July 22, 2021
As increasing numbers of companies offer post-pandemic hybrid working for employees, the challenges it poses to maintaining culture, morale, effective training and staff loyalty have been disclosed in a new survey of senior executives. (more…)
July 20, 2021
Many governments are increasingly approaching artificial intelligence with an almost religious zeal. By 2018 at least 22 countries around the world, and also the EU, had launched grand national strategies for making AI part of their business development, while many more had announced ethical frameworks for how it should be allowed to develop. The EU documents more than 290 AI policy initiatives in individual EU member states between 2016 and 2020. (more…)
July 16, 2021
Most people now recognise that we are facing a climate emergency – the record breaking temperatures in the US are, perhaps, another reminder. Many would agree that economic and legislative change is the only way forward to achieve a sustainable change in behaviour. Who should pay for greater environmental responsibility? Is it time for a carbon tax to limit carbon hungry products and fund investment? (more…)
July 8, 2021
One of the unintended consequences of the pandemic has been to focus attention on the issue of indoor air quality. But as Sarah Zhang points out in a recent piece in The Atlantic, this is an issue that we have long understood, and not just as a way to reduce the risks of infection. It is essential for our wellbeing. (more…)
July 8, 2021
The word ‘languishing’ is being bandied around in the media as the world tries to recover from the pandemic and is experiencing many struggles resuming a semblance of ‘normal life’. Recent articles in The New York Times and The Guardian have detailed languishing as an inability to focus, being off peak performance, feeling joyless and aimless and having a sense of stagnation and emptiness. (more…)
June 25, 2021
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…)
June 21, 2021
Almost every organisation now knows it must become more resilient as the economy emerges from the pandemic. As well as coping with crises and global events, organisations must excel in the face of the many less high-profile disruptions that hit an organisation – from supply chain bottlenecks to shifts in demand and sudden skills shortages. HR departments have a major role to play in this but to do so successfully requires a change of mindset, taking a step back from traditional administrative functions and reviewing the entire business as if they were an outsider. (more…)
June 18, 2021
The latest RICS UK Facilities Management Survey results suggest a greater demand for services across all sectors, apart from retail, with FM employment opportunities therefore increasing. Furthermore, for the first time since the COVID-19 crisis swept the world last year, profit margins in the sector are expected to rise. (more…)
June 14, 2021
The myth has it that John Lydon’s audition for the Sex Pistols consisted largely of wearing a Pink Floyd t-shirt with the words I HATE scrawled above the prog rock group’s name. It appealed to the new band’s managers and its existing members at a time when they needed a singer with the right attitude as much as the right chops. Before Lydon’s involvement, bass guitarist Glen Matlock had taken to approaching anybody he saw of his age group with short hair to ask them if they could sing. This was a time when everybody had long hair.
June 14, 2021
A new report from the RSA and Vitality warns of the potentially serious impact on the long-term physical and mental health of employees. The authors claim that the ‘long lockdown effect’ should lead employers to see health and wellbeing as important strategic issues and place them on the company’s risk registers. With the shift to more flexible working cultures now set to continue, Healthy Hybrid, a Blueprint for Business, claims to shine a light on the health impact of successive lockdowns on homeworkers. (more…)
June 14, 2021
A new study conducted by Wildgoose, into friendship in the workplace claims the impact of working from home on personal connections in the office. One in 20 employees starting a new job while working from home have found it hard to make colleague friendships. This is equivalent to over 300,000 employees struggling to integrate and make friends in a new role. (more…)
July 23, 2021
The unshocking truth about work and workplaces
by Mark Eltringham • Comment, Workplace design