Blog

Peter Thomson blogs regularly about the changing world of work and how WiseWork is helping organisations to benefit from new working practices. This site also hosts blog contributions from Wisework Partners and other guest bloggers..

Ban “Flexible Working”

The way we think about work is still conditioned by Industrial Age assumptions. Despite technology freeing us up from fixed time and place, we still think of work as being organised into jobs that have a specified “workplace” and a defined set  of “working hours”. By law every employee in the UK has to have a contract stating these facts. Then some employers are prepared to offer “Flexible Working” as an employee benefit, granting some variation to the fixed hours…

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Why is Engagement so low?

We are only too familiar with the headlines based on Gallup’s worldwide survey on engagement. “Only 13% of employees worldwide are engaged at work”. “24% are actively disengaged, indicating they are unhappy and unproductive at work and liable to spread negativity to coworkers”  and so on…. Yet we seem unable to shift the figures very much. There is overwhelming evidence that good engagement translates into good business results. The Engage for Success report from 2012 is full of data such…

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Why isn’t work a pleasure?

We too readily accept that work is something people don’t really want to do. We pay them ‘compensation’ for their time in order to bribe them away from things they’d rather be doing. What a strange way of designing the activity occupying the most waking hours for most adults. Why don’t we aim to make work so interesting, fascinating and rewarding that people would do it whether they are paid or not? Very little effort goes into work design. We…

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Customer Service – excuse for inaction or reason for action?

It’s Week 3 in the 26 week “A to Z” WiseWork series and we’re up to the letter “C”  for Customer Service. We are now living in the 24/7 world, where instant service is becoming the norm. I can renew my car insurance, book a doctor’s appointment or make a payment from my bank account at any time that suits me. I can buy a book and download it instantly to my Kindle or have the paper version arrive the…

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How to Improve Business Results

Report after report, survey after survey, the message is clear. Flexible workers are happier, healthier and more productive than their conventional colleagues.  They are much more engaged and are much less likely to be looking for another job. There are many ‘soft’ benefits that come from a more flexible approach to work. Employees are less stressed, have a better work life balance and take less time off sick. If they are able to choose when and where they work they will…

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Let’s ban the word ‘absence’

This is the first week in the “A to Z” series explaining WiseWork. It’s all laid out in the “Why WiseWork” guide available on this site. Each week we will be taking a letter of the alphabet and looking at the word it represents.  This week it’s A for Absence. When I chose ‘absence’ as the topic I was aware that introducing remote and flexible working schemes are known to reduce absenteeism. So it seemed obvious that one of the…

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Fathers struggling to work flexibly

A survey of 2,000 working fathers aged between 24 and 40 found that two thirds had asked for a change in their working pattern since the birth of their child. 56% of those that asked to adjust their hours were allowed to do so which means that almost half were refused.  45% of millennial fathers said they had experienced tension from their employers over their wish to balance their work and home priorities. Only 19% of the fathers who requested…

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The world of Work in 2030

A new report on the future of work draws on research begun in 2007 by a team from PwC and the James Martin Institute for Science and Civilisation at the Said Business School in Oxford and a specially commissioned survey of 10,000 people in China, India, Germany, the UK and the US. This has provided insights into how people think the workplace will evolve and how this will affect their employment prospects and future working lives. The report looks forward to 2030…

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Organisations failing to create a positive work environment

Deloitte’s Global Human Capital Trends report has found that only half (50%) of UK employees consider their organisations to be effective at creating a positive work environment and only two fifths (42%) consider their employer to be effective at creating meaningful work. The survey also suggests that UK employers are struggling to keep up with the pace of technological change as only a fifth (22%) of UK employees are satisfied with their organisation’s use of technology. This is a worrying…

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Flexible working still tops the popularity poll

Yet another survey has shown the importance of Flexible Working in the eyes of employees. This one run by corporate gift suppliers Adler covered 1,000 UK workers and aimed to identify the top benefits workers want to see offered as standard by their employer. Flexible working topped the list with half of respondents (48 percent) saying it should be offered as standard by UK companies. The full list of the top five desired workplace benefits is: Flexible working (48 percent) Pension…

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