Physical and mental stress are all too common as more people seem to find the pressures of completing expected work tasks and expected in-office time too much to bear. As firms shed labour to cut costs, the problems become worse. Work-life balance is not merely about cutting working hours or simply dividing hours between WORK and HOME life'
Times are tough for both commercial organisations and governments in terms of recruiting the labour needed for economic growth. Employment is high in most developed countries and there is a trend towards disengagement and ’quiet quitting’. This means that firms have to look further afield (than traditional labour markets) to find new staff. This ‘distance’ brings into
Engaged employees are more productive. This is not surprising. If employees feel they have a significant part to play in the organisation they work for, they are much more likely to share the goals of the organisation and to contribute fully to those goals. The culture of the organisation is a major determinant of the nature and level of
Over the last two decades and especially since the pandemic - the workplace has undergone significant transformations. The rise of technology-driven companies brought flat hierarchies, attractive employee perks, and open-office concepts. Meanwhile, the integration of productivity tools like Slack, Trello, and generative AI has aimed to make workflows more efficient. However, despite these advancements, more employees
Last week, I asked “What should we measure?” And talked about the need to measure outputs/outcomes rather than inputs - in terms of workers’ contributions. Working long hours is not a key to success. Those hours have to make a contribution to strategic goals. Now, I read that Google co-founder Sergey Brin has called the
There is an old management adage… “If we can measure it, we can understand it”. This is broadly true. Certainly if we don’t measure, we find it hard to assess or judge. So. if we want to improve effectiveness and productivity, what should we measure? There is one basic answer to this. We should measure what is important
I have written before about my belief that WFH imposes a brake on productivity. There are all sorts of reasons - big and small. The other day I thought of another reason which I thought I should bring to your attention. When working from home, employees obviously (well it’s obvious to me anyway), have less engagement with
If, on reading this headline, your first response was “If I don’t multitask, how do I get through my long and varied To Do list?”, then read on. If you switch regularly snd swiftly between tasks, or even worse, try to do two things at one, (like handle your emails while in a meeting), you
Media pundits love to talk about the productivity crisis. (Well, let’s be honest, they love to talk about any crisis…. and if there isn’t a crisis to talk about, they will invent one.) The productivity crisis isn’t really a crisis. The decline and stagnation in productivity has been a general factor in the Western world for the
Poor, and declining, national productivity is a serious malaise. Not only does it mean that inflation is likely to rise - as wage rises lead to increased costs without corresponding output rises - but investment also declines). It seems ironic that firms invest more when things are going well but they do -and it’s not really very