May 20, 2021
The COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated the transition away from traditional workforce models, and 56 percent of companies are expecting to shift more of their roles to contingent, project or contract work as a result, according to a new report by Randstad Sourceright. More →
May 18, 2021
The workspace innovator DV Signage has partnered with Scale Space, the UK’s community for scale-ups, to offer an exciting new Collaboration-as-a-Service workspace to be branded Interaction.Works. The Interaction.Works concept responds directly to the emerging hybrid working trend as companies begin shaping the Future of Work as the UK emerges from lockdown. More →
May 13, 2021
At 6.31 a.m. on Tuesday, December 8, 2020, the UK became the first country in the world to administer the COVID-19 vaccine. Just over five months earlier, I had been deployed to the NHS England and NHS Improvement COVID-19 vaccination programme to help drive the highly complex design and planning needed to bring the nation to this point. My role involved leading the set up and embedding of the Estates, Equipment, Consumables and Logistics workstream. The purpose of this was to establish and combine the new and existing infrastructure required in England to manage the distribution, regulation and administration of multiple vaccines so that all systems would be ready to vaccinate on the ‘go-live’ date. More →
May 13, 2021
The Pensions Regulator might now have the power under current UK pensions legislation, to enter the private homes of employees when it is investigating their employer, if those employees are working from home. The current law has been in force since 2005 and it allows the Regulator to enter some premises at any reasonable time. This power is restricted to use only in relation to some limited statutory investigations. However, though currently limited, these regulatory powers will soon be widened and extended by the Pensions Schemes Act 2021 which is due to come into force in Autumn 2021.
May 10, 2021
Is the workplace industry stuck in the past, in a 20th century model of how and where work is done? The separation of work and the rest of life during the Industrial Age has shaped the structures of modern life: the houses we live in, the offices, factories and shops we work in, and the transport networks that shuffle us from one location to another for different activities. It has also shaped the planning system, the institutional and financial structures of how places are designed and built, and perhaps most of all the mindsets of just about everyone involved in creating places to work and live. More →
May 6, 2021
Koa Health, has released a new report titled Wellbeing at Work, exposing the impact of COVID-19 on mental health in businesses across the UK and organisations’ response to the crisis. Social listening research conducted by Pulsar on behalf of Koa Health claims that as COVID took told in the UK, content shared online about people’s declining mental wellbeing increased by 400 percent in the period from the last week of February 2020 to the final week of May 2020. More →
May 6, 2021
Central to any business is the need to communicate effectively. Whether you’re relocating to new or refurbished premises, or switching providers, it is vital to ensure your communications networks are up to the job in terms of performance and reliability. Not only is this required to support conventional telecoms and OTT services, it is key to smart building and smart infrastructure applications. Connectivity should not be limited to Wi-Fi either. Businesses are increasingly pushing mobile-only strategies and landlines are fast becoming obsolete in the workplace. PwC, for example, removed all landlines from their offices back in 2018 and many other organisations have since followed suit, with smartphones providing a single point of contact for all voice and internet connectivity, as well as being used as resilient IT infrastructure. More →
May 5, 2021
Businesses are managing a new work dynamic that’s made up of three parts, or three ‘types’ of employee. Some are keen to go back to the office, some want to stay working from home, and some want an entirely flexible arrangement so they can fit work around important personal commitments. More →
May 4, 2021
Has working at home during lockdown made people more productive or not? This has been the subject of some lively debate recently. Many companies do not routinely measure productivity. A large number will have traditionally assumed that they get the highest output when staff work longer hours or under close supervision, but remote working is clearly causing some to re-evaluate this. Major firms, for instance professional services group PwC, have been sufficiently impressed to make remote working a permanent option for their staff. More →
Tens of thousands of restaurant, hotel, event and leisure jobs are available as England moves to the next step on the roadmap out of lockdown on Monday 17th May, but jobseeker shortages are making these jobs hard to fill, according to new research from global job search engine 
New research by
May 14, 2021
We need to acknowledge our bias if we want to see the world for what it is
by Mark Eltringham • Comment, Wellbeing, Working lives