Hybrid working could help get more disabled people into work, peers say
Ministers could encourage employers to allow more hybrid and remote working to help get greater numbers of disabled people and carers into the workplace, according to a House of Lords committee.A report by a cross-party committee says the government should set out whether it has considered including remote and hybrid working in back-to-work initiatives to offer more working flexibility to people with disabilities and long-term health conditions.The home-based working committee was set up in January to investigate how the rise of remote and hybrid working has affected employers, employees and the wider British economy.It heard evidence that remote and hybrid working made it easier for disabled people to manage their condition, partly through avoiding the commute.“Many disabled people, parents and carers may have an improved experience of work or may even be able to work where this would otherwise not be possible,” the committee found.
Hybrid working – where employees split their time between the office and home or another location – has become the new normal for more than a quarter (28%) of working adults in the UK, according to figures from the Office for National Statistics.However, the committee found access to home working was unequal and it was more likely to be available to professionals, university graduates or people living in London.It said a hybrid approach could offer the “best of both worlds” by giving employees a better work-life balance while also helping employers to bring teams together to collaborate for part of the week.The report warns, however, of a lack of investment in training bosses to support hybrid or remote workers, and it calls on ministers to incentivise employers to put money into management training.Amid a string of return-to-office mandates from some large companies over the past year, the committee found most employers and their employees were broadly in favour of hybrid working.
However, there remains a “preference gap” as most workers said they would like to spend two days a week in the office, while their employers would like to see them there three days a week.Rosalind Scott, the committee’s chair, said: “There are obvious advantages for employees not having to commute in every day, and flexibility around work-life balance, particularly if you’ve got caring responsibilities.But there are also ways it’s really working for employers.They told us they can recruit from slightly further afield, they get more job applicants if they advertise hybrid working and there is also some evidence sickness absence is reduced.”Policies at most companies to have ordered staff back to the office “amount to formalising hybrid working”, the committee found, with full-time office attendance demanded by only a few outlier firms, including the US retailer Amazon.
The committee recommended employers and employees should be left to manage hybrid working arrangements themselves rather than it be included in government legislation.However, peers believe there is a role for ministers to provide more guidance to staff and businesses.
‘Harlem has always been evolving’: inside the Studio Museum’s $160m new home
The iconic museum, which was founded in 1968, has been rehoused in 82,000-sq-ft building providing a new destination for Black art in New York CityCall it the second Harlem renaissance. On Manhattan’s 125th Street, where a statue of Adam Clayton Powell Jr strides onwards and upwards, and a sign marks the spot where a freed Nelson Mandela dropped by, there is bustle and buzz.The celebrated Apollo Theater is in the midst of a major renovation. The National Black Theatre is preparing to move into a $80m arts complex spanning a city block. In September the National Urban League opened a $250m building containing its headquarters, affordable housing and retail space with New York’s first civil rights museum to come
‘Most of it was the conga preset on Prince’s drum machine’: how Fine Young Cannibals made She Drives Me Crazy
‘Prince’s Purple Rain guitar was in the corner of the studio and his lava lamps were everywhere. You couldn’t help but be inspired’I was in a band in Hull called Akrylykz. When the Beat came to play at the Welly club we gave them a demo tape. Then they invited us to tour with them. Later, after they split up, Andy Cox and David Steele were looking for a singer for a new band and they remembered me
Groundbreaking British Museum show set to challenge samurai myths
A groundbreaking samurai exhibition that promises to challenge “everything we think we know about Japan’s warrior elite” spanning a millennium of myth and reality is to open at the British Museum next year.Titled Samurai, the blockbuster exhibition will reveal a world beyond armour-clad warriors and epic duels, as popularised by the noble, katana-wielding heroes of Akira Kurosawa’s classic action films and PlayStation’s hit video games.Much of the samurai myth – including even the word “samurai” – was invented long after their heyday, a modern phenomenon linked to mass media and pop culture.The exhibition, which opens in February, will also show that, far from being a male warrior cult, samurai women were educated, governed and even fought.Rosina Buckland, the exhibition’s lead curator, told the Guardian: “This is the first exhibition to tackle the myths
Paul Kelly: ‘Imagine by John Lennon is probably one of the worst songs ever written. I can’t stand it’
Your new album is called Seventy. You are 70 years old. And I hear you like the number 70.It’s a biblical number. It’s a very pleasing number to me
The Guide #216: Celebrity Traitors was a watercooler-moment smash-hit – but how long will audiences stay faithful?
That’s it then. The curiously pristine SUVs are back in the garage, the cloaks are off to the dry cleaners and your favourite hits of the 80s and 90s are safe, for a few months at least, from those absurdly melodramatic cover treatments. Yes, The Celebrity Traitors is over, having served up a finale that had just the right amount of intrigue, double-crossing and slack-jawed looks to camera from the terminally outwitted. We won’t ruin things here for anyone who hasn’t watched it yet, but for a full spoiler-filled debrief you can read Lucy Mangan’s review of last night’s drama here.It was a fitting capstone to a remarkably successful first Celebrity Traitors outing
Die My Love to Rosalía’s Lux: your complete entertainment guide to the week ahead
Lynne Ramsay’s latest is a portrait of a relationship in decline, while the Spanish nu-flamenco star enlists a plethora of talent for her latest albumDie My LoveOut now Lynne Ramsay’s remarkable portrait of a couple spiralling emotionally in the wake of the birth of their child sees Jennifer Lawrence and Robert Pattinson go hell for leather in a pair of no-holds barred performances that chart the journey from passion to … well, it would be too simple to call it hatred. J-Law in particular seems likely to bag herself an Oscar nom for this one.Predator: BadlandsOut now This standalone film set in the Predator universe sees Elle Fanning’s Weyland-Yutani android character team up with Dimitrius Schuster-Koloamatangi’s young, outcast Predator warrior, in a bid to survive a thoroughly hostile environment. Horror sci-fi directed by Dan Trachtenberg.The ChoralOut now For a certain audience, the prospect of a Nicholas Hytner-directed, Alan Bennett-scripted comedy-drama (their last collaboration was 2015’s The Lady in the Van, starring Maggie Smith), starring Ralph Fiennes, with Simon Russell Beale playing the composer Elgar and Roger Allam in the mix too, will be cinematic catnip, some slightly mixed reviews notwithstanding
Shelter should follow Crisis and directly house homeless people | Letters
A good deal struck for the NHS | Brief letters
Peter Archer obituary
Marianne Rigge obituary
Abuse by UK’s ‘most prolific sex offender’ was ignored at Medomsley detention centre, report finds
Experts concerned over health effects of high-dose nicotine pouches as sales soar in UK