Striking a balance

WHEN anti­Covid restrictions were at their strictest in Spain, three million people began working at home.

They accounted for 16.2 per cent of the working population, compared with 4.8 per cent in 2019, according to Eurostat, the European Union’s official statistics office.

By late 2020 the number of teleworkers had decreased and fell to 9.5 per cent throughout 2021, Eurostat said.

At the same time, the digital transforma­ tion brought work­life balance and co­responsibility to the forefront, with the option of remote working creating a new generation gap.

“The younger generation has embraced the idea that teleworking is a must,” Josep Capell, a lecturer in Human Resources at the Autonomous University of Madrid.

Reconciling work and family life is now recognised as crucial by employees and recruitment experts alike, he said.

They also intend to raise further funds to finance investments in London and elsewhere worldwide over the next two years. Colley and Withanage have already earmarked two London sites, UK media sources revealed.

“The goal is to capitalise on development and consolidation opportunities in the luxury sector,” Colley said.

Scent success

PZ CUSSONS, which owns the iconic Imperial Leather brand, achieved its sixth successive quarter of revenue growth.

Like­for­like sales rose by 6.2 per cent to £166 million (€188.4 million) for the quarter that ended on March 4, boosted by growth in Europe and the Americas thanks to more demand and higher prices.

Despite higher raw material, labour and logistics costs, turnover rose by 13 per cent thanks to favourable currency movements and sales from Childs Farm, the skincare brand that Cussons bought for £36.8 million (€41.8 million) in March 2022.

Power shock

ITALY’S government announced that Francesco Starace, president of Enel, is to be replaced.

The company will now have Flavio Cattaneo as chief executive, while Paolao Scaroni was named president. Enel is the country’s principal electricity producer and also owns Endesa, which is Spain’s biggest electricity supplier. These substitutions were already being discussed in the sector in a change that is expected to have a direct impact on the Spanish company.

Starace had been in charge since 2014 and Endesa has until now played a significant role in the group’s strategy.

LAST week I had a post removed from my FB pages. The short video was indeed distasteful, but one I felt deserved as much publicity as it could get. The film showed a naked white man being kicked and stoned to death by a number of black youths on a busy street in South Africa. This horrific act was taking place in broad daylight with no assistance whatsoever from any law enforcement or indeed passers­by.

The whole incident made me sick to my stomach and in normal circumstances I would never have dreamt of passing it on to friends and pursuers of my Facebook page, but these are not ‘normal’ times, are they?

Not only did the piece make me wonder how the public, particularly the ‘diversity’ brigade, would have reacted had it been a black man being kicked to death by a gang of whites, but it made me seriously wonder where the priorities of the faceless individuals who control the social media actually lay.

At any given time, on many of