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We are now at the end of the alphabet for the WiseWork ‘A to Z’ and we chose ‘Zeal’ as the final word. The dictionary definition of ‘zeal’ is ‘great energy or enthusiasm in pursuit of a cause or objective’. This is exactly what successful organisations get from their people. They have a productive workforce that applies its energy for the good of the enterprise. But where do they get it from? It comes from the organisational culture, something that…

Traditional organisations are based on a hierarchical structure where power flows from the top. The bosses know best because they have been around longer, have more understanding about how things work and have information that is not available to everyone else. Young people joining the business have to learn how things are done around here. People who fit in to the corporate culture survive. Those who question things are seen to be ‘rocking the boat’ and do not progress. Eventually…

Every week for the past six months we’ve had a reason adopt WiseWork. We’re now almost through the alphabet and up to the most difficult letter – “X”. You’ve probably heard of Xenophobia, which doesn’t sound like a good reason to work in a flexible way, but we’ve chosen the opposite “Xenophilia”. According to Wikipedia it means an affection for unknown/foreign objects, manners, cultures or people. That seemed an appropriate description of a way of working that’s inclusive, allowing variations depending…

It seems that the HR world has just discovered ‘wellness’ as something it should worry about. There are conferences, seminars and articles on the topic and then many people offering services too support the health of the workforce. Look behind the veneer and all is not well. The reason for this is that organisations are experiencing increasing absentees due to stressed out employees. Stress has been described as the ‘Health Epidemic of the 21st Century’ by the World Health Organization…

Many managers complain to me that their schedules are full of meetings and they never get time to think. By the time that have caught up on their daily deluge of emails, they certainly don’t have time for reflection or thinking up new ideas. It’s one long day of back to back meetings and some long evenings and weekends catching up on email. Add to that the time wasted on travelling to meetings and it’s clear we need to look…

This week we are up to “U for Universal” in the WiseWork alphabet. Almost at the end of six months of weekly blogs covering a variety of reasons for adopting our version of flexible working. There are many different definitions of flexible working and there are several different names for the variations of working patterns that are being adopted. We have ‘agile’, ‘smart’, ‘mobile’, ‘location independent’ and many others. There’s flexitime and compressed hours, home working and hot desking. We…

This Blog is written Jeremy Lewis, WiseWork Partner, to coincide with “T is for Trust” week in the WiseWork “A to Z”. “Culture is what people do when no one is looking,” said Herb Kelleher, CEO Southwest Airlines. The issue “I can’t trust my team are getting on with their work when I can’t see them in the office.” You may have some sympathy with this position: our attention spans are falling and we have access to distractions on portable…

There are many organisations worried about stress amongst their employees, but what are they doing about it? They have realised that mental health is as important as physical health and recognise that they have some responsibility for this. So they introduce a “wellness” programme with counselling services, yoga classes, healthy food in the cafeteria and subsidised gym membership. All these provisions are aimed at addressing the symptoms of stress. None of them are addressing the cause. One of the main…