July 1, 2021
Search Results for: working hours
June 25, 2021
UK employees working £4.2 billion unpaid overtime every week
by Jayne Smith • Flexible working, News, Working lives
The amount of unpaid overtime that workers around the world are doing has soared in the past year; unpaid overtime in the UK has steadily risen from six hours in 2019 to seven hours in 2020 in the advent of COVID-19, to almost eight hours in 2021, claims a new study by the ADP Research Institute, People at Work 2021: A Global Workforce View. (more…)
June 18, 2021
Is it time to ban out-of-hours emails?
by Freddie Steele • Features, Flexible working, Wellbeing
The global pandemic has blurred the lines between home and work for millions of people around the world. Where once there was a clear distinction between being on and off duty, the demands of remote working and ever-presence of smartphones has created an ‘always on’ culture in many organisations. The trend has led to a number organisations in the UK to now call for a ban on out-of-hours emails in order to alleviate pressures on employees mental health. But is this really necessary, or even logistically possible, for the new world of work? We asked four leading experts for their thoughts. (more…)
June 1, 2021
Flexible working practices vary widely across organisations
by Neil Franklin • Flexible working, News
The British Chambers of Commerce (BCC) has released new figures suggesting that over two thirds (66 percent) of businesses surveyed now offer flexible working to employees. The data, from a survey of over 900 businesses conducted in April 2021, also shows nearly three quarters of businesses expect to have at least one employee working remotely over the coming year, with the average expectation among those firms being just over half of their employees working remotely. (more…)
May 4, 2021
Why some people are more productive working from home than others
by Stephen Bevan • Features, Flexible working, Wellbeing
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…)
April 16, 2021
A fifth of UK workers feel remote working has reduced recognition in the workplace
by Jayne Smith • Flexible working, News, Working culture
Research from Ezra, provider of digital coaching claims that a fifth of UK workers feel they get less recognition within their career as a direct result of working remotely. It remains to be seen to what extent we will return to a full working environment, as Covid restrictions see many continue to work from home for part of, if not their whole working week. (more…)
April 8, 2021
Working from home surveillance drives rise of digital presenteeism
by Neil Franklin • News, Technology, Wellbeing
Lockdown has meant the majority of UK office-based employees have taken up working from home arrangements over the last year, and it seems that many employers lack trust in their employees when they can’t physically see them. Last year saw a rise in the implementation of surveillance software, to ensure that workers are acting in best corporate interests. However, this is having a negative impact on some employees – who are feeling forced to work longer hours due to a new perceived need to remain visible to their manager or team leader, revealed in a survey by cybersecurity firm Kaspersky. With remote working set to stay post-COVID, these findings indicate a worrying growing trend around broken working from home employee trust. (more…)
April 7, 2021
The binary choices and multiple outcomes of flexible working
by Mark Eltringham • Comment, Flexible working
A year of unnecessarily binary conversation about work leads inevitably to this. A stupid question. Is Big Tech going off work from home? Betteridge’s Law takes care of that, just as it did another question from 12 months ago. Even though the article is slightly better than the headline, the insistence that the only two choices we have are home or office remains. (more…)
April 1, 2021
Employers report increased productivity benefits from homeworking
by Jayne Smith • Business, Flexible working, News
The productivity benefits of homeworking appear to have increased during the pandemic, with employers now more likely to say that the shift to homeworking has boosted productivity (33 percent) than they were in June 2020 (28 percent). This is according to new research by the CIPD, based on a survey of 2,000 employers and in-depth interviews with seven organisations in different sectors. (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…)






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June 30, 2021
The new era of flexible working and knowing when to lie flat
by Mark Eltringham • Comment, Flexible working, Wellbeing