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The way we work is changing. The days of sitting at a desk for the standard 9-5 are slowly ebbing away. Once considered to be the most efficient way to measure the value of an employee's output, many jobs no longer require individuals to be office bound.
Flexible working - working at times and locations that suit both the individual and the company - is nothing new. But many companies are still uncertain about taking the plunge and adopting such new ways of working, especially without being able to prove the benefits.
The Cranfield Female FTSE board report published this week - the annual benchmarking report and update to Lord Davies about the number of women on boards - should give chief executives, chairmen and executive search firms pause for thought.
The point missed by many, is that flexible working is about far more than simply choosing between the office and the home. It isn't a case of "either one or the other" and it is possible to do both. A blinkered approach could be why some remain blind to the opportunities flexible working presents.
Maternity discrimination is a growing problem in the workplace, with employers' attitudes "hardening" against pregnant women, according to new researc...
It's that time of year again - International Women's Day. The time when people around the world take a step back to consider the position of women today, how far we've come and how far we've still got to go.
A culture of "presenteesim", the old-fashioned notion that to be productive you must be physically present in the office, is one of the most counterproductive, uncreative, and costly management approaches in practice.
Treating employees with dignity and respect is not just good for people, it's good for business. Research shows that workers are more productive when they're happier,
As more of us start to assess what we really value in our working lives we may find that the sharing economy opens up more options for our own working lives too, as portfolio working and 'renting time' become increasingly mainstream.
Who votes on what, when, and why: what if one half of the job share turns out to be a rebel in disguise whilst the other is a party loyalist to the core?
There is still a stigma that you just aren't serious about your career if you want to work part-time or flexibly. This is part of the reason why women struggle to progress to the top of the civil service. The hidden bias against women who need to work flexibly following their maternity period, for example, leads to a gradual reduction in the number of women as they rise up the ladder of seniority.
So how can you make the move from office worker to flexible worker as smooth as possible? First of all, some basic advice: you need to make sure your working environment is as hospitable for productivity as possible.
With up to one in three UK workers unable to make it to the office in last week's heavy snow, many must have had pause for reflection and asked themselves whether this is the only way to work. with the snow melting and a proportion of the country under the threat of flooding, the answer is staring us in the face.
We Brits love talking about the weather. It's been used as an icebreaker to start conversations with friends and strangers alike since time immemorial. As temperatures remain around freezing and snow continues to fall in many parts of the country, this latest bout of bad weather is another chilling reminder that more businesses need to adopt a more flexible approach to working.
Once again it's a case of stressing that 'work' is not a place to go but an activity... and there is rarely a reason for employees not to be productive, which should mean greater control of time for employees and a better balance of working and personal lives.
In this merged work-life world, work and private time are interleaved to suit individual needs. The classic example is of a working parent who wants to be able to fit their work around family time in the early evening - putting in a couple of extra hours at home after the kids have gone to sleep.
Research has shown 13% of organisations in the capital adopted a more flexible approach to working during the Olympic Games. This was largely welcomed, with 77% of workers saying they were in favour of the measures.
Nobody likes being stuck in traffic, but whilst for the majority of us it's just an annoying part of our everyday life, for businesses this is a far more serious issue.
Nick Clegg's support for flexible working for parents is welcome and overdue but, arguably, his plans don't go far enough.
The simple fact is that the system isn't working. With 1.16 million children growing up in workless single parent households, and over 300,000 working single parent families living below the poverty line, what's needed is a total gear shift.
Coming from a family where my mum has always the breadwinner, it is perhaps not surprising that I automatically see the role of women in the workplace as critical. I cringe in horror that she was once told she couldn't make a purchase without my Dad's authority and yet, in living my own life (including a stint in Corporate!) I really did think things had changed.
As this fantastic sporting summer draws to a close, there has been a lot of talk about legacies. As well as lifting the public mood and, hopefully, bringing about a "fitter" nation, this summer's sporting events may have also had a dramatic impact on the business world.
Earlier this year, amid warnings of travel chaos during the London 2012 Olympics from Transport for London, we made the decision to shut down the office for the Olympic fortnight and to set up the organisation so everyone could easily work from home.
The issue of flexible working continues to be a hot topic. First was the news that Whitehall staff are being asked to work at home over the summer to minimise disruption. Then came Boris Johnson's comment that home working is a "skiver's paradise" and "an excuse for general malingering".
As someone who has spent four years exploring other people's fulfilment-at-work as part of a business model, it can all seem rather shifting and nebulous. However, I'm increasingly convinced that the foundation for fulfilment is actually quite simple - a sense of autonomy.
