For an overview of commonly searched work-related queries from the last 90 days, please find the table below.

“Employer monitoring social media” – 900% Search Increase 

“Employee monitoring is legal in the UK. To begin monitoring employees, employers must be transparent about their intentions, such as to detect criminal activity, check mishandling of information, or to ensure appropriate standards.

“All personal data monitored must be relevant to their intentions. So, if you discuss work matters on your personal social media, this could be a reason to conduct a legal investigation.

But if you keep personal and professional life very separate, and disagree with your employer’s reasoning for employee monitoring, you can take your employer to an employment tribunal or complain to the Information Commissioner.”

Fiona’s Tips:

• Make sure to keep your personal social media registered under a personal email address. 
• Avoid using yourclient’s or company’s name in messages, as this could warrant an investigation into a breach of confidentiality.
• Do not discuss colleagues on social media or interact heavily with them outside of working hours on personal platforms. If a grievance is raised about workplace harassment, your social media could warrant monitoring.

“Employment law changes 2025” – 450% Search Increase 

“Labour’s Right to Switch Off has been scrapped, meaning employees do not have extra protection around switching off outside of working hours. This right aimed to allow workers to ignore work calls and emails and have the right to decline extra work on the weekends.

“Unless your contract states you must make yourself available outside of working hours, the scrapping of this right shouldn’t make a difference to your right to switch off. Discuss boundaries with your employer so that you can be most productive during your contracted hours.”

“Legal temperature to work in UK” – 70% Search Increase

“Although there isn’t a legal temperature to work in, 18-21°C is the optimal temperature for workers to be most efficient. Being cold not only negatively affects our productivity, but it can affect our health. The Workplace (Health, Safety and Welfare) Regulations 1992 requires employers to provide a reasonable temperature. If you feel this is breached, the best option is to contact your union, as the law around working temperature is ambiguous.” 

“Excuses to work from home” – 70% Search Increase

“You might want to work from home due to sickness, childcare responsibilities, or other appointments you want to work around. All employees have the right to request flexible working by making a statutory application. However, if you’re hoping to work from home on a random Tuesday, your employer is not required to entitle you to that.

“If you are ill, employers might believe you are too ill to work, so working from home is unfortunately not a fallback option in all companies.”

“Can you unsend an email?” – 40% Search Increase

“Mistakes can happen, whether that be a small typo or an email addressed to the wrong client or colleague. It’s important to remain calm and professional in these moments. 

“A little-known fact about Outlook is that you can recall an email, which essentially unsends it. The caveat is that it is only possible if both you and the recipient have a Microsoft 365 work or school email account in the same organisation. So, if you send an email to the wrong colleague again, you can now recall it and forget it ever happened!”

“We have seen several shifts affecting the workplace, including the emergence of generative AI (GenAI), pilots around establishing a four-day workweek, and changes to traditional careers,” said Emily Rose McRae, Senior Director Analyst in the Gartner HR practice. “This year’s predictions highlight the aspects of work that HR leaders must prioritize over the next 12 months.”

The top nine predictions for HR leaders are:

1. The Cost-of-Work Crisis Reaches a Breaking Point

Employees who have been working remotely or in a hybrid environment have experienced what it is to work without bearing the costs – financial, time and energy – associated with going into an office daily.

As many employers implement a mandate for remote employees to return to the office after long periods of remote work, employees now have a sharper awareness of what they “spend” to go to work.

In 2024, organizations looking to attract and retain talent will not just try to find the perfect hybrid strategy, but they will look to tackle the cost of work head-on via two strategies: by sharing the tangible and intangible costs of returning to the office or by finding ways to reduce the total costs.

This may include things such as: caregiving benefits, housing subsidies, financial well-being programs, or the ability for associates to bring their pets to work.

2. AI Creates, Not Diminishes, Workforce Opportunity

Despite anxiety and significant discussion around how GenAI will impact jobs, in the short- to medium-term, generative AI will fully replace few jobs.

GenAI will lower the level of technical skills needed for many roles, widely increasing the roles for which candidates can qualify.

