New Zealand's social development minister Carmel Sepuloni said she would ‘never buy the odd shaped carrot pack again’ after ‘almost wrestling’ with son over vegetable
Continue reading...Category Archives: Working from home
Office politics: firms still grappling with home working puzzle
Whether seen as an obstacle to overcome or a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, home working is proving hard to avoid
As the pandemic struck wealthy economies in early 2020, workers (in white-collar jobs, at least) found themselves carrying out their duties from home. Now that vaccination programmes are continuing apace, more companies are grappling with how – and whether – to end the great enforced experiment in home working.
The answer is far from settled, with Apple telling its global workforce on Friday that they will not return to its corporate offices until January at the earliest, amid concern over the spread of new coronavirus variants. The tech company’s original plan to bring staff back in on Mondays, Tuesdays and Thursdays in a hybrid home-working pattern had already been delayed from early September to October.
Continue reading...Three, two, win? How to adapt to hybrid home and office working
Experts offer their advice on how companies and staff can move to a more flexible model of work
Working 3:2, what a way to make a living – but a new way that may take a little getting used to, according to experts.
As coronavirus restrictions lift, many companies whose staff have worked from home for 18 months are asking those workers to dust off their bras and smart trousers and return to the office part-time.
Continue reading...Is remote working better for the environment? Not necessarily
Companies have a rare moment to reset working models. But climate calculations of remote v office work are complex
Stacy Kauk was finalizing Shopify’s 2019 sustainability report when the pandemic forced the company into remote work.
“I kind of stopped in my footsteps and went, ‘Uh oh, what’s going to happen if we’re closing our offices during Covid and staying remote in the long term? What does that mean for Shopify’s corporate carbon footprint?’” said Kauk, who directs the Canadian e-commerce company’s $5m annual sustainability fund.
Continue reading...‘Idea of commuting fills me with dread’: workers on returning to the office
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.
Continue reading...Revealed: rise in stress among those working from home
New research finds that those living and working alone during the pandemic have suffered the worst effects of all
Working from home during the coronavirus pandemic has caused increased levels of loneliness and mental distress, according to new research into how workers have been affected by the crisis.
With ministers still debating how to manage the return to workplaces in the wake of Covid restrictions, a study by the National Centre for Social Research (NatCen) found that the biggest increases in mental distress and loneliness during the pandemic were felt by the most isolated group – those working from home and living alone. However, in a finding that surprised researchers, people working from home and living with others also experienced a significant increase in loneliness not felt by those working outside the home.
Continue reading...Remote working v the office: four company bosses have their say
Working longer hours or getting more done? Managers debate the upside and downside of how we work
The global pandemic and lockdown restrictions forced many UK businesses to move employees to remote working, practically overnight.
Four company bosses speak about the upsides and downsides of working from home versus the traditional office-based model as they consider what the future might look like for their businesses and staff.
Continue reading...Ministers will not tell workers to return to office when lockdown ends
Decision will be left in the hands of businesses following damaging headlines last summer
Workers will not be told by ministers that they should return to their offices when the final phase of lockdown restrictions are expected to be lifted next month, government sources have told the Guardian.
In a significant change of approach from last summer, the government is minded to let companies make their own decisions – a strategy that could lead to conflict and confusion among staff.
Continue reading...Work is where your laptop is: meet the globetrotting digital nomads
Worldwide shift to flexible and home working in pandemic has led to rise of new kind of backpacker
Samantha Scott does not miss her daily commutes in London, particularly “the dread of having to wake up and get on the tube, and heading into work sweaty and flustered. I’m still waking up at 6 or 7am, but I’m able to go for a walk on the beach before I start work.”
When she and her partner Chris Cerra arrive with their luggage in a new city, they can easily be mistaken for tourists. But they are part of a new generation of “digital nomads” who hop from country to country to live and work.
Continue reading...The dogs keeping office workers company through lockdown
Owners say taking four-legged friends to work helps tackle loneliness and livens up Zoom calls
“Dogs are just like ‘play, eat, sleep’ – they bring me back into the moment. I think we can all learn something from that,” says Carole Henderson, who has been taking her “furry backup” to the office for the last few months.
They are not so good at making the tea and things get a bit rowdy when the delivery man comes round, but Henderson’s labradors Barney and Rusty, and labradoodle Lily, have been her sidekicks for the last decade. As well as being excellent foot-warmers, they have helped her emotionally with getting through solo months in the office.
Continue reading...US military account’s gibberish tweet prompts viral mystery
People joked it could be nuclear code but real explanation is every social media manager’s nightmare
The perils of working from home while managing the social media account of a major military power have been thrown into sharp relief after the US Strategic Command tweeted a confusing string of gibberish.
Thirteen mysterious characters long, the tweet – “;l;;gmlxzssaw” – prompted some on social media to jokingly suggest it was confidential information, for example a password or a nuclear launch code, that had accidentally been leaked.
