Debate Over Sick Days Heats Up Amid Pandemic: TOP 5 Trends From The World Of Work

Sick of turning on your camera each day? Citigroup CEO Jane Fraser announced this week that internal video calls will be banned on Friday, according to a CNBC report. Fraser, leader of the third largest U.S. bank, hopes the move will encourage employees to set healthier work-life boundaries. In addition, the CEO is creating a new firm-wide holiday called Citi Reset Day to give employees a break as the pandemic burnout and fatigue wears on. The move came after a Goldman Sachs internal survey went viral, detailing the brutal working conditions at the bank, including harsh working conditions and long hours.

″The blurring of lines between home and work and the relentlessness of the pandemic workday have taken a toll on our well-being,” Fraser said in the company-wide memo. “It’s simply not sustainable. Since a return to any kind of new normal is still a few months away for many of us, we need to reset some of our working practices.” Read more here.

A new bill working its way through Congress will potentially change the way the freelance economy works in the U.S., according to a report in Forbes. H.R. 842, or The Pro Act, “expands various labor protections related to employees' rights to organize and collectively bargain in the workplace.” It puts in place a new test (The ABC Test) that would determine whether someone is an employee or independent contractor (or freelancer). This bill would mark the biggest expansion of collective-bargaining rights in decades. Read more here and here.

A U.K. think tank is warning that the country is heading towards a “Catastrophic” digital skills shortage “disaster,” according to a report in the BBC. The number of young people in the country taking IT subjects at GCSE has dropped by more than 40% since 2015. The reason why? A lack of clearly defined job roles for certain fields, lack of role models, and lack of guidance and understanding about career fields, to name a few. Many young people don’t know that their hobbies and digital skills, such as 3D video game design, or building robots, as Dr Bentley-Gockmann points out, can turn into rewarding jobs opportunities. Meanwhile, the demand for digital and IT jobs has only grown in recent years. Digital skills will be vital to the global economy in the post-pandemic word. Read more here.