2019

I recently attended a lecture by Professor Sir Cary Cooper from the University of Manchester Business School.  Professor Cooper is a leading expert in all things relating to health and wellbeing in the workplace.  He reflected upon the role of the manager in wellbeing – noting that when you look at sickness absence data the […]

What is work life balance?  Just like ‘wellbeing’ it is an imprecise term that means different things to different people.  It’s a phrase that not everyone likes, as it brings with it the implication that work and life are two separate elements rather than interconnected aspects of who we are.  Here at the Work Consultancy

Wellbeing interventions in the workplace are generally defined as being of a primary, secondary or tertiary nature. Primary interventions aim to prevent work related stress or wellbeing issues from arising.  They address problems at source. These interventions will be strategic, systemic, structural.  Examples of primary interventions include job design, working patterns, leadership development or resource

We believe that there are some policies and guidance that every organisation should have.  One of these is a statement about domestic abuse.  Domestic abuse is experienced by one in four women and one in six men at some point in their lifetime. It is therefore very likely that all workplaces will have employees that

When we talk about wellbeing we don’t always mean the same thing. For some it is about fitness. For others it’s about mental health.  For others, it is simply about physical health (the absence of disease). There are so many lenses through which we can view a topic as broad as this; physical, psychological, nutritional,

There are some employment policies that don’t have a big impact.  Not in terms of numbers of employees impacted, at least. But to a small handful of people, these policies make all the difference in the world.  Let me give you a few examples: Fertility Treatment Policies.  Domestic Violence Policies.  Premature Birth.  Cancer.   Menopause. Carers. 

Remember the saying that you only have one opportunity to make a first impression? Your recruitment process is your first impression. The candidate experience is everything that happens between a potential new recruit engaging with your organisation in a way that leads to them becoming a candidate (most often, seeing a job advertisement) through to the conclusion of

As someone who has been involved in policy work for a good while, I remember the days when creating an email policy was a big deal. It had the same level of focus that social media policies get today.  I’m sure that when workplaces first introduced desk phones we felt the need to tell people

The Labour party recently announced that should they return to government they would introduce flexible working from day one, with the intention that there would be a presumption for flexible working with all roles.   It’s hard to see how this could work in practice – but of course it all depends on what we actually