Chronic workforce shortages have put nursing staff under unbearable pressure, says union chief
Nurses in England took an average of a week off sick last year because of stress, anxiety or depression, NHS figures reveal.
The disclosure has prompted concern that the intense strains nurses face in their jobs, including low pay and understaffing, are damaging their mental health and causing many to quit.
Continue reading...Long hours spent at desks and sofas leads to 21,000 deaths a year in the Netherlands from cardiovascular disease, diabetes and cancer
The Dutch are perceived as a nation of healthy giants, leaping on their bikes to cycle energetically across flat lands. But new research suggests they are in fact the “sitting champions of Europe”, with a sedentary lifestyle that causes thousands of early deaths.
Health experts are calling for urgent action to stop so-called “chair-use disorder” spreading across western countries. A report by the research organisation TNO, published on Friday, found too much sitting costs the Netherlands €1.2bn (£1bn) annually and leads to 21,000 premature deaths a year from cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes and cancer. It is riskier, researchers found, to be a lawyer than a lorry driver.
Continue reading...Employees will earn same salary but hours will be reduced from 44 to 36 hours as part of national voluntary trial, says government
Companies in the Dominican Republic are preparing for a voluntary six-month pilot of a four-day work week, the first move of its kind for the Caribbean country.
The initiative would launch in February, with employees earning the same salary, the Dominican government said, and the standard work week reduced from 44 hours to 36 hours, Monday through to Thursday.
Continue reading...Study shows widespread concern over quality of managers, with 82% of bosses deemed ‘accidental’, having had no formal training
Almost one-third of UK workers say they’ve quit a job because of a negative workplace culture, according to a new survey that underlines the risks of managers failing to rein in toxic behaviour.
Research carried out by the Chartered Management Institute (CMI) pointed to widespread concern about the quality of management, and its impact on workers’ daily lives.
Continue reading...UK losing belief that hard work brings better life, and fewer millennials now think work always comes first, survey indicates
In the great “live to work or work to live” debate, Britons have traditionally been seen to fall into the first group. But research appears to turn that reputation on its head.
According to a study of 24 countries, Britons are less likely than people from elsewhere to place importance on work. Increasingly, they also no longer believe that hard work brings a better life.
Continue reading...In what looks to be the new work-from-home normal, the average Australian worker spends 27% or more of their working hours at home
Transport experts believe post-pandemic work habits have finally stabilised and that the return to the office is unlikely to progress any further.
The average working Australian is spending 27% of their working hours at home, calculated across full and part-time employees.
Continue reading...With work changed for ever by the pandemic, businesses are testing whether pilot represents a recognition that ‘the new frontier for competition is quality of life’
More than 3,300 workers at 70 UK companies, ranging from a local chippy to large financial firms, start working a four-day week from Monday with no loss of pay in the world’s biggest trial of the new working pattern.
The pilot is running for six months and is being organised by 4 Day Week Global in partnership with the thinktank Autonomy, the 4 Day Week Campaign, and researchers at Cambridge University, Oxford University and Boston College.
Continue reading...With work changed forever by the pandemic, firms say shorter week could help attract and retain staff
More than 3,000 workers at 60 companies across Britain will trial a four-day working week, in what is thought to be the biggest pilot scheme to take place anywhere in the world.
Employees from a wide range of businesses and charities are expected to take part in the scheme, which will run initially from June to December, including the Royal Society of Biology, the London-based brewing company Pressure Drop, a Manchester-based medical devices firm, and a fish and chip shop in Norfolk.
Continue reading...Burnout from two years of battling Covid pandemic has created flood of departures and public concern, says survey
A record number of more than 400 workers in England have left the NHS every week to restore their work-life balance over the last year, according to a new analysis of the workforce crisis hitting the health service.
The flood of departures comes with staff complaining of burnout and cases of post-traumatic stress disorder following two years of battling the Covid pandemic. There are now concerns that the exodus is impacting the quality of care, with more than a quarter of adults saying they or an immediate family member had received poor care as a result of the workforce problems.
Continue reading...As we slowly rediscover a world of bad wifi and slow lifts, the US Office writer and creator of Parks and Recreation and Brooklyn Nine-Nine explains why he can’t wait to get back
One of the first things we knew back in early 2020 was that we wouldn’t be going to work for a while. We thought that we would take a quick break – a week, maybe – and then reassess. So we cleaned out our cubicles and desks, and grabbed a few snacks from the kitchen (and toilet paper from the bathroom). One week became two, which became a month, which became a series of question marks spanning endlessly into the future, as the Zooms and FaceTimes and home office conversions gradually made the very idea of spending our workdays with other people seem like a quaint memory. Like childhood birthday parties, or answering machines, or properly functioning democracy.
Some of us might never go back. Every so often we will hear about companies reassessing their relationship to the office, which has been proved unnecessary or at least outdated.
‘In 1987,’ photographer Steven Ahlgren says, ‘when I was bored and unfulfilled, working as a banker in Minneapolis, I began taking frequent trips to look at a painting by Edward Hopper, Office at Night. What first drew me was its setting, which I related to each and every workday at the bank. But what kept pulling me back was its ambiguous narrative – who were these two people, what was their relationship, and why was the woman looking at that piece of paper on the floor?’
Continue reading...A lawyer at a top London firm has suggested recruiting a chief happiness officer. Could this be the answer to mid-life burnout and the great resignation?
Name: Happiness officers.
Age: The psychological and philosophical pursuit of happiness was going on thousands of years ago in China, India and Greece. Think Confucius, Buddha, Socrates, Aristotle. More recently, Roger Hargreaves published his scholarly text Mr Happy in 1971.
