My baby takes the morning train…

Emma Gannon is the author of a book on flexible/home working. She says: “There’s a stereotype that flexible workers sit at home all day in their pants not really doing much.” Among her work portfolio are broadcasting, writing and charity work; “For me, the opposite is true. At times I’m the busiest I’ve ever been.” […]

Driverless cars

Researchers from MIT have said that moral responses to unavoidable damage vary greatly around the world in a way that poses a big challenge for companies planning to build driverless cars. They presented variations of the classic “trolley problem” thought experiment almost 40m times to millions of volunteers from all around the world. In the […]

Slough of Despond

‘Come friendly bombs and fall on Slough.It isn’t fit for humans now, There isn’t grass to graze a cow. Swarm over, Death.’ Unbelievably, Slough, the industrial Berkshire town that poet John Betjeman obviously hated, and that smells of Mars Bars, has just been named the best place to work in the UK for the second […]

Sack ‘em all (before they quit)

The proportion of Americans leaving their jobs voluntarily is at a 17-year high. A survey by Gallup in 2017 found that around half of American employees were hoping to leave their current job. Some of this is cyclical. The unemployment rate is 3.9%, close to its lowest level in the past 50 years. Workers rightly […]

What makes a good manager?

Aha; interesting. Google and Facebook, those tax-dodging behemoths seem to have differing views on employment criteria. While Facebook will obviously employ anyone who has proved themselves to be inconsistent and mendacious (Nick Clegg anyone?) Google prefer to set their sights on drones. It is often said (apparently) that, ‘people leave managers, not companies’, so Google […]

What the frack?

It is hard to believe today, but the prevailing ethos among the educated elite was once public service. As the historian Tony Judt documented in Ill Fares the Land, the foremost ambition among graduates in the 1950s and 60s was, through government or the liberal professions, to serve their country. Their approach might have been […]

Mental health Part 1

Many jobs took a huge physical toll on employees, from miners and construction workers through to those who suffered “phossy jaw” (a destruction of the jawbone) in the match factories of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. But it is only in the past couple of decades that workers’ mental health has become more […]

IMF talk AI

AI is, of course, a hot topic in the world of work and everyone has a view on it. This time it is the turn of the World Bank to wade into the debate. It has just said that the age of the robot is nothing to be worried about. Like all previous waves of […]

Heaven knows we’re miserable now

Gallup has surveyed more than 154,000 people in 146 countries on whether they had felt pain, worry, stress, anger or sadness the previous day. It has reported that the global mood was at its gloomiest since the first survey in 2006. It concludes that happiness levels are at their lowest level in over a decade, […]

This must be false news

Apparently graduates are taking £9k courses to help beat AI interviews for City jobs. It is claimed that some of them are spending thousands of pounds on training to beat tough emotion-scanning robot interviewers for top City jobs. Firms such as Goldman Sachs and Unilever are using artificial intelligence (AI) software to weed out candidates, […]

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Our Cause

We will fight for a world where everyone feels safe, valued, able to grow, and be inspired by their role and the organisation that they work for. And that starts with us…

cause-rotated-pink

Our Cause

We will fight for a world where everyone feels safe, valued, able to grow, and be inspired by their role and the organisation that they work for. And that starts with us…