November 23, 2015

The benefits of peeling back the layers of the workplace onion ⁰

by Darren Bilsborough • Comment, Flexible working, Technology, Workplace, Workplace design

The onion metaphor is normally used to describe the layers which must be peeled away to get to the all-important “core” of a problem or issue. The biggest question that is normally asked with respect to choosing office space based on the promise of improved productivity, is quantifying the value of the various initiatives that might be contemplated or proposed. I can’t help but think of how complex that question is due to the many “layers” there are to work through to get to a final quantifiable answer. In its most simple form the question of productivity in the workplace, is confined to how staff utilise their time to undertake the tasks or duties that correspond to expected output. But of course it is not only their use of time, but the environmental influences associated their environment, both in the workplace, its surroundings (the actual building and the precinct in which it is located) and their method of travel to the office.

November 18, 2015

Women earn less than men because they make different choices, report confirms ⁰

by Mark Eltringham • Comment, News, Workplace

In spite of its own attempts to link it to the gender pay gap a new report, Opportunities and outcomes in education and work: Gender effects, released yesterday by the UK Commission for Employment and Skills (UKCES), merely confirms that the key factors that determine how much people earn are the jobs they do and the hours they work. The report shows that male workers are paid on average 19 percent more than female workers. However, a report this year from the ONS confirmed that women now earn slightly more than men in like for like jobs up to the age of 35 and the UKCES report shows that it is career and personal choices that explain the gap in incomes across the whole economy. This confirms that the keys to closing the overall pay gap are for women to enter higher paying fields such as STEM and construction as well as employers offering flexible working arrangements and greater support for parents in their careers.

November 12, 2015

The three workplace professions need to face up to a new reality ⁰

by Mark Eltringham • Comment, Facilities management, Technology, Workplace

The modern workplace consists of an often unholy trinity of people, place and technology and each of these facets has its own associated profession; HR. IT. FM. Six letters. Three disciplines. One big mess. When life was simple, with people generally going to work in the same place and at the same time, each of these professions could operate in its own bubble, with a clear sphere of influence and control. Sure, they could behave in interdisciplinary ways, they could have their intersections, but at the end of each encounter they could each go their separate ways. That is no longer true. The workplace is no longer primarily physical, but digital and cultural too. The boundaries of space and time have slipped and taken with them the clear demarcations between the three main workplace professions. All of this is bound to provoke as big an existential crisis for the professions as it does for the workplace itself.

November 9, 2015

Business success is progressively less related to employment levels ⁰

by Mark Eltringham • Comment, Technology, Workplace, Workplace design

If you want to understand exactly how the economy has changed over the last few decades, one of the most important statistics is also one of the least remarked upon. It is the growing disconnect between a firm’s earnings and the number of people it employs, a statistic that puts paid to the lie that people are an organisation’s greatest asset. Once upon a time, of course, there was a direct correlation of one sort or another between the a firm’s revenue and the number of people it employed and consequently the amount of space that it took up. This was especially true for the world’s great manufacturers and other industries engaged in what was once proper work; moving, creating, destroying and maintaining things. Growth and success meant more employment and more space. There were economies of scale but the upshot was more or less an arithmetic progression in employment based on earnings.

November 5, 2015

Data transforms the roles of offices and the people who manage them

by Philip Ross • Comment, Facilities management, Technology, Workplace

The modern workplace creates the physical,technological and cultural point of intersection between a number of abstract or movable facets of the business, including people, technology, culture and creativity. That has always been true to a large extent but with the growing complexity of exactly how, when and where we work, this role of the office as the epicentre of it all has been thrown into sharp relief. With that has come a greater understanding of the intersections that exist between disciplines such as IT, FM and HR. In some areas, the roles already appear indistinguishable and I believe this will only become more apparent. The main driver of that growing convergence of roles will be the availability of data to make informed decisions about interrelated aspects of organisational culture, work practices, office design and management and the development and motivation of individuals.

October 28, 2015

What Shakespeare’s Henry V can teach us about flexible working

by Julia Johnston • Comment, Facilities management, Flexible working

Why are so many of us preoccupied with the status that having an office brings? They say it’s lonely at the top. Well, that loneliness often starts with the social exclusion of being in an office. Why would you not want to be in with the in-crowd, to be with your own team of people and the go-getters who are making a difference to your organisation? Why not be where the action is at the working coalface of your organisation? Stuck in your office, you can feel like a kid in the corner of the playground, wondering what the others are whispering about. Some of us want an office because we believe it shows our peers that we have made it; that we have reached the upper echelons of our corporate management structure and become an acknowledged achiever. We want an office so that we can preen to others, but that doesn’t automatically make for better managers, leaders or companies.

