May 18, 2018
Office take-up in London at highest point in last 12 months, boosted by pre-let activity
Central London commercial offices under offers are at the highest point in the last 12 months and take-up is ahead of 2017 levels compared with this point last year, new data from CBRE has shown. Central London office take-up for April 2018 stood at 547,900 sq ft, largely driven by pre-letting activity. Office take-up for the year to the end April 2018 was 4 percent higher than the corresponding period in 2017, standing at 3.4m sq ft. Take-up was boosted by 139,600 sq ft of pre-letting activity. Over the last 12 months, the business services sector has represented the largest proportion of take-up at 32 percent, driven by a large number of deals to flexible office providers. Take-up in April was dominated by the creative industries sector, accounting for 44 percent of take-up. The banking and finance sector (26 percent) and the business services sector (21 percent) also represented notable proportions of take-up in April.
With companies holding ever greater amounts of data and facing heightened scrutiny through social media, employers need to consider the wider implications of their business decisions. This was the message of the President of the 
UK office workers spend an alarmingly limited amount of time outdoors each day, claims new research from Ambius, which found that almost 40 percent spend a maximum of just 15 minutes outside, excluding their commute to work, and an additional 22 percent spend a maximum of 30 minutes outside. This is even less than prisoners, who require ‘at least one hour of suitable exercise in the open air daily’, according to UN guidelines. On average, the British workers surveyed spend more time per day at their desk or workstation (6.8 hours) than they do in bed (6.4 hours), relaxing at home (3.5 hours) or outdoors (37 mins). A lack of fresh air (57 percent), insufficient natural light (49 percent), and an absence of indoor plants (36 percent) were the biggest source of frustration for employees. Introducing indoor plants (49 percent), nicer artwork (50 percent), and a more interesting colour scheme (54 percent), topped the list of employees’ requests to improve their workplace.
Companies will need more, not less people, in the near-term to meet the demand stimulated by automation, claims a new report from ManpowerGroup. The report – Robots Need Not Apply: Human Solutions in the Skills, found that 91 percent of employers in the US will maintain or increase headcount in the next two to three years as industries shift to more advanced, automated processes. The report provides a real-time view of the impact of automation on headcount, the functions most affected and the soft skills that are both of greatest value and hardest to find. Frontline and Customer-Facing functions anticipate the most growth as organisations place higher value on customer service and human interaction. Manufacturing and Production functions are close behind. Back-office functions that are routine or add less value to customer interactions are under greatest threat as organisations implement new technology to drive efficiency. In this Skills Revolution the best blend of high-tech and high-touch will be the combination of human strengths with technical and digital know-how: 61 percent of companies say communication skills, written and verbal, are their most valued soft skill followed by customer service, collaboration and problem-solving.
A third of UK office workers (30 percent) have admitted to only completing 1-4 tasks every day, according to a new report from Fellowes, which claims productivity levels in offices across the UK have fallen to a dramatic low. A quarter of workers admit they are unproductive for up to two hours a day, equating to a staggering 40 million-hours in lost productivity across the UK every week. Compared to data from Fellowes in 2017, the average office worker has lost an extra 30 minutes each day to productivity issues., office product specialists, released their second Productivity in the UK report today to help businesses understand what their employees need to increase output and the tools that can help. The study also found that over a third (38 percent) of office workers felt their employers weren’t doing enough to help their productivity and nearly half (40 percent) even went as far as to say they were more productive than their boss. On average Brits failed to meet deadlines at least once a week and 65 percent think a four-day working week would improve productivity.
Users of co-working and flexible space rapidly growing in numbers, according to a report, Marketplace for flexible work, from research conducted by (flexible workspace provider) The Instant Group and architects HLW. The report claims to ‘analyse’ the coworking and flexible workspace sector to gather a ‘360-degree perspective’ of the industry to determine where ‘perspectives align and diverge among stakeholders’. The research also claims that location and the ability to assign or reassign employees to workspace on short notice were also important influencers when choosing flexible workspace over conventional office space. Looking forward, the research claims that more than half of the companies interviewed envisage spending less time working from a traditional company office space.
Organisations are failing to get the basics right when it comes to providing the digital and virtual systems that support employees in their roles, despite an evolving technological landscape and rise in flexible working, a new report has claimed. Data released by Leesman analyses how organisations can better support employees by offering the technology tools and infrastructure that enable people to work in a flexible way. In Deloitte’s 2018 Tech Trends report issued at the beginning of 2018, there was a heightened focus on how disruptive technologies will help businesses achieve larger strategic and operational goals and drive greater value. It predicted that within the next two years, more companies will embrace the emerging ‘no-collar workforce’ trend by redesigning jobs and reimagining how work gets done in a hybrid human-and-machine environment. However, Leesman’s findings show that, as of yet, organisations are failing to get the digital basics right. According to its latest dataset (Q1 2018) 23 percent do not agree that they have the technology tools and infrastructure that enable them to work in different locations across the office or from different locations outside of the office.
