November 6, 2018

Employers struggle to understand what motivates people in new generation of megacities

by Neil Franklin • Cities, News, Workplace

Mercer has published the results of an extensive study that examines the needs of workers in the world’s fastest-growing cities across four key factors – human, health, money and work. The study provides insight into the motivations of workers against the backdrop of fierce competition for their talent. The study, People first: driving growth in emerging megacities (registration required), is based on a survey of 7,200 workers and 577 employers in 15 current and future megacities across seven countries, namely Brazil, China, India, Kenya, Mexico, Morocco and Nigeria. As defined by the United Nations, these 15 cities will have a combined population of 150 million people by 2030 and share strong, projected GDP.

November 6, 2018

Working parents lead the charge of British workers into the side hustle

by Neil Franklin • News

A new study published by GoDaddy and the Centre for Economics and Business Research (Cebr), claims that ‘side hustling’, in which people have small business ventures running alongside their main job, has risen by around a third over the last decade. The study claims that the UK’s side hustlers make a substantial contribution to the economy, with every 1000 side hustles creating 876 extra jobs. The report, Side hustle: a way of life, not work also claims that 44 percent of side hustlers are parents with at least one child under 19 living at home.

November 5, 2018

Companies increasingly worried that Internet of Things could become a major burden

by Neil Franklin • News, Technology

The performance of Internet of Things (IoT) devices could undermine the performance of an entire organisation, according to a new report (registration required) from software firm Dynatrace, based on a poll of 800 CIOs. The report claims that nearly three-quarters (74 percent) of IT leaders are concerned that Internet of Things (IoT) performance problems could directly impact business operations and significantly damage revenues. This is mostly because 78 percent of CIOs said there is a risk that their organization will roll-out IoT strategies without having a plan or solution in place to manage the performance of the complex cloud ecosystems that underpin IoT rollouts. In fact, 69 percent of CIOs predicted that IoT will become a major performance management burden as they struggle to overcome the escalating complexity of their modern enterprise cloud environments.

November 2, 2018

Skills and new businesses drive decade of recovery for UK cities

by Neil Franklin • Cities, News

Improving skills levels and new business formation have been the key long-term drivers of growth for UK cities since the financial crisis, according to the latest Demos-PwC Good Growth for Cities 2018 index that ranks cities on a combination of economic performance and quality of life. The latest Index analyses a decade of economic and social data to determine what long-term factors drive Good Growth. PwC analysis shows that the average city in our index has improved its good growth score significantly over 10 years from 2005-7 to 2015-17, and has now more than recovered from the recession and downturn triggered by the global financial crisis.

November 2, 2018

British workplaces are amongst safest in world but work remains

by Neil Franklin • News, Wellbeing

Although Britain remains one of the safest countries to work in the world, too many workers are still being injured or made ill by their work a new report shows. Annual statistics from the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) show 1.4 million workers were suffering from work-related ill health and around 555,000 from non-fatal injuries in 2017/18. The annual statistics, compiled by HSE from the Labour Force Survey (LFS) and other sources, cover work-related ill health, workplace injuries, working days lost, costs to Britain and enforcement action taken.

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.