HR news this week: Career changes, data breaches, and returns to the office

This week in HR news, working from home is reportedly having a negative effect on the way we work. Meanwhile, data breaches are causing worries for Aussies, the return-to-office mandates ramp up, and some career change tips are offered.

Home working and our brains

As seen in the Wall Street Journal (WSJ), experts believe that working from home has messed with our minds.

According to some neurologists and behavioural scientists, the prolonged work-from-home periods we’ve become accustomed to have affected our muscle memory.

“After years of remote work, our brains’ selective attention skills and ability to block out distractions is weakened,” said WSJ.

S. Thomas Carmichael, professor and chair of the neurology department at UCLA’s David Geffen School of Medicine, commented: “The brain is really good at understanding contingencies, so if we just say ‘I’ll just get this done when I’m at home,’ we don’t learn it as well.”

Professor Carmichael encourages those with the flexibility to choose where they work to make the trek into the office more often to improve their attention skills.

Career change tips

Harvard Business Review (HBR) gave some suggestions on how to best approach a career change.

The first thing is to recognise just how common it is. “Career pivots are far more common today than they ever were. Gone are the years of picking what to study on the basis of a clear job choice or career trajectory. The best plan, it seems, is no plan at all – or simply keeping your options open,” said HBR.

Next is to understand why it is you’re changing careers. Ask yourself what you want out of a new role and work towards it. Keep your goals in mind in every decision you make to ensure you’re making a change for the better.

HBR added: “Finding the balance between an open-minded desire to experiment and a strategic focus, and being honest with yourself when you evaluate the outcome of your choices, will enable you to keep advancing and developing your potential.”

Unexpected office return

As reported by Nine News, an unexpected company is ordering its employees to come back into the office: Zoom.

This news may be surprising for people as Zoom pioneered the work-from-home charge as the go-to way to engage with colleagues during the lockdown.

The new hybrid working policy announced by Zoom means that employees must return to onsite work for a set number of days in the hopes of improving productivity.

“As a company, we are in a better position to use our own technologies, continue to innovate, and support our global customers. We’ll continue to leverage the entire Zoom platform to keep our employees and dispersed teams connected and working efficiently,” said Zoom.

Zoom is now joining some of the other tech giants in the push to reduce home working, such as Google, Amazon, and Salesforce.

Cyber security concerns

The Guardian discussed the anxiety Aussies have over potential data breaches.

The recent high-profile data breaches that affected Optus and Medibank have people worried, with a survey from the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner revealing that three-quarters of Australians see data breaches as one of the biggest risks to privacy.

“We’ve had the experience of the centrality of personal information in the pandemic response to contact tracing,” said information commissioner Angelene Falk.

“We’ve also had major data breaches over the last year, with millions of Australians being affected by those breaches, as well as community debate and focus on the use of technology and artificial intelligence.”

The government is clearly aware of this stress as they look to overhaul privacy laws, allowing Australians to opt out of targeted ads and erase data.