Search Results for: mental health

October 7, 2014

Workers struggling to balance home and work, according to CIPD report

by Mark Eltringham • Flexible working, Knowledge, News, Workplace

The UK’s workforce is struggling to find the right balance between their work and domestic responsibilities according to the latest Absence Management report from the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development. The report also suggests that, although overall absence levels are falling, much of this is down to people going into work when they perhaps shouldn’t with a third of employers reporting presenteeism. Stress and mental health problems in the workplace also remain high, with more than 40 percent of employers citing an increase, despite signs of economic recovery. One area in which absenteeism is rising is workers taking time off to care for children and elderly or disabled relatives and friends. More than a third of those employers surveyed reported an increase in absence levels amongst staff who are struggling to cope with their caring responsibilities outside of work. However only a sixth of employers have policies in place to provide a better level of support.

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September 15, 2014

How we travel to work has enormous impact on wellbeing, claims new research

by Mark Eltringham • Environment, News

Part of London’s planned cycling infrastructure around Parliament Square

New research has further highlighted the important role that the mode of transport we choose to get work has on our physical and psychological wellbeing. Walking or cycling to work is better for people’s mental health than driving to work, according to the research by health economists at the University of East Anglia and the Centre for Diet and Activity Research (CEDAR). The report ‘Does active commuting improve psychological wellbeing?’ was published today in the journal Preventive Medicine and draws on 18 years of data from 18,000 people. It follows on the heels of two other reports published last month in the British Medical Journal and Science Direct which make related claims about the careful choices we should make about how we get to work.

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September 9, 2014

Report claims workplace fails to support employees with musculoskeletal disorders

by Sara Bean • Comment, Facilities management, News, Workplace, Workplace design

When determining what constitutes a well-designed office, it’s easy to overlook the overriding need to ensure a workplace is designed first and foremost to be inclusive. Given the fact that musculoskeletal disorders remain the largest single cause of days of work lost due to sickness absence, it’s worrying to discover that many organisations fail to meet the needs of those dealing with such conditions. The new report ‘Self-management of chronic musculoskeletal disorders and employment’ from the Fit for Work UK Coalition and The Work Foundation found that despite sufferers’ efforts to remain at work, many are forced to ‘self-manage’ their condition without adequate support; with for instance an employee being forced to partake in a hot desk policy when they required their own, fixed workspace. As the report states, this lack of help is ‘all the more perverse’ when you take into consideration the role that work can play in helping to contribute to mental and physical wellbeing. (more…)

September 1, 2014

Germany set to introduce evening email ban, but is it really needed?

by Mark Eltringham • Comment, Flexible working, Legal news, Technology, Workplace

It seems likely that the much discussed German ban on out-of-hours emails is to be implemented. According to reports over the weekend, the German Labour Minister Andrea Nahles has agreed to the implementation of new legislation that aims to end the culture of people dealing with messages outside of their normal working hours and could lead to a total free time email ban. The opportunity to herald the new legislation came with the publication of a new report she had commissioned into mental health and work, which led her to claim that ‘there is an undeniable link between being constantly available for work and mental illness’. However the new legislation has met with a degree of scepticism, especially in an article written over the weekend by Karl-Heinz Büschemann for Germany’s largest circulation national newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung.

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June 27, 2014

Physical workplace should provide an environment in which people can thrive

by Bostjan Ljubic • Comment, Facilities management, Workplace, Workplace design

In these post-recession times, companies are investing heavily in their operations and the UK business community definitely has more of a spring in its step. Now, more than ever, it is important to have the right team on board and employers are now finding that their biggest challenge is how to attract and keep high quality personnel. It is becoming increasingly clear that an attractive salary package alone is simply not enough, even with benefits. More than ever before, workers are thinking about the quality of life which a job can provide and an intrinsic part of this is a working environment which will provide a sense of wellbeing. If companies are going to attract and retain the very best staff, they are going to have to think about how to provide this, because the physical workplace can be a powerful means of providing an environment in which people can thrive. Research has shown that there are six dimensions to be taken into consideration when striving to create a workspace which will provide a sense of wellbeing.

