Latest news with #King'sBusinessSchool
Business Insider
20-05-2025
- Business
- Business Insider
People are working harder and longer. Here's how to avoid burning out.
In an era of quiet quitting, the Great Resignation, and lazy girl jobs, the assumption is that workers are slacking. These trends are actually all symptoms of a workforce that is toiling harder and longer and doing more with less, according to Amanda Jones. The senior lecturer in organizational behaviour and HR management at King's Business School at King's College London specializes in remote working and work-life balance. Jones told Business Insider that "work intensification has been happening for decades. She remembers hearing about it and becoming interested in the concept while she was at school. When Jones was doing her doctorate, a professor at Cardiff University called Alan Felsted, agreed to be her examiner. He has studied work intensification extensively. "One of the things that always fascinates me about this is that it's never gone down," Jones said, pointing to Felsted's research. "We are working harder progressively over time." The end result isn't increased productivity, it's burnout and detachment. Jones said that quitting as a concept in response to feeling overwhelmed by one's workload is "quite victim-blaming; it could be just that they can't take it anymore." 'Race to the bottom' The negative impacts of work intensification include burnout and stress, which can lead to people taking long-term sick leave and putting a strain on the economy. "You've got people who are economically inactive, so they're not paying taxes, they're possibly receiving benefits instead," Jones said. "It's going to not only cost more, but if we're doing this to people in the skilled section of the workforce, it's also not going to help us with our skills gaps, so productivity will reduce," she added. "It does feel a bit like a race to the bottom." Some companies are implementing a four-day workweek, which is a step in the right direction, in Jones' view. All organizations should be aware that "what's happening isn't going to benefit them in the long run," she said. "I think probably there's a policy intervention that's necessary." Increasingly intense digital world Researchers have linked work intensification to the pandemic. The stereotype is that people who work remotely are less productive, stepping away from their computers to do household chores or run errands. This has factored into the decisions of several prominent companies requiring their staff to return to the office — sometimes up to five days a week. This is another misconception, though, Jones said, because people who work from home can actually attend more meetings than before. "It provides you with more opportunity to participate in work," she said. "If you can't go to a meeting, in the old days, you couldn't go to a meeting, you couldn't physically get there. Now, we can go to everything." Setting boundaries Having work at our fingertips — emails and messaging apps on our phones — has caused our professional lives to bleed into our personal ones more than ever. "People go on holiday and they do all this extra work," Jones said. "It doesn't feel difficult — you've got your phone in your hand and you're able to let go." Jones said she's taken note of this and now deletes her email and her LinkedIn apps when she goes on vacation. "There's this whole requirement to build your brand and to constantly be employable and always be looking for work, which adds to the intensification. It's this 'I must always be marketable' culture, which, for younger people, I worry they're going to be burned out before they're 30 at this rate." Jones also recommends setting boundaries to avoid getting sucked into the work intensification cycle, even if it's difficult to do so. "If you are in a context where your organization is not supporting that so much, often people don't feel that they have any choice other than to exit or try to retrain or do something else," she said. Ultimately, people need to be aware of what is and is not acceptable and healthy for them. "Some people do just have a propensity toward overwork, and we do have a duty of care to make sure that we are not overburdening those kind of people," Jones said. "But then again, they're exactly the kind of people who tend to get things done. So I think there's that element of having to have self-awareness and knowing how to look after yourself."
