June 18, 2014
Attitudes towards flexible working still at odds with needs of modern life, claims report
There is still a stigma attached to flexible working and employers are still reluctant to offer it to staff, according to a survey of UK employees carried out by parenting website Netmums and charity the Family and Childcare Trust. According to a third of just under 1,800 respondents, there remains a degree of resentment from work colleagues towards those who enjoy some form of flexible working. And, while, 80 percent of people think it is very important that employers offer flexible working to staff , a mere 15 percent feel it is offered in practice and another 20 percent have no idea whether it is available to them or not. The result is a mismatch between the desires and expectations of individuals and the reality of working life with the upshot that nearly a third (29 percent) of respondents claim to have left a job because they were unable to balance it with other aspects of their lives.
May 27, 2014
A third of UK workers would welcome a digital assistant to free up their time
by Mark Eltringham • Comment, News, Technology
A vision of the present. © Pixar Studios
In the 2008 Pixar film WALL-E, humans have fled the planet they have destroyed in an orgy of garbage-generating mass-consumerism and been reduced to morbidly obese, sedentary lumps living vicariously through screens and whose every need is catered for by the machines around them. Well, they say the best science fiction is really about the present day and sure enough, it appears that many of us are perfectly happy with the idea of suckling at the galvanised teat of a robot overlord. A new survey carried out by ClickSoftware claims that a third of UK employees would welcome the idea of having a personal digital assistant to help them carry out everyday tasks. Over half (58 percent) hope that intelligent apps will take on at least a tenth of their workload in the future, especially those tasks considered mundane and repetitive such as administration, work scheduling and planning journeys.
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