Search Results for: people management

We (still) need to talk about mental health in the workplace

We (still) need to talk about mental health in the workplace

by • Comment, Wellbeing

In recent years we have made huge strides in moving discussions around mental health into the public arena. Celebrities such as Cara Delevingne, Ryan Reynolds, Gwyneth Paltrow and Brad Pitt have all come forward to share personal stories of their struggle with mental health problems.  The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge and Prince Harry have also championed mental health awareness through the Heads Together campaign, a charity that aims to help people feel more comfortable with their everyday mental wellbeing and offer practical tools to help support their friends and family. The campaign rose to prominence in the media as the 2017 Virgin Money London Marathon Charity of the Year.

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Our Twentieth Century approach to ergonomics has to change

Our Twentieth Century approach to ergonomics has to change

by • Comment, Flexible working, Technology, Wellbeing, Workplace design

One of the big problems with the way some people talk about the term ‘ergonomic’ is that they tend to use it to describe the design of objects when really it’s about the relationship between a person and the things around them. It’s an abstract idea, about the relationships between design, facilities and management, so is dependent on a number of variables. When those variables change, what we understand to be good ergonomics changes too. The principle of ergonomics as we now understand it first came to prominence in the wake of the intensive growth in the use of computers. The legacy of this fixed view can be an approach based on an idea of desk-bound employees with a computer, whereas how we work now bears little resemblance to how we worked 20 years ago.

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World Mental Health Day is a day to recognise our duty of care

World Mental Health Day is a day to recognise our duty of care

by • Wellbeing

The five-year period since August 2012 has seen a 40 percent rise in mental health issues contributing to absenteeism in the workplace. Our data reveals this from examining more than 13 million days of absence across some 180,000 employees. With an estimated 31 million people working in the UK, this percentage rise is the equivalent of 4.34 million Days Lost Per Employee (DLPE) – or more precisely, an additional 1.25 million more days lost due to mental health in 2017 than 2012. And, in June to August this year, it was the most common reason for absenteeism in the UK.

This tells us two things that you don’t need to be a statistician to deduct. That there has been a steep increase in mental health absenteeism in recent years and that the summer months adds additional stress upon individuals. And this is at a time when we’d hope to be rewarded with some R&R time.

Holidays, and children being home from school, have a clear impact here, and these stresses can more often than not be carried over in to the workplace. But, with children back at school and the holiday season now over, we predict that absenteeism due to mental health issues will drop over the next three months and should account for 0.13 DLPE in November compared with 0.14 in August.

This is all very well but there’s no point in delivering this data if it’s not used in a positive way. We encourage employers to take a look at these trends and recognise who could be affected and where this may impact their business. And in doing so, implement policies accordingly to support those that are living with, or could be susceptible to, mental health issues.

Organisations should ensure their stress management policies are up-to-date, that staff are encouraged and comfortable raising stress related anxieties and concerns and line managers have sufficient training. By doing so, employers will see the benefit to their workforce in both health and productivity while making significant healthcare cost savings, too. There is a raft of information out there to help with this and HR and OH professionals are skilled at recognising signs and trends and helping those that require assistance. Every year World Mental Health Day recognises this awful illness and it deserves close attention. Because as corporate entities we don’t just have a commitment to the bottom line, we have a very serious obligation and duty of care to the wellbeing of our employees.

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David Hope is CEO of FirstCare

The current approach to creative workplace design relies on faddish, ineffective ideas

The current approach to creative workplace design relies on faddish, ineffective ideas

by • News, Workplace design

A new research paper published in the Journal of Management & Organization claims that while many organisations are focussed on creating workplaces that foster creativity, the results tend to ignore nuances about what makes people creative and instead focus on faddish ideas and playful, domestic design features to invoke ideas of creativity that may or may not be effective in practice. The study from Donatella De Paoli of the Department of Leadership and Organizational Behaviour, Norwegian Business School BI, Oslo and Arja Ropo of School of Management, University of Tampere concludes that organisations need to develop a more in depth understanding of creativity if they want to create creative workspaces.

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Stop whinging about robots taking your job and develop the skills you need for a new era of work

Stop whinging about robots taking your job and develop the skills you need for a new era of work

by • AI, News, Workplace

A report from researchers at Pearson, Nesta and the University of Oxford called The Future of Skills: Employment in 2030 claims that while the new era of robots, automation and artificial intelligence in the workplace will be disruptive, it will not spell the end of work and people need to develop new skills to meet its challenges. The study claims to take an entirely new approach to forecasting employment and skill demands in the US and UK. In contrast to many recent headlines, the study finds that many jobs today will still be in demand by 2030 and beyond. However, while jobs may remain, the skills needed for success are changing. The researchers combined diverse human expertise with active machine learning to produce a more nuanced view of future employment trends. Using this innovative approach, the study forecasts that only one in five workers are in occupations that face a high likelihood of decline.

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Rising numbers of employees face demotion, disciplinary action or dismissal for disclosing mental health issues

Rising numbers of employees face demotion, disciplinary action or dismissal for disclosing mental health issues

by • News, Wellbeing

Most UK employees have experienced mental health issues because of work yet over a million people face negative consequences after disclosing, according to a new report, Mental Health at Work published by the charity Business in the Community in advance of World Mental Health Day.  YouGov surveyed over 3,000 people in work across the UK for the study and found that three in five (60 percent) employees have experienced mental health issues in the past year because of work. Yet despite 53 percent of people feeling comfortable talking about mental health at work, a significant percentage of employees risk serious repercussions for disclosing a mental health issue. 15 percent of employees face dismissal, disciplinary action or demotion after disclosing a mental health issue at work (almost twice the number identified in similar research undertaken in 2016). Scaled up to the general working population, this could mean as many as 1.2 million people negatively affected for disclosing mental health problems.

