February 24, 2021
Employers are now more aware of their employee’s personal situation and family commitments than they were pre Covid-19, according to the Re:Me report from MetLife UK. This report, which explores the changing relationship between employers and employees amid the global pandemic, claims that seven in ten (71 percent) employees now feel ‘employers have a social responsibility to them’. More →
January 9, 2020
You’re probably aware of the experiment performed by Stanley Milgram in which volunteers were asked by men in white coats to administer what they believed to be electric shocks to another person, who they could not see, but could hear, from behind a screen. Around two-thirds of the volunteers agreed to deliver what they were told to be potentially fatal shocks to the subject, who they could hear screaming and begging them to stop. What they didn’t know was the person they were agreeing to inflict this on was in fact an actor. Although now questioned, Milgram’s findings remain the famous of a series of studies that have attempted to highlight the willingness of humans to bow to authority figures and comply with group norms irrespective of what their own morals might tell them.
July 12, 2019
Companies owned by families pay more attention to issues of corporate social responsibility (CSR), such as sustainability and environmental issues, according to research from Vlerick Business School, but the research also found that attention to CSR decreases as the company is handed down to the next generations. Dr. Kerstin Fehre, Professor of Strategy at Vlerick Business School, alongside Dr. Florian Weber from the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology in Germany, studied family firms and the attention they gave to CSR compared to non-family firms. The study, published in the journal Business Ethics: A European Review, used over a hundred of the largest HDAX listed companies in Germany and analysed messages to shareholders published in annual reports. More →
July 24, 2017
This month, the British Council for Offices (BCO) launched a new report looking at the importance of offering better workplace facilities for cyclists in order to support the Government’s ambitious cycling growth targets. The Department for Transport’s £1.2bn cycling and walking investment strategy, published in April, aims to make cycling “the norm” by 2040. It plans to do this by improving cycling infrastructure and expanding cycle routes between city centres, local communities and key employment and retail sites, making improvements to 200 sections of roads for cyclists and providing funding for councils to invest in cycling schemes. In addition, city councils across the UK are making improvements to their cycling infrastructure. Last year, Sadiq Khan announced plans to spend £770m on cycling initiatives in London over the course of his term, in order to make riding a bike “the safe and obvious” transport choice for all Londoners. Birmingham City Council has pledged to invest more than £11m in creating two-way cycle paths, resurfacing canal towpaths, and even offering free bikes, with the aim of doubling the number of trips in the city made by bike from 5 percent to 10 percent by 2033, in order to make the city healthier, greener, safer and less congested.
November 4, 2016
Corporate social responsibility is no longer seen as more than a nice to have, with those working within the built environment for example, appreciating the role it has in reducing greenhouse gases. But it is also being increasingly seen as a positive way of attracting and engaging the right talent. Now according to a new survey carried out in the US, meaningful engagement around CSR is becoming a business – and bottom line – imperative, impacting a company’s ability to appeal to, retain and inspire Millennial talent. Three-quarters (76 percent) of Millennials consider a company’s social and environmental commitments when deciding where to work and nearly two-thirds (64 percent) won’t take a job if a potential employer doesn’t have strong corporate social responsibility (CSR) practices, according to the 2016 Cone Communications Millennial Employee Engagement Study. Because the millennial generation are the most likely to blend their personal and working lives, it’s more important to them than other generations to view their job as a way to make a positive impact on society, the study suggests.
March 19, 2013
We all like to think we are discerning about what we will and won’t put in our trolleys at the supermarket. Not any old salty, fat saturated gloop will make the cut these days. That’s why food producers like to proclaim its healthiness on packaging, regardless of the nature of the product within. ‘Lower fat’ doesn’t mean low fat. Companies in other sectors follow suit. The office products market is one in which some manufacturers don’t mind a splash of green on product labels. This doesn’t do the customer or the buyer any good and can breed cynicism in the market, undermining the efforts of those suppliers who actually take a sophisticated approach to the environmental performance of their products.
September 14, 2021
Today, companies cannot shy away from their responsibilities towards the environment. With Extinction Rebellion keeping the climate crisis firmly on the news agenda, and COP26 in November gathering more international attention than ever, how businesses approach and champion sustainability is under significant scrutiny. At a local level, organisations are being set targets by the UK government to commit to 100 percent renewable energy sources by 2050, and failing to meet these objectives could have substantial repercussions. More →
September 8, 2021
Disruption, cost, building style, individual goals, responsibility and shared space are cited as the key sustainability challenges for the flexible office sector, according to the latest research report from The Instant Group. But while there is still a lot of work to be done in the sector as the role of the workplace evolves, Instant says that flex operators have an opportunity to lead the way in meeting the challenge of climate change. By creating innovative, low-carbon buildings, curating a clear engagement strategy with occupiers and landlords, and ensuring a low-carbon ambition is understood and adopted by everyone, flex operators can be the first to implement highly sustainable workplaces. More →
August 19, 2021
MovePlan in partnership with Hanson Search, claims that 40 percent of business leaders fear that the combination of the pandemic and Brexit will see their best talent disappear abroad, making hiring more challenging, just as the country begins to return to the ‘new normal’. More →
August 11, 2021
The past year and a half should have served as a reminder of that tragic, unchangeable feature of the human condition, best expressed by Kierkegaard, that we are doomed to live our lives forwards but only understand them backwards. Retrospect is particularly important when we look back on sudden, large changes that knock us off our normal path. A taxonomy of change has emerged in recent years to describe such events. The best known is the ‘Black Swan’, coined and popularised by Nassim Taleb as things that “seem to us, on the basis of our limited experience, to be impossible” but which happen anyway, have a major impact and are often rationalised later. More →
July 30, 2021
The coronavirus pandemic is a new experience for every one of us. It has changed life as we know it – at work, at home and for public interactions. As some countries start to ease restrictions on public life, how can we go back to ‘normal’ while still maintaining social distancing and feeling safe? How do we manage crowded public spaces like shopping malls, cinemas and restaurants? How do we optimize safety in our offices and factories? More importantly, how do we avoid shutting down entire cities and countries when the next pandemic hits? More →
December 15, 2020
Preparing for a mental health epidemic is a shared responsibility
by Sheena Pirbhai • Comment, Wellbeing