Strategic briefings

While flexible working potentially brings multiple benefits for individuals and organisations, take-up remains low. Claire McCartney explores the latest UK policy developments in this area and provides strong research-based practice recommendations for employers on how to improve the take-up of flexible working.

Dr Jonathan Lord, Senior Lecturer in HRM and Dr Alex Fenton, Lecturer in Digital Business at Salford Business School analyse the precarious nature of technology creeping into workers’ lives in and outside of the workplace, requiring an increasing number of employees to be permanently available through the normalisation of remote digital access.

Susan Scott, organisational development consultant and executive coach considers how individuals can optimise energy to ensure their own wellbeing and personal productivity.

How to tackle inequalities in the workplace, especially with respect to people from ethnic minorities, is the focus of much research and UK Government consultation. Claire McCartney looks at some of the workplace factors that must be addressed to achieve fairness, in particular implementing ethnicity pay reporting, and finds that, despite some progress, there is still a long way to go.

While recent headlines suggest that there is still a long way to go before gender equality is achieved and maintained in senior roles in many sectors, Dianah Worman highlights the contribution of International Women’s Day and its latest campaign BalanceforBetter to making progress towards a gender balanced world.

In today’s complex workplace environments, helping leaders in particular to cope with ambiguity may be key to leadership effectiveness and organisational success. In this strategic briefing, Vee Halliwell makes the case for offering leaders mindfulness training as a positive way forward.

Preparing leaders to lead in today’s ambiguous times is a major challenge. Illustrating their argument with case studies, Andrew Smith and colleagues outline an approach to learning — self-managed — that enables leaders to better navigate complexity and develop the reflexive ability so vital when leading organisations going through ongoing change.

Based on his vast experience of contributing to international board level conferences, award-winning author Professor Colin Coulson-Thomas highlights the fast-changing strategic agendas facing CEOs, many of whom experience difficulties responding to these agendas because their management skills, thinking and practice have been forged in an earlier era. He challenges HR to rise to the opportunity of providing real strategic support to boards against this volatile backdrop and to play a key role in changing thinking and practice internally to equip organisations to successfully respond to new and unfamiliar external developments.

Many organisations are experiencing the challenge of managing a multigenerational workforce for the first time. Here Claire McCartney and Dianah Worman, who are experts in diversity, challenge the myths around generational stereotypes and provide practical pointers for employers seeking to attract and retain the best workforce — of any age.

The reported high prevalence of stress in today’s workplace and growing awareness of mental health issues make this article, the first of two by Dr Ann Mahon, timely. In particular Dr Mahon examines the stressors affecting managers and leaders in the public sector, where incidences of stress appear higher than in other sectors.