February 16, 2021
Investment in digital technology is set to increase UK GDP by £232bn (6.9 percent) in 2040, according to a new study by Virgin Media Business and the Centre for Economics and Business Research (CEBR). The research, which examines how more digital ways of working can support the UK’s economic recovery from Covid-19, claims investment in technology could boost the economy by £74bn in 2025. (more…)
February 11, 2021
The COVID-19 pandemic is driving a fundamental shift in the way companies operate, accelerating the need for an adaptable and agile workforce to drive business success. According to Mercer’s 2021 Global Talent Trends study, the financial impact and work-life disruption caused by the pandemic is causing UK employers to focus on redefining flexibility and skills development to ensure their business and employees become more resilient and agile in the face of disruption.
February 4, 2021
The Covid-19 pandemic has had an unprecedented effect on the way in which we work and has brought in to focus the challenges around mental health and wellbeing. The recognition that we are in the midst of the biggest mental health crisis since the Second World War brings the challenge in to stark focus. Time to Talk Day (today) aims to get the nation talking more openly about mental health, and there could not be a better time for it. Research from Wondrous published this week found that one in six people (17 percent) who have switched to remote working during the pandemic have seen their mental health suffer, rising to 20 percent among women and younger workers. I suspect that the inherent stigma that still surrounds mental health is masking the true percentage of people being affected. (more…)
February 3, 2021
When the COVID-19 crisis hit the UK in March 2020, many commented that the virus didn’t discriminate and that its impact would be felt equally by everyone. However, as highlighted in Nuffield Health’s recent whitepaper, the mental health impact of the virus – rising from financial worries, anxiety around health and the direct impact of COVID-19 – has hit some groups harder than others. (more…)
January 21, 2021
Smart Building Certification, the organisation behind the smart accreditation, awarded its first platinum building. The founders of Smart Building Certification handed the first official platinum certification over to Coen van Oostrom, Founder and CEO of EDGE. (more…)
January 14, 2021
The COVID-19 pandemic left businesses in an unprecedented position of having to rapidly adapt workplace practices and implement new processes at a moment’s notice. Of course, those companies that were already accustomed to home office set-ups and flexible hours were in a much better place to adapt to these changing circumstances. However, not all businesses were prepared for the sudden change to work routines. (more…)
January 12, 2021
The pandemic and months of Zoom calls and remote work have begun to wear on us, so much so that in a recent survey from Blind – the anonymous workplace community app – 68 percent of respondents said that they are experiencing more feelings of being burnt out now, than they were before the pandemic began. Perhaps unsurprisingly, 29 percent of the respondents said their relationship with their direct boss was now worse than it had been before they began working remotely. And it’s not just top-down relationships at work that have deteriorated. (more…)
January 5, 2021
The idea of a Global Village comes loaded with a number of idyllic connotations. Most of them derive from the use of the word village itself, which triggers the idea of a community in our minds. Yet even the man who coined and popularised the term in the 1950s and 60s to describe a world contracted by new media understood that there are always complications whenever technology rubs up against human beings. (more…)
December 18, 2020
Originally published in March, right at the start of all this. Makes me wonder how far we’ve come in nine months. In Dorian Lynskey’s The Ministry of Truth, a “biography” of Nineteen Eighty-Four, the author describes how Orwell’s book was the end point of an obsession with utopian (and ultimately dystopian) fiction that characterised the first half of the Twentieth Century, and reflected the competing political, social and economic ideologies of the era. (more…)
December 18, 2020
Data from thousands of employees across the country has been aggregated in a new report, detailing the mental wellbeing of the workforce over the course of the year. The research from 87 percent, a digital platform that provides mental health assessment and support to businesses and their employees, shows how the workforce has struggled with the mental pressures of Covid-19. Since March, circumstances at work and pressures in our personal lives have badly affected our mental wellbeing. (more…)
According to a recent
February 5, 2021
Workplace things we have missed, and those we hope to regain
by Emma Morley • Comment, Technology, Wellbeing, Workplace design