Future Work:

I spoke about Future Work at an excellent conference in Sydney last week organised by Women on Boards, which has driven the debate about gender balance as a business issue in Australia. With its vast distances yet congested major cities, Australia is ripe for new ways of working, but management attitudes and processes are a significant barrier.

The low representation of women in top roles featured heavily at today's London launch of the annual Cranfield Female FTSE Report, monitoring the progress of women onto boards and executive committees. Maria Miller, UK minister for women and equality, asked what was the cost to the nation's prosperity if 60% of university graduates today are female yet women make up only a small percentage of top leaders. "I want to see a culture change," she said, noting that workplaces were designed by and for men.

A research report from Kansas State University and Southern Illinois University has just been published showing that American employees spend as much as 80 percent of their work time on the Internet “cyberloafing”, doing tasks that have nothing to do with their work. The report's authors believe that this results in lost productivity, so they recommend that companies tighten up their rules on the use of the Internet and point out the consequences of non-compliance.

Marissa Mayer, CEO of Yahoo, seems to be trying to outdo her former employer, Google, with her decision to order all employees who work remotely to get back to the office. The leaked memo to staffers says "We need to be one Yahoo!, and that starts with physically being together". Just how that's supposed to make sense in a global company when people are travelling for work and collaborating across time zones is a mystery.

A fascinating study from Wharton business school in the US has found what's claimed to be the strongest evidence so far that employee satisfaction is a significant driver of a company's value.

The Chancellor's Autumn Statement has reinforced the message that work flexibility is not just something that is socially desirable but is critical to the economy. Peter Cheese, Chief Executive of the CIPD, commented, "This statement underlines that the road to recovery hinges on the continued ability of the UK's flexible labour market to support employment growth in tough economic conditions.

It's often said that senior roles can't be done part time - and that people working flexibly won't be promoted. That is the old world. Yesterday Timewise Jobs launched the first "Power Part Time List" of 50 people in the UK doing top jobs in a wide range of sectors on less than the traditional five days a week. I covered the story in yesterday's FT.

It's not just Gen Y and Z who expect to work differently, as many organisations seem to think. Employers should be adapting to a multigenerational workforce in which the majority are looking for greater flexibility. More than a third of UK workers expect to work beyond the traditional retirement age of 65, according to a Canada Life study reported this week in HR Review.

In two years' time, if the British government's plans come to fruition, all employees will have the right to ask their employers if they can work flexibly. Today's announcement by Nick Clegg, the deputy prime minister, is a welcome step in the right direction (as is the reform to enable mothers and fathers to share parental leave flexibly). The problem is that this is still being framed primarily as a benefit for employees - and it is only a right to request, not a right to have flexibility.