July 22, 2020

Older people are happiest at work

The latest edition of the annual Age Research by Engaging Works claims that the happiest people in the workplace are those beyond middle age. By comparison, young employees don’t feel rewarded or recognised and feel that their views are not heard at work. They are also more likely to suffer anxiety in the workplace. However, it’s middle aged employees who are struggling the most at work, admitting that they feel the least developed. They also feel that they have a poor feeling of wellbeing at work and that they don’t have enough information to do their job. More →

July 17, 2020

Your working day is never finished, merely abandoned

by Mark Eltringham • Comment, Flexible working, Technology

It’s been talked about for a number of years now but we can expect to be hearing a lot more about the four day week or six hour day soon. The modern conversation has its roots partly in a Swedish experiment designed to limit the hours people work in an attempt to improve their work-life balance and possibly even increase their productivity. Now a growing number of firms are looking to introduce a nominal four day working week or restrict the use of technology – meaning email – outside of certain hours. More →

July 16, 2020

We need to include disabled people in our conversations about diversity

by Toby Mildon • Comment, Working lives

This sounds really obvious but when organisations talk about diversity and inclusion they often forget to include disability. They talk about the importance of women in leadership and the gender pay gap, the need to include people from an ethnic minority background especially following the Black Lives Matter movement. And June just gone was dedicated to LGBT+ Pride month. More →

July 16, 2020

People do more work at home but increasingly worried about cost

by Neil Franklin • Flexible working, News

A new survey from Lenovo claims that nearly two-thirds (63 percent) of people feel they are more productive working from home than when they were in the office and half (48 percent) believe they will continue to work from home more than they did. However, the report also suggests that two thirds of UK employees said they had to purchase new technology themselves to work effectively, spending an average of £271 to upgrade or improve technology while working at home. More →

July 16, 2020

Prioritising nature in development could create 395 million new jobs by 2030

by Neil Franklin • Environment, News

The global COVID-19 pandemic has caused unprecedented job losses and economic uncertainty. As governments and businesses look to stimulate growth, a new study from the World Economic Forum claims that ‘nature-positive’ solutions can create 395 million jobs by 2030. The Future of Nature and Business Report says this is a $10.1 trillion business opportunity. More →

July 15, 2020

Business leaders remain confident about post lockdown growth

by Neil Franklin • Flexible working, News

CEOs and the self-employed are cautiously optimistic about post-lockdown growth, claims a new report. As the country begins to emerge from lockdown, new research from The Institute of Leadership & Management ‘Life after lockdown: future of work’, explores the predicted changes to the workplace following the Covid-19 pandemic. More →

July 13, 2020

The economic challenges of the post lockdown world become clearer

by Jayne Smith • Briefing, Features, Premium Content, Property

There are so many unknowns about the ways in which the Covid-19 pandemic will shape our world in the coming months and years but what it has highlighted are the strengths and weaknesses in the global and UK economy and their implications for the commercial property sector. In its latest white paper, property consultancy and chartered surveyors Bruceshaw examines the macro and micro economic challenges that will shape the property sector for many years to come. More →

July 8, 2020

Nearly all businesses are aware of disability issues, but more needs to be done

by Neil Franklin • News, Working lives

A new study of 120 global brands shows how over 90 per cent of businesses now recognise the importance of disabled employees and customers. The study is the first to consider how businesses are serving the needs of disabled people at a global and local level and how to share best practice. More →

July 7, 2020

London tops rank of smartest cities in the world

by Neil Franklin • Cities, News

London has once again been declared the smartest city in the world, according to the seventh edition of the IESE Cities in Motion Index 2020. New York takes the second spot, followed by Paris. The top 10 list is rounded out by Tokyo, Reykjavik, Copenhagen, Berlin, Amsterdam, Singapore and Hong Kong. More →

July 5, 2020

From the archive: the future of work and place in the 21st Century ⁰

by Mark Eltringham • Facilities management, Features, Flexible working, Technology, Workplace design

However much we know about the forces we expect to come into play in our time and however much we understand the various social, commercial, legislative, cultural and economic parameters we expect to direct them, most predictions of the future tend to come out as refractions or extrapolations of the present. This is a fact tacitly acknowledged by George Orwell’s title for Nineteen Eighty-Four, written in 1948, and is always the pinch of salt we can apply to science fiction and most of the predictions we come across. More →

July 1, 2020

The loneliness of the long term flexible worker

by Dr Rachel Lewis • Comment, Flexible working, Wellbeing

Flexible working arrangements are those which ‘allow employees to vary the amount, timing or location of their work’ and may include part-time working, mobile/home working, compressed hours or job-sharing – among others. Before the lockdown, according to the Chartered Institute of Personnel Development (CIPD), more than half of all employees in the UK used at least one form of flexible working, while a study by Gallup in the US suggests as many as 43 percent of employees already worked flexibly. The practice has been found to have positive effects on job satisfaction, employee commitment, reducing work-family conflict – and for many is now an essential component of modern working life. More →

June 30, 2020

Cracking the issue of work after lockdown

by Mark Eltringham • Comment, Flexible working, Workplace design

Take any issue in the modern era and you’ll find a noisy schism. The big-endians and little-endians yelling at each other about the right way to eat a boiled egg, right over the heads of the majority of people who wonder if they’d be better off just having some toast and a nice cup of tea. Not that the toast-eaters can say anything without being accused by both sides of the divide of belonging to the other. More →