6 December 2018
In the past few years the issue of workplace mental health has come to the fore in the UK. Mental health first aid training, manager awareness packs, even the Mental Health at Work website launched by the Royal Family testify to this fresh focus. Every month new initiatives are launched that suggests a real revolution is occurring to bring into the light what was hitherto an engrained taboo subject. Are these efforts enough however to make a dent in what is becoming a widespread phenomenon and at a time when...
21 November 2018
Introduced just a year ago (c.f. article No. 10475) Aviva’s second parent parental leave program that allows all employees who become parents regardless of gender to take a fixed period of paid leave has proved particularly popular among fathers in the five countries across which the program has been initially deployed (paid leave of 10 weeks in France, 26 weeks in the UK, 12 weeks in Canada, 18 weeks in Ireland, and 16 weeks in Singapore). Aviva’s leap of faith seems to have worked, at least in the UK (in...
7 November 2018
According to the annual report published on 30 October by the Politecnico di Milano School of Management Observatory, over a year after the approval of Law 81 2017 that regulated ‘agile working’, where employees could work one or two days per week away from the company’s premises, (c.f. article No. 10206), the popularity of smart working continues apace with almost ½ a million (480,000) ‘smart workers’ (+20% compared with a year earlier) now operating across the economy and with more than half of the country’s large companies now offering specific smart working projects.
17 October 2018
While Germany’s working-time debate continues apace and the country’s trade unions seek working time arrangements that include employees’ needs alongside company profits, the ZEITREICH (Time-Rich) project continues its pioneering progress. Launched in July 2016 with backing from the German Labor Minister, ZEITREICH seeks to assist SMEs devise, test, and implement innovative...
14 March 2018
SAP Germany has a longstanding tradition of teleworking and ‘confidence-based working time’. Nonetheless the German enterprise-software giant has decided to go further and make its working organization even more flexible. It has signed a company agreement on mobile working with its Works Council, which it made public on 01 March and which allows all of its employees working in Germany to work where they wish; in the office, at home or in any work place within Germany. SAP is looking to both support employees...
20 September 2017
Italy’s major companies haven’t waited for the law of 22 May 2017 in order to try out several ‘agile working’ formulae, whereby they provide staff the option to work one or two days per week away from the company premises, from home, or in co-working spaces. For the most part a voluntary initiative, ‘smart working’ encourages responsible staff attitudes, performance oriented working, and also facilitates striking the right work-life balance. Positive initial feedback and adoption of the new law has...
20 July 2017
Since its inauguration in October 2016, employees at the US IT giant’s subsidiary, Microsoft Deutschland’s new head office in Schwabing, north of Munich, can now get to work when they want and where they want, both outside and inside the ultramodern seven storey premises. Symbolic of the digital world of work Microsoft’s German head office is presented on a new federal ‘experimental forums’ internet platform which concentrates on developing innovative ways of work organization in this new digital age and...
25 April 2017
While Germany’s Minister of Social Affairs and Employment, Andrea Nahles (SPD) is doing her utmost, albeit currently with little success, to introduce legislation giving workers working on a part-time basis the right to return to full-time work, SAP, the German multinational and global leader in enterprise software has taken the initiative and as of 01 April the 19,000 employees in its German offices can scale back their working time for a fixed time period (running from 1 to 36 months) at the end of which they...
14 December 2016
On 14 December French luxury goods brand announced that as of 01 January 2017 minimum standards would be in place for maternity and adoption leave that will be fourteen weeks at 100% of basic pay and five days paternity/partner leave. These ‘internal standards’ will apply to the group’s 38,500 employees working in more than sixty countries across the globe.
3 November 2016
Mikko Kuitunen and Pekka Virtanen set up Vincit (software development and IT outsourcing) in 2007 in the Finnish town of Tampere. They dreamt of a ‘business where people were happy to go to work on Mondays.” In recognition of its innovative HR resource management practices that are particularly tailored to younger generations, Vincit has just been awarded the “best European Workplace’ prize from the Great Place to Work® organization. The company currently employs 300 and is growing fast. For the past...
