Barclays installs motion sensors to monitor how often their bankers use their desks
Staff working for Barclays plc in London arrived at work to discover black boxes underneath their desks. Their bank bosses had installed tracking devices to monitor how often staff used their desks. The devices, known as OccupEye, use heat and motion sensors to log how long people remain at their posts. Their purpose is to […]
Italy considering trialling four-day working week
To help tackle Italy’s growing unemployment, councillors have put their support behind proposals to introduce a four-day week. The proposals will cut the working week from 40 to 32 hours. This, councillors claim, would create around 200,000 jobs by introducing new job roles in a variety of industries and provide work for the country’s 160,000 […]
Amazon to trial 30-hour working week
Amazon is planning a trial that will see some of its staff working only 30 hours a week. Instead of working the usual 40-hour week, a number of Amazon staff from the company’s human resources department will be allowed to reduce their hours to just 30. This will mean that they will earn 75% of […]
Women Aiming for Quicker Career Success
Women want to achieve career success faster than men, according to a study by recruitment agency Reed. 48% of women are aiming to reach their career goal by the age of 40. Over three out of five men stated that they were happy to wait until after that age to hit their career targets. Further to […]
Offer Flexible Hours to Hire Better Talent
Fewer than one in ten ‘quality’ jobs offer the possibility of flexible hours. A failure to recognise the prevalence of flexible working means that employers are overlooking up to 1.9 million qualified candidates, a report has warned. The Joseph Rowntree Foundation (JRF) surveyed parents, older people and disabled people to form the report. It found […]
Tipping Point for Flexible Working in 2017
Next year will see the tipping point for flexible working in the UK, according to new research. Lancaster University’s Work Foundation indicates that over half of UK businesses are likely to adopt flexible working practices by 2017. The paper, ‘Working Anywhere: A Winning Formula for Good Work?’ aimed to estimate when flexible working will become […]
Flexible Working: The Future of Employment?
A new study by the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) has found that only a quarter of people consider work to be central to their lives. The study is the first such research the CIPD has undertaken since 2005, and it highlights the degree to which attitudes and approaches to work are evolving. […]
Companies Failing to Embrace Flexible Working
It has been one year since the Government rolled flexible working out to all UK employees, but research suggests that employers are still not quite sure how to manage it. A recent survey by workingmums.co.uk found that over a fifth of working mothers believed that they had no choice but to leave their jobs after their […]
Sweden Introduces Six-Hour Working Day
There has been a working time revolution taking place in Sweden as businesses trial the six-hour working day. Employers in Gothenburg, the country’s second largest city, have reduced the length of their working day in an effort to improve productivity and work-life balance. The trial is running as part of a controlled experiment into the […]
Work-Life Balance Key to Reducing Stress
Corporate work-life balance programmes are the most effective method for reducing employee stress, according to new research. A workplace health initiative called Britain’s Healthiest Company has conducted research into the steps that businesses take to manage staff stress. The results indicate that whilst many firms acknowledge the importance of reducing employee stress levels, they could […]
Changes to Flexible Working Rules
We recently saw the announcement of new changes to flexible working rules, providing the opportunity for all UK employees to request different working patterns. This could have a dramatic effect on how we design our working lives, as well as affect our work/life balance. Many employers already offer flexible working for all staff as part […]
Flexible Working Arrangements a Benefit to Business
More than half of UK HR directors surveyed believe that remote and flexible working arrangements have resulted in increased productivity in their organisation. A study conducted by Robert Half has found that nearly two-thirds of HR directors (63%) believe that a flexible working environment has a positive impact on their business. Over half of the respondents (51%) […]
The 10 Year Rise of Flexible Working
The last decade has seen an increase in the number of employees working from home with 4.2 million people now taking advantage of flexible working regulations. The TUC found that whilst the number of people in employment has increased over the last ten years, that growth has been exceeded by the number of people working […]
