Mayor announces plans to boost digital connectivity across London

Mayor announces plans to boost digital connectivity across London

by • Cities, News, Technology

The Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, has announced a package of measures which he claims will boost digital connectivity across the capital and tackle London’s areas of poor connectivity – known as ‘not-spots’ – including the appointment of a troubleshooting ‘Not Spot Team’. Meanwhile, Transport for London is working to bring mobile connectivity to London Underground tunnels – one of the most high-profile not spots in the country. In spite of Brexit, London is still widely regarded as Europe’s leading technology hub, with a growing sector of over 40,000 digital technology businesses employing almost 200,000 people, as well as major bases of many leading global tech companies. But while the capital leads the way in tech growth, there are parts of the city where slow and unreliable broadband is a source of concern and frustration for businesses and residents alike, such as in Rotherhithe and parts of Westminster and the City of London.

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Google wins approval for new London headquarters

Google wins approval for new London headquarters

by • Cities, News, Property

Google’s much talked about plan to build a new London headquarters in King’s Cross has been approved by Camden Council. The building, designed by Thomas Heatherwick and BIG in collaboration with BDP replicates some of the campus facilities now associated with a tech campus including a garden, 200m jogging track on the roof, swimming pool, massage parlours exercise  rooms and facilities for badminton, five-a-side football and basketball. The finished 11-storey building will be more than one million square feet in size of which Google will occupy 650,000 sq ft. Motorised timber blinds on the outside of the building keep direct sunlight out. Solar panels on the roof will deliver an annual output of 20MWh. The main contractor Lendlease will start on site next year on a contract believed to be worth around £350m.

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Large majority of facilities managers believe BIM will have a significant impact on their role

Large majority of facilities managers believe BIM will have a significant impact on their role

by • Facilities management, News, Technology

Building Information Modelling (BIM) has the potential to deliver significant benefits to the facilities management industry, according to the results of a new survey published by The British Institute of Facilities Management (BIFM). The FM Awareness of Building Information Modelling survey, developed in partnership with Liverpool John Moores University and the Zurich University of Applied Sciences, aims to establish a benchmark of the current perceptions of the impact of BIM on the FM sector and the benefits and challenges it presents. The report’s key finidng is that eighty-three per cent of respondents believe BIM will help support the delivery of facilities management, with the same number indicating it is already having an impact, or will do so, in the next five years.

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Men more likely to experience work-related mental health problems

Men more likely to experience work-related mental health problems

by • News, Wellbeing

New research from mental health charity Mind claims that men are twice as likely to have mental health problems due to their job, compared to problems outside of work. One in three men (32 per cent) attribute poor mental health to their job, compared to one in seven men (14 per cent) who say it’s problems outside of work. Women, on the other hand, say that their job and problems outside of work are equal contributing factors; one in five women say that their job is the reason for their poor mental health, the same as those who say problems outside of work is to blame (19 per cent).

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Employees rate the best UK companies for work life balance

Employees rate the best UK companies for work life balance

by • News, Wellbeing

Jobsite Glassdoor has today identified the UK employers which offer the best work-life balance, according to individuals on the Glassdoor website. Winners are ranked based on their overall work-life balance rating from employees in the UK during the past year. For reporting simplicity, ratings are rounded to one decimal place though actual calculations extend beyond the thousandth to determine rank. According to the rankings, the five best employers in 2017 are Expedia, Lookers, American Express, HomeServe and Peninsula.

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Could a four-day week help improve UK productivity?

Could a four-day week help improve UK productivity?

by • Facilities management, Flexible working, News, Workplace

Over half (61 percent) of office workers believe they’d improve their performance levels if they worked a four-day week; and 40 percent believe they would be more productive working remotely. This is according to new research which claims that UK productivity has fallen dramatically, with one in three (31 percent) office workers admitting they are unproductive for a huge two hours every day. The report, commissioned by office products firm Fellowes, argues that despite being the fifth largest economy in the world, the UK sits 15th in the productivity table, lagging behind the likes of Sweden (31 hours p/w), Denmark (27.2 hours p/w) and Norway (27.3 p/w) – who all work, on average, less hours per week than Brits (32 hours p/w). As a third of workers are essentially working a six-hour day, many believe it’s time to look towards Scandinavian countries like Sweden – who recently trialled a 6-hour working day – where employees have more flexibility to choose when and where they work.  More →

Government to create new civil service hubs in Cardiff and Edinburgh

Government to create new civil service hubs in Cardiff and Edinburgh

by • News

The UK government has announced that it has signed a 25 year lease at the Central Square development, Cardiff to create a new civil service ‘hub’. The news follows a similar announcement that a new lease had been signed for a hub in Edinburgh, as the government sets out to rationalise its estate and increase the number of civil service jobs outside London. The deal is part of the Government’s Hubs Programme which it claims ‘will transform the way the Civil Service works by accommodating several government departments in one building, across the country’. The programme plans to deliver over a billion pounds of savings, free up land for housing and reduce government buildings from 800 to around 200 by 2022. The UK Government has agreed to lease 265,000 sq ft in the Cardiff city-centre development, which will accommodate over 4,000 public servants from several different UK Government departments. HMRC will be the majority occupier and Central Square will become one of their regional centres. The office will be ready by 2020 for civil servants to occupy.

