and life beyond the screen, according to a new Ofcom study. The study of around 2,500 people suggests that our reliance on the internet is affecting people’s personal and working lives, leading many to seek time away from the web to spend time with friends and family. Ofcom’s 
A new survey by office products supplier Viking claims that a third of workers suffer from stress and yet have no one to talk to about it. The authors of the study claims that these findings correlate strongly with people’s overall levels of fulfilment at work, with 46 percent of those surveyed saying they had negative thoughts about their job several times a week. When it comes to a person’s working environment, the results showed that office workers were more stressed than those working from home. Factors that contributed to these stress levels included working overtime, not taking enough breaks, having no one to talk to, job satisfaction, pressure to succeed. It’s no surprise that a lack of breaks is causing stress, with half of office workers admitting to taking no breaks at all during the day, excluding lunch. Conversely, a massive 61 percent of people working from home said they took two to three breaks throughout the day.
There is a lurid headline in today’s Telegraph proclaiming that ‘Working in an office is as bad as smoking’. It’s been picked up by a number of other news outlets, has been splashed all over search engines and will no doubt join 
How many people in the workplace genuinely trust their managers and employers? It’s a question that we should ask because the answer unfortunately is not as many as you might think. It’s almost certainly well below what an organisation supposes or expects. For example, a recent 
Working on complex tasks and work that is based on interactions with other people rather than data or things appear to protect against cognitive decline, according to research presented at the Alzheimer’s Association’s International Conference in Toronto. Researchers in two separate studies claim that people whose work requires complex thinking and activities are better able to withstand the wider causes of cognitive decline. The results suggest that working with people, rather than data or physical things, contributed the most to the protective effect and could offset the widely reported effects of a Western diet on cognitive ability. Researchers found that people with increased white matter hyperintensities (WMHs) – white spots that appear on brain scans and are commonly associated with Alzheimer’s and cognitive decline – could better tolerate WMH-related damage if they worked primarily with other people rather than with things or data.
Giving employees more control over workplace design is the single most important contributing factor to their wellbeing, according to a new study. The Workplace & Wellbeing report examines the workplace design factors that influence wellbeing. The research team discovered that an invitation to participate in the design of the work environment raised levels of wellbeing, although increasing the level of participation did not necessarily increase the level of wellbeing. The research was led by the Royal College of Art’s Helen Hamlyn Centre for Design in partnership with architects Gensler and supported by a consortium of leading industry names: Milliken, Bupa, Royal Bank of Scotland, Kinnarps and Shell. The context for this project lies with a current ‘wellbeing deficit’ in the workplace which means absence from work costs the UK economy more than £14 billion a year according to the Confederation of British Industry.
August 9, 2016
Time to address ‘shocking disconnect’ between boardroom and staff pay 0
by Sara Bean • Comment, News, Workplace
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