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March 20, 2014

Happiness and wellbeing more important to people than economy

by Sara Bean • News, Workplace

Whatever their opinion on yesterday’s Budget, the vast majority of Britons think levels of happiness and wellbeing matter more than the size of the economy. In a YouGov poll commissioned to mark today’s United Nation’s International Day of Happiness, a majority (87%) of UK adults were found to prefer the “greatest overall happiness and wellbeing”, rather than the “greatest overall wealth” (8%), for the society they live in. And despite the Conservative Party’s much lampooned attempts to appeal to working class people who they presume enjoy bingo and beer, this majority was found to be broadly consistent across all regions, age groups and social classes. LSE economist and co-founder of Action for Happiness, Lord Richard Laya says the results show that more priority should be given to mental health and wellbeing. (more…)

February 25, 2014

Musculoskeletal disorders rate highlights scale of ergonomic challenge

by Sara Bean • Comment, Facilities management, News, Workplace

More working days were lost last year to back, neck and muscle pain than any other cause. The latest figures from the Office of National Statistics (ONS) show that although there has been an overall downward trend in sickness absence in the UK over the last two decades; with 131 million days lost in 2013, down from 178 million days in 1993, at 30.6 million days lost, the greatest number of staff sick days in 2013 were due to musculoskeletal problems. Regulations and guidance relating to ergonomics in the workplace (the Health and Safety (Display Screen Equipment) Regulations 1992), were published over 20 years ago; and despite being amended in 2002, that’s still aeons in technology terms. The typical modern worker now routinely uses tablets, mobiles and other digital devices; whether at work, on the move or at home.

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November 25, 2013

How a 70 year old happiness model is still helping us to define wellness

by Mark Eltringham • Comment, Workplace

This year marks the seventieth anniversary of Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, the model that still introduces most of us to notions of what makes people happy and fulfilled. Maslow first proposed the model in his 1943 paper “A Theory of Human Motivation” in Psychological Review, developing his ideas throughout the rest of his life. His work has been parallelled and built upon by other researchers since, but few have had the influence and longevity. Maslow’s hierarchical characterisation of human needs by category is ingrained into the minds of students all over the world. In the first of two pieces to mark this anniversary, Cathie Sellars of Workspace argues that Maslow continues to offers us the ideal definition of wellness.

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November 25, 2013

Over half of managers ‘constantly worried’, with real estate most stressed sector

by Sara Bean • News, Property, Workplace

Over half (51 percent) of managers say they feel ‘constantly worried’ and a disturbingly high number (40 percent) have experienced depression as a result of being stressed. The research, which was carried out by YouGov to support Bupa’s Healthy Minds programme polled the views of 6,000 employees across a range of industries, job levels and regions. It found that real estate is the UK’s most stressed sector, with more than half of workers (54 percent) feeling the pressure and a further one in five struggling to cope (20 percent) and worried about the effect of stress on their health (22 percent). With one in six adults experiencing a mental health problem at any given time, the impact on businesses is significant in terms of staff absence, productivity and performance.

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October 22, 2013

What happens in a designer’s mind and Mac can be very different to reality

by Simon Heath • Architecture, Comment, Facilities management, Furniture, Workplace design

Social media is inarguably closing the gap between organisations and consumers of their services. Advances in the way we interrogate the opinions of building users are lifting the veil on some sharp practices in management and the negative impacts of poorly thought out design or badly executed installation of designs into the built environment. The positive impacts of this new, more open world are evident in changing attitudes to mental health and other wellness issues that affect us in the workplace. And it is becoming ever more evident in the response to a clear disconnect between what happens inside the designer or architect’s MacBook and its effect on the physical spaces with, and within which, we interact.

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October 14, 2013

More employers than ever introduce some kind of flexible working pattern

by Sara Bean • Flexible working, News, Workplace

Disenchantment with flexible working appears to be ongoing in the tech sector, with a recent report revealing that computing giant HP is following Yahoo’s lead by quietly discouraging staff from working from home. However, more employers than ever are attaching growing importance to making at least some changes to working patterns as a means of managing rising long-term absence levels. In the annual CIPD / Simplyhealth Absence Management, the number of employers introducing small changes, such as later start times, has increased by 20 per cent in the last year alone. Over 70 per cent of organisations report a positive impact on employee motivation and employee engagement, while a further 46 per cent are using flexible working options to support employees with mental health problems. (more…)

October 10, 2013

European business leaders join forces to target depression in the workplace

by Sara Bean • News, Workplace

Mental health campaigners’ efforts to persuade employers to combat mental ill health at work took a significant step forward today when, for the first time, senior European executives from a group of major employers, including BT Group, Barclays, and Unilever, came together to assess and address depression in the workplace. One in 10 employees in Europe is estimated to take time off work due to depression, which equates to more than 34 million people. The “Target Depression in the Workplace” initiative recommends concrete tools and resources that will enable company executives to better identify and support employees with depression, as well as promote good mental health at work. (more…)