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Over a quarter of employers are struggling to keep their workforce engaged

Over a quarter of employers are struggling to keep their workforce engaged

by • Facilities management, Flexible working, News, Wellbeing, Workplace

Nearly one in three (28 percent) of employers are struggling to keep their employees engaged, claims new research from totaljobs, with staff spending too much time internet browsing, being constantly late and chatting with colleagues. Over half of employers said lower productivity (59 percent) and internet browsing (55 percent) were clear signs of lower engagement they were seeing in the workplace. Worryingly, 62 percent said poor performance was a common problem as a result of a lack of engagement. Almost half (48 percent) of employers also report disengaged employees continue to arrive late and leave early, while 41 percent said chatting with colleagues suggested a lack of workplace engagement. The same number again said taking too many breaks during work hours might also indicate disengagement, as well as employees appearing distracted. But when it comes to tackling a lack of employee engagement, one in two employers (51 percent) said clear communication, via email, newsletters and team meetings for example, was an effective strategy to improve engagement. Nearly half (46 percent) of employers said setting out clear objectives for both individuals and teams was also effective.

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UK ranks thirty-first worldwide for broadband speeds, claims year long study

UK ranks thirty-first worldwide for broadband speeds, claims year long study

by • News, Technology

An analysis of over 63 million broadband speeds worldwide carried out by comparison site Cable.co.uk claims that the UK sits in 31st place, with an average speed of 16.51 Mbps. The data was collected for the 12 months up to 10 May this year by M-Lab, a partnership between New America’s Open Technology Institute, Google Open Source Research, Princeton University’s PlanetLab, and other supporting partners, and compiled by Cable.co.uk. The UK manages to beat 158 other countries, yet falls behind 30 others, coming in behind 20 European countries, 17 of which are in the European Union (EU).  The five fastest countries have download speeds around 40 times faster than the five slowest. Singapore tops the table at 55.13Mbps, compared to Yemen, which is more than 162 times slower at just 0.34Mbps.

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New analysis reveals shrinking pool of younger workers in the UK workforce

New analysis reveals shrinking pool of younger workers in the UK workforce

by • Legal news, News, Workplace

New analysis reveals shrinking pool of younger workers in the UK workforceAn increase in the number of UK-born employees leaving the UK’s workforce, either through retirement or emigration is coinciding with a shrinking pool of younger workers, which a fall in immigration can no longer fill, a new report warns. An analysis of the UK’s workforce showed that the UK’s workforce grew in 2016-2017 only because of an increase in EU and non-EU workers. Mercer’s Workforce Monitor showed that retirement, opting out (i.e. due to caring responsibilities) or emigration saw around 143,000 UK-born employees leave the UK workforce with the loss of workers only being offset by the entry of around 147,000 EU-born workers and around 232,000 Non-EU workers.  In sum, the UK’s workforce grew by an estimated 234,000 over 2016-2017. From Q1 2016 to Q1 2017, the number of workers over 50 in the UK economy grew by 230,000, the under 35’s grew by 50,000 while the number of workers aged 35-49 shrunk by 48,000. According to the analysis, if net migration into the UK levels off at 100,000 per year from 2020, the number of under 50s in the workforce will fall by 200,000 by 2025; the over 50s would increase by over 1 million while the number of under-25s in the population would fall by 100,000. This means apprentices and graduates numbers will be less.

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People change the way they speak based on the status of the person to whom they are talking

People change the way they speak based on the status of the person to whom they are talking

by • News, Workplace

Ever wondered why people change the way they speak in certain situations? The answers might be found in piece of research carried out by academics at the University of Stirling. It found that people tend to change the pitch of their voice depending on to whom they are talking and how dominant they feel in a particular context. The research, published in the journal PLOS ONE, put participants through a simulated job interview and discovered that individuals’ vocal characteristics are altered in response to people of different social status. Regardless of self-perceived social status, people tend to talk to those they consider high status individuals using a higher pitch.

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Millennials email habits are at unhealthy levels, resulting in round the clock stress

Millennials email habits are at unhealthy levels, resulting in round the clock stress

by • News, Technology, Wellbeing, Workplace

Round the clock emailing by Millennials

Email overload amongst under-35s has reached unhealthy levels, a new survey claims, with 42 percent saying they would feel stressed if they were not able to access their emails, compared with a fifth (22 percent) of employees aged between 45-54 years old. According to new research from Bupa it’s now the norm for younger workers to constantly dip into work via email in the early morning and late evening. Although many businesses have taken steps to help ensure their employees have a good work-life balance, it is clear that the idea that the best way to progress is to be available around the clock persists amongst millennials. A fifth (22 percent) of millennials believe that they would be viewed as uncommitted to their job if they did not respond to emails outside of work hours. A third (33 percent) believe that their career progression could be impacted if they only respond to work emails in work time, compared with less than 10 percent of employees over 55 years old.

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