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..
A detailed report, “Working anytime, anywhere: The effects on the world of work” has recently been published jointly by Eurofound and the ILO. It studies home-based and mobile workers in ten European countries and five others. The researchers concluded that the incidence of home/mobile working varies substantially, from 2% to 40% of employees, depending on the country, occupation and sector. They point out the advantages of mobile working, both for individuals and organisations, such as improved productivity and better work-life…
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The UK is running out of workers. According to the CIPD current employer plans suggest that we’ll need to fill 13.5 million job vacancies in the next ten years, but only 7 million young people will leave school and college. With fewer people entering the labour pool, it’s critical for employers to be able to embrace talent and fill roles. Andy Briggs, CEO of Aviva Life and the UK Government’s business champion for older workers has called for a million…
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Following straight after the news about men working part time comes a report showing fathers are seeking more flexible employment. The “Modern Families Index 2017” report has just been published by Working Families. In this they point to a ‘flexibility gap’. Almost half of parents are not comfortable raising the issue of workload and hours with their employer. They identified flexible working as a key way of getting a better balance, but many felt that they could not make use of…
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The Institute for Fiscal Studies has just issued a report stating that men on low pay are four times more likely to be working part-time than in the 1990s. It shows that 1 in 5 men aged from 25 to 55 in low paid jobs are now working part-time. Twenty years ago it was 1 in 20. This has been portrayed in the media as bad news, implying that these people would prefer to have full-time jobs. But this may…
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Today we have had the news that the number of men working part time has grown rapidly. The Institute for Fiscal Studies has published a report saying that 20 years ago 1 in 20 men aged 20-55 worked part-time with low wages. Now it’s 1 in 5. So the Guardian puts this under the headline “Bleak trend ….is revealed”. It seems that the growth of anything other than conventional full-time jobs is a bad thing. But, wait a minute. I…
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The UK remains consistently near the top of the working hours league and well down the productivity table. Maybe there is a connection? A recent survey from Morgan McKinley showed that 84% of respondents work beyond their contracted hours. And it’s not just the odd extra hour. 27% work between 6 and 9 hours more per week and a further 31% work 10 hours or more over their official working time. The survey disproves the theory that these are all…
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The Work Foundation have just produced a fascinating report on mobile working. They have trawled through a wide range of existing literature and surveyed over 500 managers across the UK to build up a picture of the extent of mobile working today and the way it is headed over the next few years. Their survey showed that mobile working was the norm by 2014 for over one third of the individual respondents and over one third of the organisations they…
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The CIPD have recently issued a research report on zero-hours and short-hours contracts. It makes interesting reading. It should certainly be studied by all those people criticising these flexible working arrangements and calling for more legislation or even an outright ban. The government’s Labour Force Survey shows that the number of people on zero-hours contracts has almost tripled in less than three years. Although some of this may just be greater public awareness of these arrangements it does look like…
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It struck me as slightly ironic that I’m involved in organising a workshop, based in London, on the subject of agile and remote working. If we are now in the age of webinars instead of seminars and YouTube recordings instead of live presentations, why are we running a physical event. Why not a virtual one? That made me think. Why do we go to football matches when you can get a better view on TV? Why do people go to…
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Productivity has been in the headlines recently. The government is trying to improve the performance of the country in the league tables and various bodies have come out with reports on how this can be achieved. One of them is ACAS. Its 50 page report “Building Productivity in the UK” focuses on the workplace as the place where “the elements of productivity come together to deliver goods and services.’ They say “How businesses manage and organise their workforce has a…
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