Business Mayor
12-05-2025
- Business
- Business Mayor
Top BoE official urges ‘caution' over UK inflation outlook
Stay informed with free updates Simply sign up to the UK inflation myFT Digest — delivered directly to your inbox. UK inflation pressures should continue to weaken on the back of easing pay growth and Donald Trump's trade war, a Bank of England rate-setter has said, but caution 'remains appropriate' over the outlook for prices. Clare Lombardelli said on Monday that forward-looking indicators suggested 'substantial progress' on wage growth falling to be more in line with the central bank's 2 per cent inflation target by the end of the year. 'However, caution remains appropriate. I'll be more comfortable when I see material deceleration in the data over a longer period,' the deputy BoE governor told an audience at King's Business School in London. In the short term, Trump's tariffs on imports to the US 'and more uncertain US policies will likely reduce growth and inflation', she added, 'because of reduced demand and trade diversion from reduced exports by the rest of the world'. Consumer price inflation stood at 2.6 per cent in March, according to data from the Office for National Statistics, while wage growth came in at 5.9 per cent in the three months to February. Lombardelli said pay growth was 'still too high' to be consistent with the 2 per cent inflation target, along with services price growth, which stood at 4.7 per cent in March 'The picture is not entirely reassuring, although we should expect this disinflation to be bumpy,' she added. Lombardelli said she had been undecided between holding and lowering interest rates when the BoE's Monetary Policy Committee met last week, although she voted in a three-way split for a quarter-point cut to 4.25 per cent. Read More Официальный двигатель Casino Online Selling Products But gradual progress on bringing inflation down and the fallout from Trump's trade war had prompted her to side with the majority, she said, noting that stronger sterling had helped lower price growth of goods imported into the UK. Welcoming a tariffs deal between the US and China, Lombardelli warned that in the longer term, 'if global trade were to fragment, this would reduce output and productivity and would raise inflationary pressures'. The UK last week clinched the first deal with the US since Trump started imposing high tariffs, agreeing cuts to punitive levies on car and steel exports, but failing to reverse a flat 10 per cent levy that applies to most goods. Recommended The BoE's interest rate cut last week marked the fourth reduction since summer 2024, but governor Andrew Bailey said after the MPC met that policymakers 'must continue to respond carefully to evolving economic circumstances'. Lombardelli, whose remit as deputy governor is monetary policy, noted that productivity growth had been 'very low' in recent years, but that this had not been reflected in a substantial decline in wage growth. While the BoE modelled two scenarios — one in which demand weakens more than expected, and the other in which 'second-round' effects on inflation lead to more persistent price growth — they were not mutually exclusive, Lombardelli said. 'It would be perfectly reasonable to be concerned that productivity growth does not return to pre-Covid levels and also that demand may be more suppressed by trade policy uncertainty,' she added.
The Independent
28-01-2025
- Business
- The Independent
Male actors occupy 75% of screen time in finance-related films and shows
Around three quarters of screen time in finance-related films and TV shows is typically occupied by male actors, a study indicates. A range of films and series about finance and investing from the past 15 years were analysed, such as The Wolf of Wall Street, The Big Short, Margin Call and Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps. The research, commissioned by trading and investing platform eToro, consisted of visual and text analysis, focusing on the main male and female characters depicted as financial experts. We all know that women earn less, invest less, yet live longer than men and therefore have an even greater need to build wealth to secure their futures Dr Ylva Baeckstrom, research lead Among the films and shows analysed, researchers found that, on average across all the productions analysed, 75% of screen time was occupied by male financial experts, who made up 64% of the experts portrayed. The research indicated that male experts often tended to portrayed as more knowledgeable, confident and significantly more comfortable with risk than female experts. Female characters often conveyed their authority or confidence by 'power dressing' in suits and heels, researchers noted. While men dominated the 'alpha' roles as experts, women were seen playing 'supportive' characters such as wives or admin assistants, or were portraying strippers or mistresses. Dr Ylva Baeckstrom, a senior lecturer in finance at King's Business School, who led the research, suggested that portrayals of finance and investing as a pursuit for 'alpha males' and a lack of female financial role models are both 'perpetuating the gender investment gap'. She said: 'We all know that women earn less, invest less, yet live longer than men and therefore have an even greater need to build wealth to secure their futures.' Dr Baeckstrom also said some improvement had been observed for productions in recent years, with films such as Fair Play, starring Phoebe Dynevor, and episodes of the TV show Billions, 'introducing stronger women in roles that highlight their capabilities, struggles and complexity'. Lale Akoner, global markets analyst at eToro said: 'There is a need for female role models both on and off-screen to encourage us all to talk more about money and to inspire the next generation of female investors.' eToro has partnered with research business Boring Money to launch a campaign called Loud Investing to encourage discussions about finance.
