The Know Daily - Wednesday 4 February 2026

_{Read in 4m 22s ∙ Listening to Ella Langley ∙}

A community wildflower project is helping nature flourish across Cumbria 🌼 Volunteers have been planting native flowers in meadows and green spaces across 15 sites, creating lush habitats for bees and butterflies. They’re making a difference from the ground up (literally!).

👩‍💼 Career ‘lilypadding’

Gen Z are increasingly hopping between jobs on a yearly basis instead of climbing the traditional career ladder, so we’re looking at what it means for the future workforce.

Tell me more.
Career ‘lilypadding’ is the idea of moving between roles, teams, projects or even industries, rather than following a straight, upward promotion path. Think less corporate ladder, more strategic stepping stones. Workers “pad” from one opportunity to the next based on flexibility, learning and purpose, which can broaden skillsets and bump employability. While the trend is visible across the workforce, it is increasingly associated with Gen Z.

Why is it happening now?
Job search activity traditionally spikes at the start of the year, and recruitment firm La Fosse reports that Google searches for “new year, new job” have jumped by 90% in the past 30 days, with one in ten UK workers considering resigning in January alone.

For younger generations, ‘lilypadding’ reflects the world they’ve come of age in, with rapid technological change and shifting ideas about work. According to a recent industry report, 85% of Gen Z see continuous learning as essential, and 72% say they’ve left, or would consider leaving, a role that doesn’t offer genuine flexibility to balance career planning with wider lifestyle priorities.

What does this mean for the wider workplace?
By 2030, an estimated 58% of the global workforce will be Gen Z and Millennials, according to PwC projections. Their expectations won’t stay contained to one age group and could influence how careers are shaped across generations. Rather than signalling a lack of commitment, shorter tenures often reflect changing ideas about how experience is built, allowing employees to have a clearer sense of what they’re good at. At the same time, the trend does pose a real retention risk for employers that stick rigidly to narrow progression pathways or inflexible work policies.

How are workplaces adapting?
Forward-thinking employers are already starting to meet ‘lilypadders’ halfway. Mentoring, training budgets and extra projects are increasingly sitting alongside promotions and pay rises as real motivators. Importantly, ‘lilypadding’ doesn’t mean opting out of responsibility. Gen Z are stepping into management roles at roughly the same rate as previous generations and now account for around 10% of all managers. The difference is how they lead. Many favour collaboration, flexibility and work-life balance as a baseline rather than a bonus.

The takeaway.
The career trend is not merely job hopping due to feeling restless or lacking ambition in the workplace, but tactical building of a toolkit to strengthen future progression and land that promotion when the time is right. In fact, PwC’s global workforce survey found that 71% of Gen Z look forward to going to work each day and perhaps ‘lilypadding’ is part of that optimistic future.

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👩‍⚕️ NHS resident doctors in England have voted to continue industrial action for another six months in their dispute with the government over pay and training posts.

• The bigger story: Doctors’ pay has risen by almost 30% over the past three years, but the British Medical Association says that hasn’t kept up with inflation over the long term. To counterbalance this, the union is asking for a further 26% pay rise, something the government is continuing to negotiate to reach a fair agreement that supports both doctors and patient care.

🤳 Spain is set to ban social media for under-16s and require platforms to employ strict age verification tools, following in the footsteps of Australia, France and Denmark.

⛲️ The Trevi Fountain in Rome now costs €2 per ticket to visit, with the new fee going towards maintaining the city’s cultural treasures. 

🧠 Babies can actively process and categorise the world around them at two months old, a new study has suggested.

🏞️ A British landmark’s future has been secured thanks to donations from people in over 20 countries to support conservation and archaeological work.  

💸 A first-time buyer mortgage which could help some people get on the property ladder with a deposit of just 2% has been launched by this bank.

⚔️ A new exhibition at the British Museum has revealed that half of Japan’s samurai class were actually women. 

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Trivia answer: C) The 900-year-old university was the only UK institution to make the top 5 – check out the other 99 top global universities here.

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