April 10, 2020
?In light of the numerous changes in daily behaviour across the world because of the coronavirus,?Microsoft has published the first edition of its?Work Trend .?It uses the Microsoft Graph of usage data to analyse productivity trends and observe how remote working scenarios are changing the way we connect with each other. More →
April 7, 2020
Manchester could be set to see an influx of tech talent in the next three years, according to new research from CWJobs, the UK’s leading tech job board. Surveying 1,000 tech workers, Manchester emerged as the top choice outside of the capital (22 percent) to work in, with a fifth (20 percent) also revealing it’s the city they would choose to set up a tech business in the next three years, ahead of Birmingham (11 percent) and Edinburgh (8 percent). In the same survey, 505 IT decision makers (IT DM) also placed Manchester as the best location to set up a tech business, with over a quarter (27 percent) choosing the city. More →
March 25, 2020
Loneliness is increasingly recognised as a serious issue in modern society. In the UK, the Office of National Statistics reported that 5 percent of adults feel lonely ‘often’ or ‘always’, with further 16 percent of adults reporting feeling lonely ‘sometimes’, equivalent to approximately 9 million adults suffering from loneliness to some degree. More →
March 19, 2020
Betteridge’s law of headlines declares that “Any headline that ends in a question mark can be answered by the word no”. And so I simultaneously ask and answer the question of whether the coronavirus pandemic will really lead to the death of the office. So it goes. Of course, I’m not the first person to raise the question over the last few weeks as the world adapts to the threat of the pandemic. But it’s worth reminding ourselves that the demise of the office has been predicted for at least a quarter of a century, although never in such circumstances. More →
March 17, 2020
Less than a week on from the Budget, and already the government’s emergency measures to respond to covid-19 feel like they belong to another crisis. While attention this weekend has rightly focused on how our health services and older people can be supported, we also need urgently to revisit the impact on the workplace and especially how we’ll support the many millions of workers who will find themselves off work – sick or in self-isolation – over the coming months. More →
March 3, 2020
The idea of giving everybody something called basic income – an unconditional, regular income – has become increasingly popular in the last few years, partly because employment has become less secure and people fear that increasing automation may cause job losses across many sectors. More →
February 28, 2020
UK employers claimed £35 billion of free labour last year because of workers doing unpaid overtime, according to an analysis of official statistics published today by the TUC. More than 5 million people put in an average of 7.6 hours a week in unpaid overtime during 2019, it claims. On average, that equates to having £6,828 taken out of individual pay packets. More →
February 26, 2020
Wellbeing advocacy group ukactive has announced a new partnership with HCA Healthcare UK, to undertake a consultation into health and physical activity in the workplace. The partnership brings together the independent research expertise of not-for-profit health body ukactive and the resources of healthcare provider, HCA UK. Anna Davison of ukactive can be heard speaking about workplace wellbeing in the Wellness Maters podcast here. More →
February 13, 2020
Employers should prepare themselves for a dramatic rise in staff taking shared parental leave, a new research report into shifting attitudes to flexible working and childcare for working parents has claimed. While only 7 percent of employees with children have taken up the opportunity of shared parental leave so far, 38 percent of those planning to have further children intend to do so when they have their next child, YouGov polling of 1,000 employees and 500 HR decision makers suggests. More →
January 31, 2020
Policy makers should resist claims by Uber that its drivers fall into a middle ground between traditional employees and independent contractors, a new study says. The research report, Profits Uber Everything?, by Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University, examines Uber’s argument that its drivers are “independent workers” who are, in some respects, like individuals working for others and in other respects are like independent businesses. The company is only trying to establish this new category to exonerate itself of any responsibility for the workers, the researchers claim. More →
January 30, 2020
It may not always be evident to those working in logistics, but burnout doesn’t exist solely in supply chain recruitment – it’s a recognised condition which is having an impact across all industries and sectors. According to the Labour Force Survey, the UK lost 15.4 million working days in 2017/18 to work-related stress, depression or anxiety, with 239,000 new cases reported. Increasingly, severe cases are being recognised as ‘burnout’. More →
April 6, 2020
So what sort of homeworker are you?
by Sarah Booth • Comment, Flexible working