October 27, 2015

Seven ways your choice of new office may boost business performance ⁰

by Darren Bilsborough • Comment, Facilities management, Property

There are generally four main reasons why a business considers changing to new office space: your business is growing and your existing office can’t be expanded to accommodate that growth; your need for office space is reducing due to a change in business circumstances; your office lease is nearing expiration: you are prepared to explore whether a change in office could improve your current business performance. It is the last of these four reasons that sits at the heart of this article, but that does not detract from the validity of the other motivations for investigating options for new office space. Changing office space requirements and/or the fact your lease is expiring do not preclude searching for new ways to improve business performance. In fact, they provide a compelling excuse to explore alternatives and often organisations choose to move for a number of good reasons.

October 26, 2015

An updated green building standard designed to meet wider business objectives ⁰

by Sue Gregson • Comment, Facilities management, Legal news, Property

The publication in September 2015 of the revised ISO 14001 Global Environmental Management Standard has been heralded as a move that will “shift business focus on the environment from compliance with regulations and direct operations, to placing the environment at the heart of thinking and strategy.” This will assist businesses around the world to respond to increasing global sustainability challenges and ensure long-term business success. Currently there are over 300,000 organisations worldwide that are certified to the ISO 14001 Standard, first published in 1996. According to the Institute of Environmental Management and Assessment, (IEMA) ISO 14001 is the second most used standard companies employ to manage their performance globally, with 171 countries now represented. Its popularity as a management tool has been linked to both improved financial and environmental performance.

October 22, 2015

Seven ways to make your office work for different workstyles ⁰

by Brittney Herrera • Comment, Flexible working, Wellbeing, Workplace design

The conversation around office space is shifting. Baby Boomers brought us cubicles, and as millennials joined the workforce, so did the trend of a collaborative, open office. Now, as Generation Z begins to make its way into the workforce, it’s more important than ever to make sure that your office appeals to all generations, and more importantly, all work styles. This trend is taking off in companies of all sizes and types. To begin, study the culture, brand, demographics and interactions of employees and you’ll find that people want to move throughout the day and change their work setting based on tasks. This can be applied to all organizations on different scales. Providing the right environment for unique tasks has the power to energize teams, reinforce the culture and allow for serendipitous interactions all at once.

October 21, 2015

Far fewer working women than men receive an annual bonus ⁰

by Sara Bean • Comment, News, Workplace

Nearly three quarters of the UK’s working women don’t receive any form of annual bonus. Glassdoor’s latest UK Employment Confidence Survey found that only 29 percent of women at work receive a bonus, compared to 44 percent of men, which presumably is one reason why 44 percent of men remain positive about the outlook for their employer as opposed to just one in three women. The survey, which is carried out twice a year, also found that over the last six months, nearly half of all businesses in the UK that had made negative changes in the workplace (49 percent) had made employees redundant/and or communicated plans to implement further redundancies. The result is that nearly a third of employees (32 percent) are concerned that they will be made redundant over the next six months, up from 21 percent from the beginning of last year.

October 14, 2015

Sitting down is no worse than standing for long periods, claims new study ⁰

by Mark Eltringham • Comment, News, Wellbeing, Workplace design

As we’ve always argued, the now commonly parroted idea that ‘sitting is the new smoking’ is extremely dubious and has led to a degree of hysteria about the effects of sedentary work and the substitution of one harmful extreme for another. Now a new peer reviewed study from researchers in the UK and Australia confirms earlier findings that suggest that what is important is not posture or position, but movement. The study of 5,000 civil servants over a 16 year period was carried out by researchers from the University of Exeter, University College London, and the University of Sydney (Australia) and funded by organisations, such as the British Heart Foundation, Stroke Association, the National Heart and Lung Institute, and the National Institute on Aging. It concludes that ‘no associations were observed between any of the five sitting indicators and mortality risk’.

October 12, 2015

How workplace design is more closely reflecting how we actually work ⁰

by Adrian Campbell • Comment, Flexible working, Workplace design

In years gone by, a ‘one size fits all’ approach to office design might have been the norm, but as the decades have progressed, so too have the options available to businesses designing ‘homes from home’ for their office-based workforces. As new interpretations of the office environment proliferated, so the open plan model came to into being and eventually evolved into the default office design model. This initially brought greater variety than ever before but, ultimately, a one size fits all mentality in workplace design ultimately prevailed – every worker was expected to work in certain ways, utilising the equipment and furniture supplied and designed for them. From inception through to occupancy, the average new office involves a six-year period of design and construction involving varying teams of people discussing the best and most attractive solution for the actual end user.