Continue reading...Call centre staff to be monitored via webcam for home-working ‘infractions’
Exclusive: Teleperformance, which employs 380,000 people, plans to use specialist webcams to watch staff
Thousands of staff at one of the world’s biggest call centre companies face being monitored by webcams to check whether they are eating, looking at their phones or leaving their desks while working from home, the Guardian has learned.
In a sign of potential battles ahead over the surveillance of remote staff after the pandemic, Teleperformance – which employs about 380,000 people in 34 countries and counts dozens of major UK companies and government departments among its clients – has told some staff that specialist webcams will be fitted to check for home-working “infractions”.
Continue reading...Goldman Sachs junior banker speaks out over ’18-hour shifts and low pay’
Younger staff in London follow revolt in US offices over remote-working conditions
The reputation of Goldman Sachs as the most desirable employer for aspiring investment bankers is at stake. Legendary for its pulling power with the best graduates, the bank is now facing a rebellion in its lower ranks.
Junior staff who used to tolerate long working hours thanks to office camaraderie have been forced to manage burnout at home, alone, throughout the pandemic. Some have started demanding change, while others are plotting their exit. What began as a little local trouble at a US office in February has now spread to the UK.
Continue reading...‘If you switch off, people think you’re lazy’: demands grow for a right to disconnect from work
Working from home can mean never being able to switch off, but could EU-wide regulation end the always-on culture?
When Poland went into strict lockdown last March, Natalia Zurowska barely had time to clear her desk at work. “I went in to get my laptop and then left,” says the 36-year-old, an office manager for a graphic design firm in Warsaw at the time. “I had been working in an office for 10 years. So it was a new thing, working from home. But from day one I knew I didn’t like it.”
Continue reading...Home workers putting in more hours since Covid, research shows
Staff in countries including UK log on for two hours longer at home and face bigger workloads
Employees who work from home are spending longer at their desks and facing a bigger workload than before the Covid pandemic hit, two sets of research have suggested.
The average length of time an employee working from home in the UK, Austria, Canada and the US is logged on at their computer has increased by more than two hours a day since the coronavirus crisis, according to data from the business support company NordVPN Teams.
Continue reading...‘I wanted to give something back’: the academic who signed up for the Novavax trial
Librarian says she feels ‘very lucky’ working from home, so she volunteered for the vaccine test
While many have endured almost a year of stress and hardship during the Covid crisis in the UK, others have remained relatively unscathed.
Caroline Ball, a 37-year-old academic librarian from just outside Derby, has even felt guilty at times, having the good fortune of a stable job which she can do from home and not worrying about homeschooling children.
Continue reading...Working from bed? Here’s how you can still look professional
From airline pants to the all-day dressing gown, these outfits are just the thing for those duvet-based video calls
Dressing for work, if lockdown is forcing you to work from bed, is a dance between comfort and mindset. A nightie suggests you’ve given up, but lip gloss is too much (plus it’s a nightmare if you get it on your sheets). So, how to dress when you don’t want to get dressed? Can you get away with a dressing gown, and what about a hoodie? Follow these tips for bed-based video-call dressing, and you can hunker down in your chrysalis and emerge from it warm, transformed and, hopefully, still employed.
Continue reading...The Wodge: can London’s tallest new skyscraper survive the Covid era?
Nicknamed The Wodge because of its girth, the capital’s tallest ever office has just muscled onto the skyline. But in the age of coronavirus, who wants to jostle for 60 lifts with 12,000 others?
With the City of London deserted once more, its streets only populated by the occasional Deliveroo driver or tumbleweed-seeking photographer, it seems a strange time to be completing the largest office building the capital has ever seen, not least because the very future of the workplace is now in question.
But, rising far above the Cheesegrater and the Walkie-Talkie, dwarfing the now fun-sized Gherkin and boasting the floor area of almost all three combined, 22 Bishopsgate stands as the mother of all office towers. It is the City’s menacing final boss, a glacial hulk that fills its plot to the very edges and rises directly up until it hits the flight path of passing jets. The building muscles into every panorama of London, its broad girth dominating the centre of the skyline and congealing the Square Mile’s distinctive individual silhouettes into one great, grey lump.
Continue reading...London population set to decline for first time since 1988 – report
Economic fallout from Covid pandemic and rise of home working likely to spur exodus
London’s population is set to decline for the first time in more than 30 years, driven by the economic fallout from the coronavirus pandemic and people reassessing where they live during the crisis, according to a report.
The accountancy firm PwC said the number of people living in the capital could fall by more than 300,000 this year, from a record level of about 9 million in 2020, to as low as 8.7 million. This would end decades of growth with the first annual drop since 1988.
Continue reading...Future shock: how will Covid change the course of business?
The crisis poses a deadly threat to some sectors and creates opportunities for others. We examine how they will fare in 2021
Coronavirus has changed lives and industries across the UK, accelerating fundamental shifts in behaviour and consumption that were already on their way. Debates about home working, preserving local high streets and the ethics of air travel were bubbling away before coronavirus rampaged across the world, but the consequences of the worst pandemic in more than a century have either settled those arguments or boosted the momentum behind certain lifestyle changes. Here we look at how those debates have been changed – or resolved – by Covid-19.
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