EDITION 813
13 APRIL 2020

As another week of working from home slips by, here are 10 things which caught my attention and may have escaped yours. This newsletter is sent to 50,000+ subscribers each Monday at 10am. Please share on social media and forward to your colleagues and friends so they can subscribe, learn and engage. I'd be very grateful if you did.

1. How to lead and manage your remote team. Leading and managing people working from home comes with challenges. Without face-to-face contact, it can be more difficult to establish personal connections and build trust with employees. With remote employees, managers have less insight into their teams’ day-to-day tasks, and may have to experiment with different types of communication practices to help the team function at its full potential. Here's a few ideas:  [MORE]

2. One Million Claps appeal bid to raise £5m for NHS staff. People taking part in the weekly clap at 8pm on Thursdays to celebrate health workers are being asked to also donate to a charity appeal seeking to raise at least £5m for NHS staff. NHS Charities Together says members of the public who want to show their support financially can text “clap” to 70507 to donate £5. Dame Vera Lynn and Katherine Jenkins are also raising funds for the cause by releasing a duet of We’ll Meet Again, inspired by the reference to the wartime song in the Queen’s address to the nation last week. Evening Standard

3. A podcast to make us happier. Laurie Santos is a Yale professor whose course Psychology and the Good Life became the most popular class in the university’s 316-year history – and whose Happiness Lab podcast has become a global phenomenon, The first season, which wrapped in November, unpacks various “myths and truisms about happiness”. Now, in response to the pandemic, Santos has made six new episodes; in them, she discusses how to beat “self-isolation loneliness, how to emotionally process a crisis and how to maintain focus”. They are “an oasis of calm in a very loud period”. The Guardian.

4. Tech giants to join forces to develop Covid-19 technology. Apple and Google have announced they have teamed up to create contact tracing technology aimed at slowing the spread of coronavirus. The two companies plan to add new software to devices to make it easier to track down people who may have been infected with Covid-19. Between them, the two firms power 99% of the world's smartphones. Financial Times

5. Setting work-from-home-boundaries. When working from home, it's all too easy to blur the lines between work time and personal time, to the point that it's unclear when work ends at all. Protecting your essential personal time comes down to managing your transitions. One way to do this? Set up work start and end rituals. Such tasks can be as simple as making yourself coffee or going out for a walk. But they are essential signals that mark the start and finish of you work day. Watch my latest Minute with Montgomery for more on this subject. [WATCH]

6. Lockdown to cost £2.4bn a day. The national lockdown will cost the economy £2.4 billion a day as the UK is set to face its worst recession since at least World War II, according to research. UK economic output has fallen by around 31% as social restrictions present businesses from functioning, the Centre for Economics and Business Research said. But the extent of disruption varies across industries. While output in manufacturing and accommodation and food services has fallen 69% and 79% respectively, one of the least-affected sectors is information and communication, where output has fallen 7%. The Times

7. Where every night is opening night. Launched in 2018, the arts and culture streaming service Marquee has come into its own as lovers of live theatre, opera, ballet and dance look for digital substitutes. The platform has performances from the Royal Opera House, the RSC, the West End and the Bolshoi, and also features commentaries and interviews. I'd highly recommend the channel, particularly as there's a 30-day free trial on offer. Editor

8. Universal credit claims pass the million mark. More than a million people have applied for universal credit since 16 March, according to the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP). The scale of the applications is almost ten times the norm. The applicants include people who have been made redundant or furloughed, are self-employed, or have had their pay cut. More than 10,000 DWP staff have been redeployed to work on processing the claims. BBC

9. Puzzling surge in jigsaw sales. With many parts of the world under lockdown due to the coronavirus pandemic, work and social habits are shifting. The extra free time has led to a sales surge of jigsaw puzzles and a worldwide shortage among retailers. In the UK, sales of board games and jigsaw puzzles climbed by 240% during the first week of the lockdown, with Monopoly being the best-selling game. Podcast consumption on the other hand, which has surged in recent years, has now plunged, a side effect of commute-free remote work. The Guardian

10. The bottom line. Last week, air traffic the UK was down 92% on the same period in 2019; rail travel was down 95%, and road traffic down 71%. The latter would have been higher had it not been for the irresponsible morons travelling to Devon for the Easter Weekend in a convoy of caravans. Editor