EDITION 904
31 JANUARY 2022

There is no escaping it: too much news is bad for you. It should come with a government health warning: “This intellectual diet is fine taken in small doses, and preferably in weekly instalments, via a well-balanced newsletter, such as 10 things from William Montgomery."

So, as another week slips by, here are 10 things which caught my attention and may have escaped yours. Please feel free to share on social media and forward to your colleagues and friends so they can also subscribe, learn and engage. I would be very grateful if you did.

William Montgomery
Editor and CEO of TEN

1. How to keep remote workers engaged. Research shows people overwhelmingly want to keep remote work as an option post-pandemic, but it can provide challenges for those starting off their careers. Many in-office friendships were cemented over informal coffees before the crisis, and remote connections can also be long lasting if done correctly. READ MORE >>

2. The cost of living squeeze. If Boris Johnson manages to hold on to his job, he’ll have more to worry about than lockdown parties. A far bigger problem is the worsening cost-of-living crisis. Annual CPI inflation rose to 5.4% in December – a 30-year high – and it’s predicted to hit 7% in the spring. Consumers are having to pay more for essentials such as food, clothing and transport, and the squeeze will get worse in April when the energy price cap is renewed, pushing fuel bills up to a predicted £2,000 a year per household. To make matters worse, the jump in energy bills will coincide with a planned rise in national insurance contributions. The Spectator

3. Typical families now tax millionaires. Thousands of middle-class families pay more than £1m in tax over a lifetime. New analysis by low-tax campaigners has found that the long-term tax bill faced by households with an annual income of over £60,000 now stands at £1.1m. This means they would have to work the equivalent of 18 years just to pay off HMRC. A spokesperson from the TaxPayers’ Alliance said that “with the tax burden at a 70 year high, typical families are now tax millionaires”. The Daily Telegraph

4. Video meetings are getting old. The majority of remote workers spend up to a third of their week in video meetings these days. That may sound like a lot of facetime with coworkers - but it’s actually down from the outset of the pandemic, according to a new Dialpad survey. In March 2020, workers were scheduling an average of 12 meetings per month. The number of meetings has since fallen off, likely due to fatigue, with workers seeing an average of about 9 meetings per month as of the middle of 2021. Some industries still have overloaded calendars: Marketing and advertising workers have an average of over 20 meetings per month, while those in the travel and tech industries each have an average of about 11 meetings per month. The Guardian

5. We’re superglued to our phones. People the world over are spending as much as a third of their waking hours browsing apps. App Annie’s State of Mobile 2022 found that, in Android’s top 10 markets globally, users spent 4.8 hours looking at their phones daily. To be fair, we live in a bring-your-own-device-to-work world, right? Nevertheless, the finding represents a 30% increase since 2019. And, 7 of every 10 minutes are spent on social apps. The Independent

6. Solved crimes at record low. Police are solving the lowest proportion of crimes since records began, official figures show. According to Home Office data, just 6% of all crimes in the year to September 2021 resulted in a charge, equivalent to one in 17 offences being solved. That marks a fall from 7.3% the previous year and 15.5% six years ago. The proportion of rapes resulting in a charge has also fallen to a historic low. The news “will undermine public faith in a criminal justice system that is teetering on the brink”, said the Criminal Bar Association. The Daily Mail

7. Five into four does go. The Demos’ Workshift Commission thinks the notion of Monday-to-Friday office hours – cemented during the Industrial Revolution – is facing its “biggest upheaval in 100 years”. And why shouldn’t things change? Britons work some of the longest hours in Europe, yet we remain one of the least productive economies. There’s plenty of evidence that a four-day week results in the same, or improved, productivity. A trial by the UK supermarket Iceland was described as “an overwhelming success”. The Times

8. More women reach 30 child-free. Record numbers of women are reaching the age of 30 without having any children, according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS). More than half (50.1%) of women in England and Wales born in 1990 were child-free when they turned 30 in 2020 – almost three times higher than the 17.9% of those born in 1941. The ONS also found that the average number of children women have by the time they reach 30 has fallen to its lowest-ever level (0.96). The Guardian

9. Our unhealthy old age. We’re likely to live longer in the future; but we may spend those extra years in poor health, and unable to work. That is the bleak conclusion of a new study, which warned that governments may need to take action soon, if they want people to be able to remain in the workforce for longer. By extrapolating from past trends, the authors of the study, estimate that in England, life expectancy gains from the age of 50 will average 10.7 weeks per year for men, and 6.4 weeks per year for women, between 2015 and 2035. In the UK, as in other countries, the retirement age is being pushed back in line with these trends, but it is not clear that “healthy working-life expectancy” is keeping pace with them. Previous research has indicated that on average, a 50-year-old in England can expect to stay healthy and in work for only nine more years. The researchers also note that people’s capacity to keep working may be further impacted by the need for them to care for their own parents. Nature Aging

10. The bottom line. Inmates aged over 50 now make up 17% of the prison population in England and Wales, up from 7% in 2002. The number of over 60s has trebled in the past 20 years from 1,511 to 5,176. The Daily Telegraph