Earlier this week I attended the 2011 Division of Occupational Psychology conference, held in Stratford-upon-Avon. Aside from presenting a poster on my own doctoral research and attending the usual round of presentations and workshops, I was invited to be the discussant at a symposium on Work-Life Balance and Health Behaviours. Organised... read more →
Jan
06
Dec
12
I’m sure I’m not the only professional psychologist who has to regularly describe what I actually *do* for a living. Despite the best efforts of the British Psychological Society, my experience tells me that a lot of the British public are still unclear as to what psychologists do and how they... read more →
Oct
16
The recession across Europe has shifted the focus of many commentators from well-being in organisations to the fundamental survival of those organisations. Unemployment in the private sector has risen sharply and the public sector in the UK is undergoing radical reorganisation and down-sizing. On the one hand, organisations are looking... read more →
Jul
28
Like many other research areas in psychology, the terminology used to address Work-Life Balance has developed with time, in the most part reflecting an evolution of research focus. However, there still remains a plethora of terms used, seemingly interchangeably, to describe an examination of the interface between the workplace and... read more →
Apr
02
The BBC today reported that a Japanese Mayor is taking paternity leave. Surely it’s a reflection on the status of work-life balance in Japan that this made the news at all! A district mayor in the Japanese capital, Tokyo, is going on paternity leave on Saturday, the first local government leader ever... read more →
Mar
11
As we draw closer to official election season here in the UK, the number of “silly season” political stories has been increasing steadily. Monday’s Telegraph article on the party leaders was a case in point. They reported Cosmopolitan’s attempt to gain insight into the personalities of the main parties’ leaders… by using... read more →
Oct
09
HR Magazine is reporting that the Labour Party is promising to extend Work-Life Balance legislation if returned to power in next year’s election. The Government will extend work-life balance legislation by allowing staff to accumulate their overtime and turn it into paid leave, according to Labour’s pre-election manifesto. According to The Choice... read more →
Sep
23
Last week, Gordon Brown announced another shake-up of the rules governing parental leave while at the Trades Union Congress (TUC) annual conference in Liverpool. Plans to extend maternity leave from nine months to one year have been shelved in favour of extending a father’s right to paternity leave. In addition, as an... read more →
Aug
12
The world post-September 11th saw legislation and government activity on both sides of the Atlantic that would never be countenanced outside of these exceptional events. Many critics have pointed to the “Patriot Act” in the US and its apparent curbs on civil liberties that the then-government in Washington was so... read more →
Jul
13
In the middle of this global recession,with redundancies being announced across industries on an almost daily basis, it’s worth considering if you have a back-up plan. In the event of being made redundant, what would you do? The BBC recently ran a piece on Americans’ preparations for redundancy, which in... read more →