July 15, 2015

The standard gender pay gap narrative is a myth, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t problems

by Mark Eltringham • Comment, Flexible working, Knowledge, Workplace

It is one of the great ironies of modern life that in a world drowning in data, a great deal of public discourse is driven by narratives that have little or no factual basis. If anything, the substitution of baseless and questionable stories. Sometimes these narratives are based on outdated realities. Sometimes on assumptions. Sometimes they are deliberately created and upheld by those with vested interests. Sometimes people lie, including to themselves. However they are formed, they can become pretty hard to dislodge, especially when they become so enshrined that the default response to inconvenient truths is a wall of cognitive dissonance and denial. I’m obviously building up to something here and it won’t necessarily be an easy thing to say or hear. And it’s this. The gender pay gap doesn’t exist. Or at least, it doesn’t exist in the way we normally assume so distracts from related issues that we may be able to address.

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July 14, 2015

Homeworkers left to fund their own technology by stingy bosses

by Sara Bean • Comment, Facilities management, Flexible working, News

Last week we learnt that for some employers, homeworking is only to be encouraged when it’s out of hours. Now new research from Regus suggests that only around a third of people encouraged by their employers to work from home (35 percent) receive any contributions from their firm to fund the fit-out. The survey of over 4,000 senior business people found that the majority (82 percent) of employers refuse to cover all the costs incurred for creating and maintaining a work space for homeworkers. This proves costly for staff, as a quarter (25 percent) of respondents said that it would take a whole monthly salary for them to fit-out their home, while the average cost of running a home office in the UK is almost £2,000 a year. Nearly half (43 percent) of workers think that most companies encouraging their employees to work from home are simply trying to transfer the workspace cost onto the employee.

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July 13, 2015

Email still default comms tool for virtual teams, despite drawbacks

by Sara Bean • Flexible working, News, Technology

Email remains the preferred way corporate teams stay in touch, but there is a widening technological gap between the generations. Although it remains the most widely used form of communication (87 percent) email also has the greatest potential to cause misunderstanding in nearly half (49 percent) of teams. The survey from EF Corporate Solutions of over 800 executives based in Brazil, China, France, Germany, Middle East, Russia, UK and US, indicated that a primary cause for conflict stems from language barriers (39 percent) but 45 percent said there are also barriers to communication between associates over 50 and under 30 in the way they use technology. Respondents also suggest that email has the potential to cause ‘information overload’ and teams can suffer from a lack of interaction when it is the preferred communication method.

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July 13, 2015

Free Wi-Fi for agile workers is not quite as free as you’d like to think

by Mark Eltringham • Flexible working, News, Technology

One of the underlying drivers of agile working is supposedly the availability of ubiquitous free Wi-Fi. Yet according to new research, free Internet access may cost quite a bit more than firms might think. The study from Rethink Technology Research, Enterprise Apps Tech and iPass claims that North American and European business travellers spent at least £855 million in connectivity charges while on the road last year. The report, based on data from around 78 million business trips, includes the costs of 3G and 4G roaming data and paid Wi-FI connections that would have been cheaper of paid for in advance. The report is particularly critical of the practice of offering business users free Wi-FI with deliberately slow connection speeds to encourage them to pay for faster connections. It also highlights the well publicised problems of data security.

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July 11, 2015

Agile workers beat strikes + World’s healthiest building + 3D printed office

by Sara Bean • Facilities management, Flexible working, Newsletter, Technology, Wellbeing, Workplace

In this week’s issue; Paul Carder points out agile workers were unaffected by tube and train strikes; Maciej Markowski says despite digital technological advances, companies still appear to value human interaction and Sara Bean suggests employers only encourage home-working when it is on their terms. Mark Eltringham finds two new reasons to dislike tall buildings and argues employers attempt to manage stress in the workplace in the wrong way. We learn that a Chinese 3D printing firm plans to print a fully functioning office in Dubai; Melbourne claims to have the healthiest workplace in the world and an alarming report finds that the Internet is reducing our ability to memorise and recall things for ourselves. Subscribe for free quarterly issues of Work&Place and via the subscription form in the right hand sidebar for weekly news, follow us on Twitter and join our LinkedIn Group to discuss these and other stories.

July 9, 2015

London transport shuts down ….. agile workers unaffected …..

by Paul Carder • Cities, Comment, Flexible working, Wellbeing

London’s Financial Times reported this morning, “The worst London Underground strike in more than a decade saw millions of Londoners struggle to get to work”. It is chaos, here in the UK capital – the top global city in PwC’s Cities of Opportunity ranking. It is a sorry state of affairs, as in a scene reminiscent of 1970s union-crippled Britain, the “workers” representatives couldn’t agree with “the management”. “Workers” and “management”…we thought we had overcome that particular divide in business and society, didn’t we? But, some people have a vested interest in keeping it very much alive. In the large, industrialized, unionized industries such as transport, it lives on. Only last year, UNITE union leader Len McCluskey addressed his supporters in Liverpool as “sisters and brothers” like some mid-20th century socialist (which, of course, he is).

