December 12, 2018
Unhappy workers engage in non-work related activities to get through the day
Over two thirds (69 percent) of full-time employees in the UK are currently unhappy at work, with the majority (88 percent) admitting to regularly doing non-work related activities to ‘make the day go faster’, new research claims. Of the 2,101 respondents surveyed, 61 percent stated that the largest distraction at work is gossiping to other co-workers, followed by almost half (45 percent) spending time procrastinating on Facebook and using personal email (44 percent).
A new survey into happiness at work suggests it is viewed differently according to age. Baby boomers: aspire to have job security and think careers are defined by employers. Gen X: aspire to have a work-life balance and although are loyal to a profession will not necessarily stick with the same employer. Millennials or Gen Y aspire to have freedom and flexibility and are digital entrepreneurs while Gen Z aspire to have security and stability. The report by Instant Offices’ considered what is important to each age group, and how employers approach the age gap. It found that eight in 10 millennials look for a manager to act as a mentor or coach; Baby boomers want a boss to be ethical, fair and consistent, while 61 percent of Generation X, and 55 percent of millennials, think team consensus is important. 
New research suggests as the supposed ‘technologically savvy’ millennials enter the workforce they are more likely than older workers to break the most basic of security rule, reusing passwords across different accounts. This is according to the results of the 10th Annual Market Pulse Survey from SailPoint Technologies Holdings, which finds that despite an increased focus on cybersecurity awareness in the workplace, employees’ poor cybersecurity habits are getting worse, which is compounded by the speed and complexity of the digital transformation. 
November 18, 2018
What The Midwich Cuckoos can teach us about Millennials
by Mark Eltringham • Comment, Workplace
John Wyndham’s 1957 novel The Midwich Cuckoos is the story of a fictional English village in which, following an unexplained event that causes everybody within Midwich to fall unconscious, all of the women in the village fall pregnant and 61 children are subsequently born all at the same time. The children bear absolutely no physical resemblance to their parents, with pale skin, blond hair and piercing eyes. As they grow older it also becomes apparent that they are strange, emotionless and have a telepathic bond with each other. It’s not much of a spoiler to tell you that things don’t go well. The only rationale for what had happened to create the children in the first place is an unexplained incident of xenogenesis – the birth of offspring unlike their parents. Something similar must have happened on a global scale from the beginning of the 1980s onwards, at least based on what we are told about Millennials.
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