Search Results for: working lives

September 13, 2018

Over half of men want to be more involved in childcare, major new report claims

by Mark Eltringham • Flexible working, News

More than half of men who have children or other caring responsibilities want to be more involved in childcare, a new study commissioned by Business in the Community, in partnership with Santander UK, has found. The Equal Lives research asked 10,225 UK parents for their views on work and care, and found that traditional gender roles in caring are seen as increasingly outdated, with 85 percent of men believing that they should be as involved as women in caring for their children.

September 12, 2018

Quarter of people who work during twilight hours add billions to UK economy

by Sara Bean • Flexible working, News, Wellbeing, Workplace

New research from Huawei has suggested how much the dusk-to-dawn workforce is significantly boosting the ‘twilight economy’ by contributing an estimated £487 billion annually to the UK economy. The study of more than 2,000 UK workers found that a quarter (25 percent) of us now work outside of the traditional 9 – 5. Looking across the UK, a number of ‘twilight hubs’ have emerged, with Norwich (34 percent) topping the list of cities whose residents work whilst the rest of the nation sleeps, followed closely by London and Manchester (both 31 percent), and Liverpool and Cardiff respectively (both 30 percent). People who spend their working moments in the twilight hours say they feel more inspired and creative (30 percent) during this time, as well as more productive (28 percent). Meanwhile, a fifth of British workers prefer the flexibility that twilight working allows when it comes to balancing time with their kids (19 percent), and 20 percent describe themselves as night owls who find it easier to work later.

August 15, 2018

The global problem of overwork and the right to disconnect

by Aki Stamatis • Comment, Flexible working, Technology, Wellbeing

Anybody who doubts the importance of work and working culture to people’s lives should look at the resistance to President Macron’s mooted changes to labour laws. His attempts to modernise and liberalise French workplace legislation marked the first cracks in his reputation and brought millions of French workers to the streets as part of a national strike.However, one change to French legislation that met with little or no resistance earlier this year was a new right to avoid work emails outside working hours. Under the legislation, firms with more than 50 workers will be obliged to draw up a charter of good conduct, setting out the hours when staff are not supposed to send or respond to emails as they seek a right to disconnect.

August 9, 2018

How will Crossrail impact the office landscape of London and beyond?

by Lars Brown • Comment, Property

We are now just a few months away from the grand opening of the central section of Crossrail, the 118km long railway line spanning London and the South East which will, once completed, will deliver a direct connection between all of London’s main employment centres; linking Heathrow with Paddington, the West End, the City and Canary Wharf. This ambitious redevelopment plan will bring huge positive change to the City and is estimated to generate over 850,000 new jobs in the Capital, as well as making the lives of those already working in London easier and more efficient.

August 6, 2018

Levels of digital dependency hit new heights

by Mark Eltringham • News, Technology, Wellbeing

Most people in the UK are dependent on their digital devices, and need a constant connection to the internet, following a decade of digital dependency and transformation claims a report from regulatory body Ofcom. The findings are from Ofcom’s Communications Market Report, which it claims is the most comprehensive study of how communications services in the UK are changing. Around 17 percent of people owned a smartphone a decade ago. That has now reached 78 percent and 95 percent among 16-24 year-olds. The smartphone is now the device people say they would miss the most, dominating many people’s lives in both positive and negative ways.

July 13, 2018

London’s poor connectivity is holding back commercial property occupiers

by Neil Franklin • News, Property, Technology

Connectivity is more than just broadband speeds and 4G coverage. New research from property consultancy Cluttons claims to reveal the impact it has on everything from the properties we choose to live in, to the places where we can work and our overall happiness both at home and in the office. The research suggests that London is lagging behind other national and global hubs when it comes to good connectivity in both residential and commercial property, failing our needs both as residents and businesses.

July 11, 2018

A beauty industry veteran makes the case for corporate wellness

by Leena Jain • Comment, Wellbeing, Workplace design

Wellness is a term that today transcends the consumer and business worlds, but it is so much more than a buzzword. Today, the wellbeing of employees is essential for organisations to flourish, so much so that the term has in many ways replaced ‘productivity’ as the way to measure the success of an organisation. Both the beauty and workplace design sectors are very personal areas of high emotional involvement. There is a very real and physical contact with these products — in beauty, women are particularly (and increasingly men too) engaged in developing a customised routine because it gives them a sense of happiness, wellbeing and identity.

