Tag: working hours

The concept of a four-day work week is attracting growing interest in countries around the world, including South Africa. Local employers must understand the model, decide if it will work for them, and know how to implement it effectively.

Two years since the world shut down and companies and employees scrambled to set up work-from-home, we are once again in a transition period as the world opens up a little and organisations grapple with how they will organise their workforce.

Widespread burnout and lack of flexible work continues to hinder progress in supporting working women, according to the our latest report, Women @ Work 2022: A Global Outlook released this month. The research reveals that 53% of women globally say their stress levels are higher than they were a year ago, and almost half feel burned out.

With many organisations now looking to adopt more flexible working hours on a permanent basis, the Work From Home (WFH) trend is here to stay. While this offers numerous benefits, there are certain considerations organisations must bear in mind.

Working from home has become a normal part of business life, a part that is unlikely to come to a crashing halt any time soon. Within this new normal are casual clothes, comfortable working conditions, as well as less time spent in cars and chatting around the water cooler.

South Africa’s young people prefer to work for organisations that have business leaders who are open and honest in their communication with employees. In the eyes of younger generations, transparency has become an important factor that needs to be ensured by employers, in particular on matters relating to the business and leadership.

At first, the lockdown added some notable benefits to the employee’s life. They didn’t have to sit in traffic for hours. They could wake up a little later and work a little longer. They could wear their pyjamas at the desk and they discovered that they were far more productive in this new world of work.

There are regulations and rules that protect both employer and employee when it comes to costs, tools and behaviours, but these are being tested in entirely new ways with the 2020 pandemic. It’s a perfectly legitimate question for any employee to ask for financial support when they’re working from home, using their internet and electricity to do their jobs.

Many of us have stayed later at work to meet a tight deadline or finish a large project, but would we work frequent unpaid hours? Have you considered the toll this can have on your mental health and wellbeing? It is well established and commonly known across the world that work-related stress is a huge contributor to work absence.

Should it be for the reason of the lockdown during this unprecedented time in our lives, or for those who have the opportunity to work from home in general, there are always some challenges in the work environment. For those whose challenge is working remotely, here are some survival tips I found useful.