Many jobs heavily impacted by GenAI will be redesigned and will have new responsibilities that include interacting with GenAI tools.

This year, leaders should partner with HR to assess how GenAI investments should change their teams’ roles and workflows, and how to identify potential internal candidates for newly redesigned roles. HR must also evaluate the impact on hiring strategies, identifying which technical requirements and assessments are now unnecessary for open and upcoming roles and determining how to assess talent against any new skill needs.

3. Four-Day Workweeks Go from Radical to Routine

A four-day workweek (4DWW) has become a centerpiece of large-scale studies in performance, union negotiations, and the preferences of many workers.

Embracing a 4DWW will require organizations to rethink the cadence of the work week and re-examine what is necessary to get work done.

Organizations in 2024 will use 4DWWs to improve talent outcomes – including employee engagement, performance and well-being – and business outcomes, including eliminating inefficiencies, increasing talent attraction and retention and driving competitive advantage.

4. Employee Conflict Resolution is New Must-Have Skill 

Conflicts between employees are poised to be at an all-time high in 2024 due to geopolitical crises, labor strikes, climate change, pushback to DEI efforts, and upcoming elections for half of the globe.

Conflict resolution requires actively working through challenging moments, pulling employees back from ostracizing colleagues with opposing viewpoints to focus on areas of mutual respect, or at least neutrality.

“Managers who can effectively navigate and manage interpersonal conflict among employees will have an outsize positive impact on their organizations; the question is how many really feel trained and prepared to do so,” said Peter Aykens, Chief of Research in the Gartner HR practice.

Organizations should consider bringing in dedicated conflict management trainings, creating shadowing and coaching opportunities for new managers to see how experienced leaders resolve intense conflicts between employees, and finding ways to recognize and reward effective conflict resolution at all levels of the organization.

5. Generative AI Experiments Will Yield Hard Lessons 

Enthusiasm, hype, and a strong fear of missing out or being left behind are driving executives to push for the implementation of GenAI within their teams and organizations.

Companies will need to actively manage the risks of GenAI, including more rigorous access and file classification policies internally, and solid quality control and judgment when utilizing the outputs of GenAI tools.

These risks don’t outweigh the potential benefits of GenAI, but they will lead organizations to train employees to develop judgment around not just information validity, but also how and when to use GenAI.

6. Skills Overtake Degrees 

College degrees are the top requirement of yesterday’s job descriptions. Organizations today are increasingly shredding the paper ceiling – the invisible barrier workers without degrees face – and embracing skills-based hiring, even for some corporate jobs long considered degree-dependent.

Removing degree requirements from job postings will enable organizations to attract qualified talent by hiring from a much broader talent pool that includes both internally developed talent and workers via Skilled Through Alternative Routes (STARs).

Leading organizations are increasingly touting their in-house universities and business schools – and expanding apprenticeship programs – as tailored credential programs that prepare talent with the specific skills they’ll need to advance.

7. Climate Change Protection 

Severe climate change-related events are shifting from localized and episodic to widespread and persistent, and organizations are responding by making climate change disaster response a more visible component of benefits packages.

In 2024 and beyond, organizations will begin to highlight and promote direct climate change protections as a key part of their benefit offerings. These will include explicit commitments to physical safety (such as plans to offer shelter or energy provisions when natural disasters arrive), compensation to impacted employees, and mental health support.

8. DEI Doesn’t Disappear, It Becomes the Way We Work

There has been a growing sense of disillusionment with DEI over the past few years; in the U.S. there’s even a sense of direct pushback. However, the critical need for diverse, equitable and inclusive workforces remains, leaving organizations uncertain about what to do next.

“In 2024, companies will begin to pivot from DEI existing solely in a silo to having it embedded throughout the organization,” said McRae. “In this new model, DEI will shift to a shared way of working as organizations fully integrate DEI values into business objectives, daily operations and culture.” ​

9. Career Stereotypes Collapse 

The traditional career path where employees rise up the ranks and retire at the peak of their career is going away. Many employees don’t retire at all or do so after a career shift or break. Workers are also facing involuntary disruption to careers due to economic cycles, displacement during conflict and natural disasters, and shifting responsibilities as technology and business models evolve.

