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As another week 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 avoid being too defensive. When we get defensive we make it harder for our conversational counterparts to hear what we’re saying, and we usually trigger the other person’s defensiveness, too. After someone has said something that causes you to want to become defensive, these three steps can lead you toward cooperation - and away from explosion: [READ MORE] 2. England ‘on knife-edge’ as R number soars. Cases of Covid-19 in England are doubling every seven to eight days, new data has revealed. The R number is as high as 1.7 as the pace of infections returns to levels not seen since May. A former UK government chief scientific adviser said England is on a “knife-edge” as Birmingham became the biggest local authority to announce a tightening of lockdown measures. The Guardian 3. Socially clumsy? Blame the pandemic. After months of isolation and distancing, have we all become socially awkward? That’s the question posed by The New York Times, which notes that, deprived of peer interaction, it’s not just children who become socially clumsy. Much like prisoners and astronauts who report feeling more awkward and intolerant when they re-enter normal life, psychologists say the pandemic is having the same effect on many of us. Isolation experts recommend people make efforts to stay socially nimble — and to understand that when people do emerge from the pandemic, they may have changed. The New York Times 4. Dozens of Tory MPs prepare new Brexit revolt. Boris Johnson is facing a rebellion of Tory MPs over plans that would break international law by allowing him to renege on parts of the Brexit withdrawal agreement. Meanwhile, there is a behind–the–scenes rift between the government’s top legal advisers over the legality of the decision to introduce legislation that overrides the treaty. The Times 5. The key to curbing your distraction. In today's world, distraction has become a way of life. For every bit of work we know we need to do, there's a seemingly endless range of device-enabled ways we can be led astray. Our tech may be an easy target, but it isn't the root cause of our dawdling. Instead, it's the emotions - boredom, loneliness, anxiety, fear — we'd rather forget about that sends us down the path of distraction. To kick this habit, then, we need to first take a hard look at the feelings that lead us there in the first place. To learn how join 10/10. [READ MORE] 6. Diversity and inclusion roles rising. As the pandemic has changed work and social justice movements such as Black Lives Matter have gained global attention, diversity and inclusion roles have been spotlighted. Firms that see D&I as a “nice to have” are being shown up, while the pandemic has highlighted issues such as economic inequalities that show the need for greater inclusion. Research also shows financial advantages in diversity, with more diverse teams generating greater innovations and profits. Data shows that D&I roles have grown rapidly in the past five years, rising 75% in France, 81% in Germany and 58% in the UK. MSN 7. £3.5bn furlough claims ‘fraudulent or paid in error’. Up to £3.5bn of payments made under the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme may have been claimed fraudulently or paid out in error, HMRC has said. The tax collector told MPs on the Public Accounts Committee that it estimates between 5% and 10% of furlough cash has been incorrectly awarded. “We will expect employers to check their claims and repay any excess amount,” said HMRC. Daily Mail 8. Planned redundancies twice the rate of the last recession. Employers in Britain are planning more than twice as many redundancies than they did at the height of the last recession, new figures show. About 180,000 job cuts were planned from January to March 2009, while 380,000 were planned from May to July this year. Completed redundancies could reach 735,000 this autumn, researchers say. The figures were obtained by an Institute for Employment Studies (IES) Freedom of Information request. BBC 9. Divorce boom forecast as lockdown sees advice queries rise. The coronavirus pandemic is creating an "enormous strain" on relationships, an advice charity has warned, with family lawyers predicting a "post-lockdown divorce boom". Citizens Advice said views on its divorce webpage on the first weekend of September were up 25% compared with the same date in 2019. BBC 10. The bottom line. From 2028 workers will have to wait until they are 57 to unlock savings from defined-contribution pension schemes, up from today’s threshold of 55, the Treasury announced last week. This will most frustrate the pension planning of 860,000 savers now aged between 46 and 48, who may have planned to access their pots in 2028, but will now have to wait. The Times. |