July 5, 2018

Why a Google office simply does not work for everybody ⁰

by Dr Caroline M. Burns • Comment, Facilities management, Technology, Workplace design

The open plan office versus closed debate rages on, and rather than running out of steam in the face of all of the evidence and reasoned argument put forward one one side or the other by many industry thought-leaders, it seems to have nine lives. Those grand and ground-breaking new offices occupied by the world’s tech giants seem to be particularly popular examples of why highly open and transparent workplaces do, or don’t work, especially those headline-grabbing offices created around the world by Google. This public debate has led to some very interesting and insightful discussions in various forums (to which I have contributed), inspiring me to synthesise the key themes into four reasons why a Google office is not necessarily the right type of office for your organisation. Many thanks in particular are due to David Rostie and Kay Sargent for their valuable online contributions to the debates which inspired this article.

June 28, 2018

Ten demonstrable truths about the workplace you may not know

by Kerstin Sailer • Comment, Facilities management, Features, Workplace design

The science of the workplace has gained a lot of interest over the last few years, highlighting recurring patterns of human behaviour as well as how organisational behaviour relates to office design. In theory, knowledge from this growing body of research could be used to inform design. In practice, this is rarely the case. A survey of 420 architects and designers highlighted a large gap between research and practice: while 80 percent of respondents agreed that more evidence was needed on the impact of design, 68 percent admitted they never reviewed literature and 71 percent said they never engaged in any sort of post-occupancy evaluation. Only 5 percent undertake a formal POE and just 1 percent do so in a rigorous fashion. Not a single practitioner reported a report on the occupied scheme, despite its importance in understanding the impact of a design.

June 28, 2018

The self-employed enjoy higher levels of wellbeing and happiness, but work still needed

by Neil Franklin • News, Wellbeing

Policymakers and business leaders must work to improve wellbeing among the self-employed, a new report by the Centre for Research on Self-Employment (CRSE), has said. Instead of exploring self-employed wellbeing through the conventional prism of economic success, the report, The Way to Wellbeing, adopts a new approach. It considers people’s overall life satisfaction, based on their subjective assessments of various aspects of their lives – including jobs, income, health, family life and leisure. The report found that wellbeing was higher among self-employed people by using subjective assessments of different aspects of their lives. This is the first time a major report of its kind has taken a holistic view of wellbeing – looking at jobs, health, family life and leisure – to build an overall picture of life satisfaction, rather than just using a narrow measure of economic success.

June 25, 2018

Misunderstanding of mental health means millions of employees delay seeking help

by Sara Bean • News, Wellbeing, Workplace

Almost 60 percent of UK employees are unable to identify key symptoms of the most common mental health conditions resulting in treatment delays for millions of workers. A new study from Bupa examined employees’ understanding of key psychological and behavioural symptoms of six of the most prevalent conditions in the UK, as well as identifying widely-held misconceptions. The research reveals that inaccurate assumptions have caused almost seven million people to delay seeking support for a mental health problem. Early diagnosis and treatment of conditions can improve recovery rates which is why medical experts at Bupa want to raise awareness of the accurate symptoms. More →

June 21, 2018

The hype surrounding wellbeing concepts can blind us to their true value

by Georgia Elliott-Smith • Comment, Wellbeing

Digital detox. Does the phrase make you roll your eyes or grab your attention? Lately, you’d be forgiven for thinking that the idea of switching off from technology, particularly your smart phone (if people still call them that as they are so ubiquitous) has become a media fad. A litmus test for this might be how much air time BBC R2 give the subject. Over the past few weeks it has figured a lot, particularly Chris Evans referencing it in a Japanese themed week and a Friday morning interview with the neuroscientist Dr Jack Lewis who shared his tops tips for a digital detox. No doubt the Daily mail is jumping on the bandwagon as well.