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Time to start a new culture to tackle stigma on mental wellbeing issues in the workplace

Time to start a new culture to tackle stigma on mental wellbeing issues in the workplace

by • Comment, Wellbeing

mental wellbeing at workAs a recent Workplace Insight story reported, UK workers are still uncomfortable about having honest conversations at work, with nearly two thirds (61 percent) feel they keep an aspect of their lives hidden in the workplace. Family difficulties (46 percent) was the most likely hidden issue at work, followed by mental health (31 percent). Talking about mental wellbeing worries to employers can be very distressing for individuals and not only make a person’s condition worse, but also, leave their career in a worse place according to our latest thought leadership research report: Mind Culture. Our latest research study shows that more than half (51 percent) of survey respondents who had confided in their line manager about a mental health issue did not receive any extra support. Even worse, 8 percent respondents faced negative consequences, including being sacked or forced out, demoted or subjected to disciplinary action.

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How smart workplaces increase performance and attractiveness 0

by • Case studies, Facilities management, Premium Content, Technology, Work&Place, Workplace design

The workplace can and should be used as a strategic tool to support work and cooperation, to shape the experience of the brand and to produce competitive advantage for the organization. Even when not used as a strategic tool the workplace still affects all these parts and there is always a risk that the workplace has instead a negative impact if we are not aware of the relationship and really use workplace as a strategic tool to affect attractiveness, productivity, efficiency and sustainability. The workplace makes a great difference and it is becoming an important differentiator between successful and less successful organizations. I also strongly believe that the workplace management area is a key for us in the FM industry to bring FM to a higher level, to shift from cost focus to more value focus, and this is something we need to do together within the FM industry and we really should take the driver’s seat. But, let’s start from the beginning.

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Lack of cultural inclusiveness means staff reluctant to share personal issues at work

Lack of cultural inclusiveness means staff reluctant to share personal issues at work

by • News, Wellbeing, Workplace

Lack of inclusiveness means staff reluctant to share personal issues with employersUK workers are still uncomfortable about having honest conversations at work, with nearly two thirds (61 percent) feel they keep an aspect of their lives hidden in the workplace. The research from Inclusive Employers found family difficulties (46 percent) was the most likely hidden issue at work, followed by mental health (31 percent). One in five also admitted they would hide their sexual orientation while at work. It also found a generational divide, with 67 percent of employees aged between 18 -24 years old keeping something secret compared to 55 percent of those over aged 55 years or over.  The data, released to mark National Inclusion Week 2017, found this lack of openness can have negative impacts on workers and employers, with over a quarter of workers (26 percent) admitting they would feel less connected to their workplace if they hid an aspect of themselves and 18 percent saying their performance would suffer.

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Shocking level of dissatisfaction amongst workplace occupants, finds Leesman

by • Facilities management, News, Wellbeing, Workplace design

There is a shocking level of dissatisfaction among the workforce according to a new global report from Leesman, which looks at how a poorly planned workplace can have a negative impact on employees, and inhibit their ability to perform. The findings show that while employers continue to face economic uncertainty, many of their employees are having to endure workplaces that fail to support their basic working day, obstructing their ability to positively contribute to business success.  ‘The Next 250k’, a global report based on the evaluation results from more than 250,000 employees across 2,200+ workplaces in 67 countries found that 43 percent of employees globally do not agree that their workplace enables them to work productively. In the UK, that figure jumps to 46 percent. Therefore, in line with ONS employment figures, for over 1.3 million UK workers, the office is simply not good enough.

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One in three line managers admit they would struggle to detect mental health issues

One in three line managers admit they would struggle to detect mental health issues

by • Legal news, News, Wellbeing, Workplace

Over a third of line managers would struggle to detect mental health issuesA third of line managers have admitted they would struggle to identify mental health issues and a similar percentage wouldn’t know what to do if a team member had a mental health problem. This is according to new data from Bupa which argues that while mental health and wellbeing support in the workplace has significantly improved in recent years, and employer support is gaining attention with two in five managers being trained; line managers would still benefit from support and advice to identify mental health issues within their teams. These findings come at a time when NHS figures identify that almost a third of fit notes issued by GPs are for mental health problems – making it the most common reason for people to be signed off from work. Recognition of the role employer support plays in helping colleagues with mental health conditions is clear as two in five (41 percent) line managers have already received related training from their employer.  And conversations around mental health at work are being reframed as more than a third (35 percent) of employees feel more comfortable talking to their manager about their mental health than before.

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Ethnic minority leaders believe institutional prejudice still rife in UK workforce

by • Legal news, News, Workplace

The majority (82 percent) of ethnic minority leaders believe there is institutional prejudice against minorities in the workforce in the UK; and almost one in five (18 percent) of these leaders have personally experienced workplace discrimination in the last two years. A report from Green Park, ‘Changing the Face of Tomorrow’s Leaders:  Increasing Ethnic Minority Representation in Leadership’ claims that while 60 percent of ethnic minority leaders believe institutional racism has moved up the organisational agenda in recent months, two thirds of these respondents say the language is emotive and makes people uncomfortable.  When tackling the issue of racism many firms are struggling to find an appropriate dialogue and language.  When it comes to ethnic minority board level representation, just 2 percent of companies surveyed are meeting their identified targets.  Over a fifth (22 percent) of firms admitted being unaware of current progress towards diversity targets and 18 percent did not know there to start.  More than one in ten (13 percent) have a ethnic diversity target but no strategy, while 9 percent are simply replicating their gender diversity strategy.

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