April 19, 2021

Pressure and weak leadership form the recipe for workplace bullying

Employees experience more bullying on days with higher work pressure and passive avoidant leadership, finds new research from BI Norwegian Business School and the University of Bergen and published in The European Management Journal. Professor Olav Kjellevold Olsen and colleagues studied how work pressure is related to daily experiences of workplace bullying related acts, as well as the relationship with transformational or laissez-faire leadership. Transformational leadership involves paying more attention to employees’ needs for achievement and providing social support. Laissez-faire leadership involves a more passive and destructive approach leaving followers on their own in situations in need of leadership. (more…)

April 19, 2021

Over a third of employees worry about job security if they report an accident at work

by Jayne Smith • News, Wellbeing, Working culture

Employees would worry about the security of their job if they were to report suffering an injury in the workplace, claims new research carried out by JMW Solicitors. More than 1,200 people were surveyed and results claim that 39 percent either ‘strongly agreed’ or ‘agreed’ that they were worried their job would be at risk if they reported their employer for negligence. (more…)

April 13, 2021

After a year of lockdowns, people are burnt-out but happier

by Steven Buck • Comment, Wellbeing

Glint’s latest insights report shows that there is a worrying increase in employees experiencing challenges with their mental health, with burnout risk trending upwards year-over-year. That spiked in late March 2020 and climbed by nearly 4 percent between August and December 2020. That’s not a big surprise, given the first challenging months of the global pandemic. Paradoxically, employees say that despite feeling burnt-out, they also feel happier at work at the end of a year of lockdown than they did at the start. Is this some sort of contradiction—or evidence of something very encouraging about the state of HR? (more…)

April 1, 2021

Finding a new sense of purpose in the way we all do business

by David Lineen • Comment, Environment, Property, Wellbeing

It is now a truism that society expects more of business than merely maximising shareholder value. Milton Friedman’s conviction that unswerving commitment to this single goal would ensure that business and society would prosper has come to be seen as blinkered, unfit for the twenty-first century and enabling of corporate greed. Instead of shareholder value maximisation, an idea that The Economist called ‘the biggest idea in business’ in 2016, businesses are now encouraged to recognise their responsibilities to an array of ‘stakeholders’, from employees, suppliers and customers, to the planet itself and other communities (real or imagined). So, it has never been more important for businesses to do good, have a clear sense of purpose and be seen as doing so. (more…)

March 31, 2021

Business leaders share lessons in resilience from the Covid crisis

by Jayne Smith • Business, News

Most businesses were ill-prepared to deal with the pandemic and muddled though the challenges stemming from it, according to new report ‘Resilience reimagined: a practical guide for organisations’, produced by Cranfield University, in partnership with the National Preparedness Commission (NPC) and Deloitte. (more…)

March 30, 2021

Working mothers healthcare hit hard by the pandemic

by Jayne Smith • News, Wellbeing, Working lives

The UK government has had to make many changes to its healthcare system in the last year to stop the spread of coronavirus, including asking people to stay home when possible, prioritising higher-risk patients and putting many routine appointments on pause throughout the pandemic. (more…)

March 24, 2021

Major firms lose appetite for office downsizing as they plan what happens next

by Neil Franklin • News, Property

A new report from KPMG suggests that half of major corporations do not expect to see a return to any sort of ‘normality’ until 2022 when half of the general population has been vaccinated. The report also claims that there has been a steep decline in the appetite of the global executives who took part in the survey for office downsizing as the firms reconsider the need for in-person business to resume when countries emerge from the pandemic. (more…)

March 24, 2021

Employees more likely to resist change if it contradicts firm’s traditional values

by Jayne Smith • News, Working culture

Employees are more likely to resist beneficial organisational changes if they contradict historic firm values according to research from Imperial College Business School. The COVID-19 pandemic has forced organisations all over the globe to rethink how they do business, yet it may not be easy to make lasting change if new organisational practices grate against traditional, deeply-held values. (more…)

March 17, 2021

Mental health and wellbeing are top of the priority list

by Jayne Smith • News, Wellbeing, Working culture

A new in-depth report by HR and payroll software providers, Natural HR highlights the trends, challenges and priorities facing the HR profession, and the impact of the pandemic. In 2019, the top priority of HR leaders was cited as recruitment and retention, however by the end of 2020 this had shifted to employee health and wellbeing. (more…)

March 15, 2021

Serfs up for the self-employed and gig economy workers (and the middle class)

by Mark Eltringham • Features, Flexible working, Working culture

One of the most significant consequences of the 2008 economic crash was a remarkable shift in the nature of employment. The recession led to a surge in the number of people categorised as self-employed. The numbers have been increasing ever since, albeit at a lower rate. By the end of 2019, the number of self-employed people in the UK exceeded five million people for the first time. Fifteen percent of the workforce. (more…)

March 12, 2021

Indoor air quality is more important than ever, and Tarkett is leading the way

by Freddie Steele • Company news, Wellbeing, Workplace design

The pandemic has certainly opened our eyes to the importance of constantly washing our hands, sterilising everything in sight and realising just how far germs can travel through the air, causing us to wince at the thought of a time where we huddled on public transport without masks. However, as we contemplate heading back to the office in the near future, businesses need to translate these learnings into workplace design and move indoor air quality to the top of the agenda. (more…)

March 11, 2021

BCO offers new guidance on indoor air quality

by Neil Franklin • Facilities management, News, Wellbeing

A new BCO research paper, Thoughts on ventilation design and operation post COVID-19, has called for UK offices to ensure they have adequate ventilation ahead of the return to work. The paper highlights that while most offices that follow good practice guidelines do benefit from indoor air quality, there are also many examples of poorly ventilated offices that fall short of the best practice guidelines set out in the BCO’s 2019 Guide to Specification. Poorly ventilated indoor spaces have been linked to COVID-19 super spreader events and the paper states that ventilation in these offices must be “addressed urgently.” (more…)