Continue reading...Savile Row designer Ozwald Boateng says it’s time for a smarter look, tailored to a new era of hybrid working
He’s the designer famed for reviving Savile Row tailoring in the Cool Britannia era of the 90s with his sleek, jewel-coloured suits. Since then, office attire has become less formal and working from home has taken off, yet Ozwald Boateng believes rumours of the death of the suit are greatly exaggerated.
As he prepared to show at London fashion week on Monday after a 12-year absence, he told the Observer that he believes the suit will be seen as less an everyday work uniform and more as special occasion wear – but with many of those going into an office just two or three days a week making more of an effort and opting to dress more formally.
Continue reading...In an internal survey, employees asked company to find ‘ways to connect’ which the 75-acre Trailblazer ranch will provide plenty of
Salesforce employees will soon be able to hold meetings in California’s redwood forests after the company announced plans to open its own luxury ranch to help staff “connect” after two years of remote working.
The 75-acre property known as Trailblazer Ranch is located near Santa Cruz, California, and boasts an outdoor amphitheater, a communal kitchen, fitness and learning centers and conference rooms. The property also features sleeping pods and suites equipped with fireplaces and employees will be able to partake in guided nature walks, yoga sessions, garden tours, group cooking classes, art journaling and meditation.
Continue reading...People juggle work and Friday prayer as country switches to Saturday-Sunday weekend
Employees and schoolchildren juggled work and studies with weekly Muslim prayers on the first ever working Friday in the United Arab Emirates, as the Gulf country formally switched to a Saturday-Sunday weekend.
Some grumbled at the change and businesses were split, with many moving to the western-style weekend but other private firms sticking with Fridays and Saturdays, as in other Gulf states.
Continue reading...There were winners and losers as work patterns continued changing, with repercussions for city centres and society as a whole
Of all the predictions on your 2021 bingo card, who had employees being fined for going into the office? Workers in Wales now face that threat since the tightening of Covid regulations amid the spread of the Omicron variant, with a possible £60 penalty for failing to work from home.
That is just one of many examples of how the pandemic has transformed the world of work this year – and perhaps for ever – for city centre employers, their staff and the service industry that depends on them for trade.
Continue reading...It started in bed one morning when I realised I hadn’t had an original thought for months. I needed someone to make me wake up
For some reason it takes me two and a half hours to email my life coach. I write “email life coach guy” on my to-do list. I have a really long shower. I riffle through a stack of unopened New Yorkers, and pretend I am either going to read them, or leave them in my building’s lobby for my neighbours to claim, and in the end I do neither. I watch a 20-minute YouTube video about Amir Khan’s boxing career (“The legendary speed of Amir Khan!”), then check Wikipedia to see how he fared in the fight the video was trailing (an embarrassing knockout). I send three tweets and scroll Instagram. I stand at the fridge and eat some hummus with a plain cracker for no reason at all. Finally, I sit and write the email. It is 36 words long. Tomas, the life coach, writes back almost immediately. That was the absolute last thing I wanted.
The pandemic was broadly fine for me. I worked at home anyway, so I didn’t have any shock adjustment to make. I didn’t (and still don’t) have any children to look after, so there wasn’t any particular agony with my many lives layering on top of each other in a confined space. My girlfriend, Hannah, and I did the usual things to stay sane when confronted with seemingly endless periods of time and no real social life: jigsaws, taking too long to cook dinner, a Sopranos rewatch.
Continue reading...Businesses are becoming increasingly aware that exhaustion is a ticking timebomb
This week, staff at Nike’s headquarters in Oregon breathed a prolonged sigh of relief, after learning that they were getting a week off to de-stress and recover from the pressures of the Covid-19 pandemic.
In an open message to staff posted on LinkedIn, Nike’s senior manager of global marketing science, Matt Marrazzo, told staff: “In a year (or two) unlike any other, taking time for rest and recovery is key to performing well and staying sane.”
Continue reading...After lockdown some businesses understand better how flexible working hours enhance productivity
A three-hour break in the middle of the working day for a languorous lunch, followed by a restorative nap sounds like the Mediterranean dream, but employers in Spain are increasingly moving away from this rigid schedule, which for many workers feels more like a nightmare.
The merits of introducing the siesta in the UK have been hotly debated this week after the National Trust unveiled plans to move towards “Mediterranean working hours” at some sites in the south-east, to help cope with rising annual temperatures.
Continue reading...I spent 30 years as a journalist before deciding to become a secondary school teacher. While a complete career change is rare, it is one of the best moves I ever made
I had my first midlife crisis in 2006. It started at 7am on a cold January morning when my mother got out of bed, made herself a cup of tea, had an aneurysm and died.
I was a 46-year-old married newspaper columnist with four children, who appeared to be living a more than satisfactory life. But as the sudden axe of grief fell, I looked at my career, which was going better than I’d ever thought possible, and thought: I don’t want this any more.
Continue reading...Staff warily contemplate going back to work as business leaders say it is vital to boost urban economy
With the lifting of coronavirus restrictions in England probably two weeks away, the prospect of returning to offices means the revival of the daily commute.
In a push to bring back more people to town and city centres to boost the urban economy, a group of 50 business leaders, including the Canary Wharf executive chair, Sir George Iacobescu, the bosses of Heathrow and Gatwick airports, the Capita chief executive, Jon Lewis, and the BT chief executive, Philip Jansen, are calling for the government to encourage a return to the office.
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