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July 9, 2015

Many employers discourage home working, unless it is out of hours

by Sara Bean • Comment, Flexible working, News, Wellbeing, Workplace

A combination of tube and rail strikes causing travel disruption in London today, means many businesses will accede to requests to work from home. Yet a large number of UK employers are still reluctant to encourage home working. According to a recent report by Redcentric, despite the fact that that just under a third of UK office workers reported an increase in productivity when working outside of the workplace, 48 percent of respondents claimed that their employers didn’t allow them to work remotely, with 23 percent saying that their business simply didn’t like them doing it, for reasons such as data privacy and loss of productivity. Yet research by PMI Health Group shows nearly a third of staff feel pressured to routinely check and send emails from home, which suggests that employers tacitly encourage home-working, as long as it is on their terms.

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July 9, 2015

Growing numbers of workers are ditching their laptops, claims study

by Neil Franklin • Flexible working, News, Technology

A growing number of European employees are shedding their laptops and instead using tablets as their sole device for work, according to a new study from technology research firm International Data Corporation. The report surveyed 2,000 UK, French and German workers and found that tablets are the only business device used by 40 percent of staff. Not everybody is ditching their keyboard so readily, however, as more and more people are using hybrids as their sole device because they need the functionality of the keyboard. The study found that just under a third of users rely solely on hybrids and the study expects this to rise to over half within a couple of years. This not only reflects the changing way we work but also has profound implications for the way we design and manage the places we work and the tools and systems we use to communicate with each other.

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July 8, 2015

Productivity starts with people, advises CIPD ahead of today’s Budget

by Sara Bean • Flexible working, News, Workplace

Investing in people’s development and offering flexible working practices can help organisations boost productivity. This is according to research by the CIPD published ahead of today’s budget, which the Chancellor has said will put the emphasis on improving UK productivity. The report: Productivity: Getting the Best out of People, explores the factors that help to explain why some businesses have higher productivity than others and finds that there are clear links between productivity and how people are managed at work. The report finds that performance tends to be higher in businesses where there is a focus on higher quality products or services rather than only on low cost and where workplace culture is clearly aligned with the future direction of the business. Investment in workforce training and an intelligent approach to the implementation of ‘smart’ or agile working practices also has a positive impact.

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July 6, 2015

Humans will remain at the heart of the emerging digital workplace

by Maciej Markowski • Comment, Flexible working, Technology, Workplace design

The speed of technological development over the last 30 years has been pretty mind blowing. Of course, some technologies came and went, for instance you would struggle finding fax machines in your office nowadays or people using Pagers to contact one another. It’s no wonder that in the early nineties futurologists predicted the death of the office. Technology was shaping the way we worked and was leading us away from office buildings towards a digital workplace. Yet videoconferencing hasn’t destroyed the need for business travel. Team meetings haven’t been abandoned because of messaging services like Yammer, Slack, Lync and Webex. We still do a lot of business face to face over coffee in a meeting room. Although technological advances have greatly improved the way we connect and do business, companies still appear to value human interaction.

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July 4, 2015

Beyond agile working + Is the environment a non-issue? + Neocon review

by Sara Bean • Flexible working, Newsletter, Workplace, Workplace design

In this week’s issue; Paul Goodchild reviews Chicago-based office design event Neocon; Andrew Mawson describes a major new research project on knowledge workers and Dan Callegari argues the business case for green building design is changing. Mark Eltringham finds we are often best able to understand the way people function by using symbols of mechanisation; asks whether the environment could now be something of a non-issue for building managers and suggests employers like open plan offices because they allow them to keep an eye on what people are doing. We reveal that working while on holiday is fast becoming the norm for many workers and that new evidence is published on the positive influence of good ergonomics on performance. Subscribe for free quarterly issues of Work&Place and via the subscription form in the right hand sidebar for weekly news, follow us on Twitter and join our LinkedIn Group to discuss these and other stories.

July 3, 2015

One in five Americans would change jobs for better work-life balance

by Sara Bean • Flexible working, News, Wellbeing, Workplace

More than half of US and Canadian employees report feeling overworked and burnt out (53 percent), yet the overwhelming majority (86 percent) say they are still happy at work. According to the inaugural Staples Advantage Workplace Index employees are working longer days, with about a quarter of them regularly working after the standard workday is done. A key motivator is to advance in the organization, with nearly two-thirds of respondents seeing themselves as managers in the next five years. Though employees are largely conditioned to working longer hours, about one in five do expect to change jobs in the next twelve months. Steps employers can take to improve happiness levels include; adding more office perks, improving office technology and providing a better office design. Alongside this, with employees working longer days and on weekends, the biggest request is for employers to provide more flexibility. (more…)