July 23, 2015

Business start-ups in London grew by nearly a quarter in a year

by Sara Bean • News, Property, Technology

The number of new business start-ups in London has increased by nearly a quarter over the past year, an analysis of Companies House data by Instant Offices’ has revealed. This is driven predominantly by growth in technology firms, but also by retail and creative services’ companies. Key growth sectors include technology services which went up 200 percent year on year, wireless and telecommunications were up by 79 percent and computer facilities companies by 51 percent. Tim Rodber, CEO of Instant Offices, said: “The diversity of the firms behind this increase in demand is interesting – but of particular note is the role technology and creative services industries are playing in driving growth in the Capital and producing space requirements outside traditional business locations. Areas such as Southwark and the City Fringe are benefiting from high demand as start-ups weigh up the need to not only reduce costs, but attract the best staff to great work spaces.”

July 23, 2015

Majority of managers are ready to welcome robots in the workplace

by Mark Eltringham • News, Technology, Workplace

The relationship between mankind and the beings it creates has been a staple of science fiction ever since Mary Shelley first dreamt up her tale of Frankenstein and his creature. It’s an enduring idea because it poses questions about the nature of life and what it means to be human. We’re now about to address those questions in real life for the first time and we’ll need to address their mundane as well as profound implications, including the advent of robots in the workplace. As things stand, the problem is that you can come up with any answer you like to these questions because, for every report that a robot has displayed a degree of self awareness, another will tell you about a robot in Germany crushing a man to death. And for every piece of footage disconcertingly showing a robot learning to clear hurdles like an Arab stallion, you can find dozens of them falling over like drunks.

July 22, 2015

OECD nations need to urgently address the coming digital workplace

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

There is now an urgent need for the world’s growing number of digital economies to shift their focus to how they help people to manage their own transition to a new form of digital workplace. That is the main conclusion of a new report from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). The OECD Digital Economy Outlook 2015 claims that while most countries have moved from a narrow focus on communications technology to a broader digital approach, they now need to address the significant and growing risk of disruption in areas like privacy and jobs. The report – which covers areas from broadband penetration and industry consolidation to network neutrality and cloud computing in OECD countries says more should be done to offer information and communication technology (ICT) skills training to help people transition to new types of digital jobs.

July 22, 2015

Workers of all ages want employers that commit to digital progress

by Sara Bean • News, Technology, Workplace

Employees across all age groups want to work for businesses committed to digital progress, and companies that are slow to embrace digital technology will not thrive and are more likely to lose talent, according to a new global report. Strategy, Not Technology, Drives Digital Transformation from MIT Sloan Management Review and Deloitte Digital is based on findings from the fourth annual global survey of more than 4,800 business executives across 27 industries and 129 countries. It suggests the ability to digitally transform and reimagine a business is determined in large part by establishing a clear digital strategy, supported by leaders who foster a culture that can change and reinvent their organizations. People want to work for digitally maturing organizations, with nearly 80 percent of respondents preferring to work for a digitally enabled company or digital leader. This sentiment crossed all age groups nearly equally, from 22 to 60.

July 17, 2015

Do we really think the future of work involves our replacement by robots?

by Simon Heath • Comment, Flexible working, Technology, Workplace

A report published recently by my former colleagues at CBRE called “Fast Forward 2030: The Future of Work and the Workplace” claims that by 2025 so many people will be more interested in being happy and having creative roles that up to 50 percent of current occupations will be defunct. 35 years elapsed between the release of Orwell’s 1984 and the eponymous year and very little of Orwell’s dystopian vision came to pass. 2030 is a scant 16 years away so, even if one takes the exponential pace of change into account, it’s perhaps a bit of a stretch to think robots will have taken their seat at the table in quite the way we appear to think they will. Also unchanged one assumes are the attitudes of those who have a vested interest in the status quo or in dictating where the benefits of change will fall.

July 15, 2015

One in five Brits distrustful of adopting wearable technology at work

by Sara Bean • Facilities management, News, Technology, Workplace

Almost a fifth (18 percent) of European employees already have access to some form of wearable technology, but British workers are most worried about the privacy implications. According to research by ADP wearables such as augmented reality headsets, biometric identification and holographic video conferencing tools will create opportunity for businesses to improve productivity, connectivity and security. Yet more than half (52 percent) of employees are concerned about the amount of personal data employers can access via wearable technology, with attitudes towards privacy varying between countries. While as many as 60 percent of German employees express reservations, only 36 percent of Dutch employees feel this way. Overall, UK workers are the most hesitant, with as many as one in five (20 percent) saying that they would not use wearables at all, compared to 10 percent in France, and 8 percent in Germany and the Netherlands.

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.

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.

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

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.

July 6, 2015

People are outsourcing their own memories to the Internet, claims report

by Mark Eltringham • News, Technology, Wellbeing

We have outsourced our memory to the Internet and digital technology to such an extent that many of us are suffering from digital amnesia. That is the main finding of a new report from software developer Kaspersky Lab. The study of around 6,000 people claims that the seductive ease of access to a bottomless well of information is taking its toll on our natural ability to memorise and recall things for ourselves. Nearly all respondents (91 percent) across all age groups now agree that they “use the Internet as an online extension of their brain”. Around half of people now simply cannot be bothered to remember even basic facts and a quarter cheerfully even forget whatever facts they glean through search engines after they have made use of them. As with many things in the modern world, we are increasingly prone to treat even hard information as disposable.

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.