As atypical career paths become mainstream, the well-entrenched talent stereotypes that underpin most talent management strategies will prove a growing barrier to talent acquisition and retention. For example, employers will break with the stereotype of career continuity by offering job sharing, gig work or reduced hours to provide greater flexibility.

To take advantage of expertise where it exists, regardless of tenure, organizations will break the mold of a step-by-step progressive career trajectory.

[Source] [Featured Image Credit]

Speaking on the anniversary of International Women’s Day (IWD), Adekunle Adewuyi, Head of Human Resources at Ecobank Nigeria, stated that the bank, as a responsible organization, has structures in place to ensure that all women can reach their full potential and have equal opportunities to men in advancing their careers and achieving promotion in the bank.

EcobankGroup (Ecobank.com), the leading pan-African bank, recently received the Best Place to Work in Africa 2022 Award from the Best Place to Work organization. The Award recognizes organizations that demonstrate the highest levels of excellence in Human Resources (HR) practices and employee experience.

According to him, “Female staff are holding strategic leadership and management positions in the organization. We are committed to creating a society and workplace that is free of bias and gender-based discrimination. As part of our IWD 2023 celebrations, we will be organizing health screening for our female staff in four different locations including Lagos, Ibadan, Abuja and Port Harcourt. We will also host a Health Talk for female employees, who as of today constitute 51 percent of our workforce.” he stated.

Mr. Adewuyi added that while celebrating women and girls championing transformative technology and digital education, IWD 2023 will also address the impact of the digital gender gap in widening economic and social inequalities.

“It is the responsibility of all of us to make transformative technology and digital education inclusive. At Ecobank, our digital solutions aim to respond to the needs of all our clients, including women and women entrepreneurs. The Ecobank Foundation has partnered with organizations – such as UN Women and the Global Partnership for Education – that leverage digitalization to address the gender gap.”

In addition to the award, Interswitch also emerged fourth overall in the 2022 ranking of the ‘Best Companies to Work or’; a ranking that lists corporate organizations with great workplace cultures.

The award ceremony, themed ‘Better Together’ was held on Friday, November 18, 2022, as part of the organization’s efforts to acknowledge and encourage companies that strive to create great workplace values.

As part of the pre-qualifying criteria that contributed to positioning Interswitch as one of the 2022/2023 Best Workplaces in Nigeria, the company had also earned a certification as a ‘Great Place to Work’ in the Gold Category.

Part of a global organization, Great Place To Work uses analytical data and insights gathered from 10,000 organizations from around the world to identify issues affecting employees with respect to their workplace. The resulting data and insights are used to advise employers on the best strategies for retaining talent and improving employee performance.

Interswitch’s recognition in the 2022 ‘Best Companies to Work For’ award category is a demonstration of the technology firm’s dedication to creating an enabling workplace environment by instituting impactful organisational practices that foster employee growth and team collaboration, which in turn boost the company’s overall performance.

Speaking on the company’s recognition, Franklin Ali, the Chief Human Resources Officer at Interswitch, noted that employees at Interswitch remain crucial to the attainment of the company’s overarching goal of fostering prosperity on the continent, a posture which drives the firm’s continuous investment in providing an enabling workplace environment.

He said, “We are thrilled by this recognition from Great Place to Work. It speaks to our resolve to continue pushing the frontiers of excellence as we achieve our goal of creating a prosperous Africa, while facilitating the personal growth of our employees. As an organization, we ensure to adopt the best workplace practices that enable employees to be their best selves in and out of the office as we collectively strive to deliver value to the continent as a whole.”

Earlier in the year, the company was a recipient of the 2022 Fintech of the Year award hosted by the African Banker Awards, highlighting Interswitch’s leading role in the fintech space in Nigeria and Africa, as it works to deepen financial inclusion and financial freedom through its innovative products and solutions.

More recently, it was also recognized by Hofstede Insights as one of Nigeria’s top five companies in Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI), in recognition of Interswitch’s diversity across board and management levels and the creation of an inclusive workplace for employees.