November 1, 2018

Cultivating a culture of personal development can supercharge performance

by Neil Franklin • Company news, Workplace

We all want success. You started a business because you had a dream. Maybe you wanted to change the world. Maybe you wanted to fulfil a childhood ambition. Or maybe you just want to make parents proud. Whatever that reason may be, you started a venture that was, yes, risky and scary at times. But a safe journey wasn’t an option anyway, we know. To achieve the fulfilment of the dream though, you need a team with you. You need to surround yourself with the best people in the field. You need people who know more than you, are better than you. Because in today’s world, competition is fiercer. You are not anymore competing against locals. The game has become global. It has, therefore, become necessary to never stop innovating.

November 1, 2018

South American firm to join global workplace design and fit-out network

by Neil Franklin • Company news, Workplace design

South American workplace designer and fit out specialist Contract Workplaces has become the latest organisation to join The United Workplace (TUW). With over 20-years’ experience working across ten countries from Mexico in central America right down to Southern Ocean, Contract Workplaces dramatically increases the reach of the TUW as a global business network of workplace design and fit-out firms. Beginning with its founding partners Fourfront Group in the UK and Amicus in Australia, TUW now has members in the Middle East, USA and South America.

November 1, 2018

Businesses may be blowing billions on unused office space

by Neil Franklin • News, Property

Big businesses in England and Wales are squandering £10 billion a year on under-used office space, a new study claims. The report by flexible workplace specialist Abintra draws together data from its work with more than 100 corporations worldwide. In London alone, it claims that the cost of office space being under-utilised is more than £4 billion annually with large firms in other regions collectively ‘squandering’ billions more. More →

October 31, 2018

Lack of skills investment means businesses miss out on benefits of automation

by Neil Franklin • AI, News, Workplace

A new report from the Capgemini Research Institute claims that, in the majority of companies (58 percent), automation is not yet meeting executives’ desired goals of increased productivity. The study, Upskilling your workforce for the age of the machine: Why a workforce upskilling strategy is key to unleashing automation’s productivity potential reveals that while automation does increase productivity to an extent, the key to reaching its full potential is by appropriate upskilling of the workforce.

October 31, 2018

Top global industries leading the way in remote work

by Neil Franklin • Features, Flexible working, Property

More business owners are swapping rigid 9-5 schedules and traditional office environments in favour of flexible space and remote work as an option for saving costs, retaining employees and encouraging a healthy work-life balance. With this in mind, Instant Offices has investigated what industries are leading the way for remote working and how to overcome the typical challenges of managing a remote team.

October 31, 2018

Conversations may be more productive when held in the great outdoors

by Neil Franklin • News, Wellbeing

Conversations are more responsive in natural environments such as parks and gardens than indoors, finds new research by the University of Manchester and Cardiff University. The researchers recorded conversations between three- and four-year-old children and their parents while they explored a city park and the park’s indoor education centre and found that the conversations in the park were more responsive and connected compared to those recorded indoors. The study ‘Responding to nature: Natural environments improve parent-child communication’ is published in the Journal of Environmental Psychology.

October 29, 2018

The jobs of the future that will survive the AI revolution

by Neil Franklin • AI, News, Technology

While the debate rages on about the exact consequences of the use of automation in the workplace, IT firm Cognizant has identified what it claims are the jobs of the future. Of the jobs Cognizant tracks, 45 actually exist today, such as data scientist and aerospace engineer. The other five are “proxy” jobs, the key characteristics of which the report sets out to define.

October 29, 2018

Majority of maternity returners say they lack support when they go back to work

by Neil Franklin • Flexible working, News, Wellbeing

Lack of support for maternity returners among UK businesses has been uncovered in a new survey of professional, mainly management-level women. More than four fifths of pregnant women begin their maternity leave unhappy and lacking in confidence about work – and over a third feel so isolated when they return that they want to hand their notice in. MMB, a working parents’ website, surveyed more than 1,000 mothers, 72 percent of whom were in jobs at management level or above.

October 24, 2018

Commercial property uptake shows finance sector remains committed to London

by Neil Franklin • News, Property

Undeterred by political and economic headwinds in recent years, London remains a world leading financial centre and is by far the most active centre in Europe, according to the latest research from global real estate advisor CBRE. According to the report, 1.1 million people were employed in the UK financial services sector in 2017, of which 34 percent were in London. The industry contributed £119bn to the national economy (7% of UK GDP) – half of this was generated by London, where it accounted for 14 percent of the city’s economic output.

October 16, 2018

Area expands operations into mainland Europe

by Neil Franklin • Company news

Area, the workplace fit-out arm of Fourfront Group, is expanding from its UK base to become a dominant player across Europe – establishing offices in 10 cities in mainland Europe, in addition to its two existing offices in the UK. The move comes after consistent success in the UK, delivering workplace projects for thousands of clients, covering millions of sq. ft. Area’s claims that its track record has led to an increasing number of enquiries from clients to deliver workplace requirements in Europe, with over 30 projects in mainland Europe having been completed to date.

October 15, 2018

Wearables and apps to help you stay organised and keep track of your time

by Neil Franklin • Company news, Products, Technology

Technology in the workplace is both a blessing and a curse. Workplace Insight recently published an article about tech multi-tasking and how switching through different platforms takes away ones focus. Employees need to stay updated through digital means all the time but staying connected to the cloud also means being susceptible to various distractions. However, technology usage just takes a little bit of refinement to increase productivity and various wearables, devices and mobile apps are the way to do that.

October 15, 2018

Review of progress on diversity in boardrooms shows that there is much to do

by Neil Franklin • News

Business leaders have been urged by Sir John Parker to step up their work on ethnic and cultural diversity at the top of business. The call to action comes as the Parker Review Committee, led by Sir John Parker, publishes its first annual update to track the progress made against the recommendations in its Final Report, published in October 2017. The Final Report urged business leaders to improve the ethnic and cultural diversity of UK Boards to better reflect their employee base and the communities they serve. It set out achievable objectives and timescales to encourage greater diversity.