September 3, 2014
Increased use of mobile devices give office workers space to move
Office workers now spend up to six hours a day working on mobile devices rather than using desk computers; with men generally working with three or more mobile devices while women choose to work with a maximum of two. This is according to the intermediate results of a Global Posture Study carried out by Steelcase to identify which type of work environment fits different workers best. It reveals that the Millennial generation, born between 1979 and 2000, change posture during the course of the day more than any other age group. Female workers tend to choose postures where they can withdraw from the environment, while men prefer open seating postures where they can lean back. The results of the posture study underlines the fact that employers must take an increasingly innovative approach to creating working environment which supports the various ways of working of the employees to guarantee their wellbeing and productivity. (more…)
Amongst all the talk about Generation Y and its impact on the world of work, it can be easy to miss the fact that the modern workplace is not defined by one particular generation, but a number of them. The multi-generational workplace has significant implications for the way we design and manage offices. While we must avoid the more obvious stereotypes about the needs of different age groups, we must still offer spaces that can meet a wide range of cultural, physical and technological needs if we are to create productive workplaces.The latest organisation to bang the drum for the multi-generational workplace is the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development. It has published new research together with the Scottish Centre for Healthy Working Lives into the experiences and attitudes of SMEs towards age diversity at work.
Just a few days ago, 
Given the track record of people when it comes to making predictions about the future, it’s easy to grow cynical, especially when it involves a profession as subject to the vagaries of technological and cultural change as facilities management. But while we should be wary of more fanciful and long term thinking, any natural scepticism shouldn’t blind us to those predictions that we know will largely come true, especially those based on what we know is happening already. For example, recent research carried out by Cass Business School and Henley Business School and presented in the book 
The recent Cabinet reshuffle in the UK Government won’t alter one fact; politicians simply don’t get it when it comes to technology, the workplace, the way people work and the needs of small businesses. Once you dismiss the paranoid idea that they DO get it but don’t care because they’re too busy looking out for The Man, you have to conclude that one of the big problems they have (this won’t go where you think) is that they don’t understand anything about technology and work, especially when it comes to emerging technology, the working lives of individuals, the needs and functions of small businesses and the fact the self-employed exist at all. These things exist outside the bubble. This is obviously a problem because they are implementing policies and making big, uninformed and anachronistic decisions about the things that shape every aspect of our lives, help to define us as people and determine how companies and individuals function. Here are just three examples.
September 4, 2014
The myths and the memes of public sector purchasing waste
by Justin Miller • Comment, Facilities management, Public Sector, Workplace design
There has always been a certain degree of skepticism within the UK’s business community about the way the public sector goes about buying goods and services. Some of it is justified but some is unfair. The efforts of successive governments to address the problem demonstrates that there is always a will to improve things. So while a recent BBC Panorama documentary highlighted claims from one report that the NHS loses billions each year thanks to a range of errors and fraud in its procurement processes, we might also ask whether an equivalent private sector organisation with an annual budget of £109 billion would not also be open to a wide range of eye-wateringly expensive failures and inefficiencies. Unfortunately there is a tendency in the media to want to expose ‘waste’ in public sector purchasing, which can politicise what are perfectly reasonable decisions, when you examine them.
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