February 13, 2019

Organisational innovation being stymied by lack of senior support

by Sara Bean • AI, News, Technology, Workplace

A lack of senior stakeholder support is the greatest inhibitor of change, new research suggests as despite considerable enthusiasm to innovate, organisations are being thwarted by tight resources and strong internal resistance. The data commissioned by KCOM found that organisations are also limiting themselves by turning away the specialist skills and experience that could help them advance, through overly predictive procurement processes. They are however, eager to be more competitive, which is why organisations are making big investments in innovation projects. Almost half (43 percent) consider driving digital transformation to improve competitive advantage to be their top priority in the next year. A further 32 percent are allocating at least 20 percent of their IT budget to new projects. Both public and private sector organisations are also taking an increasingly people-centric approach to digital transformation. In the next year, 80 percent said they would incentivise staff retention through training, accreditation and career development to deliver on their innovation strategy. This is compared to 71 percent who said they would do so by investing in new technologies.

February 12, 2019

Lack of cohesion in many organisations on adoption of digital workplace

by Sara Bean • AI, Facilities management, Flexible working, News, Technology

The majority of organisations (58 percent) do not have a have a clearly defined strategy in place when it comes to adopting and integrating digital workspace technology which suggests that implementing and making use of such technology is still being carried out in something of a haphazard manner. The findings of the research are summarised in SoftwareONE’s Building a Lean, Mean, Digital Machine report, which also claims that, despite the fact that almost all organisations (99 percent) employ some form of digital workspace technology, respondents have encountered a host of challenges when it comes to using them. These include higher security risks (cited by 47 percent) and a lack of employee knowledge in how best to use the solutions (45 percent). More →

February 8, 2019

Post digital era offers the chance to create personalised experiences at work

by Neil Franklin • AI, News, Technology

The enterprise is entering a new “post-digital” era, where success will be based on an organisation’s ability to master a set of new technologies that can deliver personalised realities and experiences for customers, employees and business partners, according to the Accenture Technology Vision 2019 annual report that sets out to predict the key technology trends that will redefine businesses over the next three years. More →

February 8, 2019

Finding the Goldilocks Point for collaborative workplace design

by Jonathan Hindle • Comment, Technology, Workplace design

One of the great paradoxes of modern life is the ever increasing likelihood of breakdowns in communication in a world in which we have more ways to talk to each other than ever before. This can play out in especially toxic ways in the wider world, but its effects in the workplace can also be problematic. Most importantly, what we often assume to be true about communication and collaboration may not be borne out by the facts and this in turn has implications for workplace design.

February 7, 2019

Employees think Internet of Things will be most important workplace technology trend

by Mark Eltringham • Flexible working, News, Technology

A team from Savills’ flexible office platform Workthere has predicted the top five tech trends we’re likely to see arriving into offices across the UK in 2019. Supporting the research, Workthere also completed a survey of 2,000 office workers to find out their views on the future of workplace technology as defined by the original study. The poll suggests that employees think that the Internet of Things will have the biggest impact on their day to day working lives followed by voice activated technologies and wireless charging.

February 7, 2019

Employee use of apps at work puts their organisation at risk of cyber-attack

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

Workers continued use of unapproved apps in the office, including Instagram, Facebook Messenger and Snapchat, to communicate with colleagues as well as friends and family is putting their organisations at risk of cyber-attack, new research suggests. Four in ten employees (41 percent) admit to using Instagram for more than two hours each day, despite the app being banned in almost half of UK organisations. The majority of employees are well aware that certain apps are not approved for workplace use, but this hasn’t stopped them breaking the rules.

February 6, 2019

A robot can do amazing things, but could it hold down a desk job?

by Amy LaViers • AI, Features, Technology

A colleague of mine, a roboticist, recently proclaimed that if one could teleoperate the robot he developed in his lab, it could hold down a desk job. It’s a common sentiment among roboticists that existing mechanical hardware is sufficient to replace humans in many of the tasks by which we earn a living. Rather than the hardware, the last, golden step to having human-like machine counterparts is in the development of appropriate algorithms. But this is wrong. There is in fact little evidence that robots have the mechanical features necessary to hold down a desk job, regardless of the algorithms.

February 6, 2019

Majority of businesses fail to see a return on their technology investments

by Neil Franklin • News, Technology

According to a new report from Accenture, the majority of businesses don’t see a return on their technology investments and just 14 percent of businesses manage to realise the full potential of their tech investments. Roughly $3.2 trillion was spent on new technology in the last five years. Businesses that were most successful with their investments were the ones investing in bold moves, rather than incremental shifts.

February 4, 2019

Businesses need to build far more employee trust in their use of workforce data

by Mark Eltringham • News, Technology, Workplace

Business leaders need to improve the way they implement and communicate responsible workforce data strategies if they are to build the employee trust that will help generate sustained revenue growth, according to a new report from Accenture. The report, Decoding Organizational DNA, is based on qualitative and quantitative research, including global surveys of 1,400 C-level executives and 10,000 workers across 13 industries.

February 1, 2019

Millennial headlines, eternal workplace truths, the pathologisation of sitting and some other stuff

by Mark Eltringham • Facilities management, Features, Technology, Wellbeing, Workplace design

The New York Times asked an interesting question this week. “Why Are Young People Pretending to Love Work?” it demanded, begging the immediate response ‘for the same reason everybody else does’. If only that pat, facetious response were enough to satisfy the actual questions concealed by the typically misleading headline. What the article actually wants to know is why some members of one particular tribe of young people have a toxic relationship with work. And that tribe (of course) is made up of the diverse, attractive, urbanite, coffee-fixated, stock image Millennials working for the world’s tech giants. Interesting in so far as it goes, but this tribe is not homogeneous to begin with and does not represent the world’s ‘young people’. It’s beyond time we stopped working on the basis that it does. Change the headlines.

February 1, 2019

Employees call for more user-friendly workplace technology

by Neil Franklin • News, Technology

A new report claims that because workplace technology is perceived as less intuitive and intelligent than consumer technology lags behind. The survey commissioned by The Workforce Institute at Kronos Incorporated conducted with UK-based Coleman Parkes Research, asked more than 2,800 hourly and salaried employees across a variety of industries in Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Mexico, New Zealand, the UK and US to explore the impact existing and emerging technologies have on the employee experience.

January 31, 2019

Get ready for the next wave of technological innovation, or get left behind

by Bruce Barclay • Comment, Facilities management, Property, Technology

The natural world is a story of constant change and evolution. Animals, plants, insects and micro-organisms exist in an ecosystem, adapting to relentless changes in their environment, influenced by habitat, climate and their cohabitors. They respond to change faster than the human world, because they are not tied by the same restraints and conventions. They are interdependent and reliant on each other, competitors and cohabitors for mutual advantage. As humans move into what has been called the Fourth Industrial Revolution, there is much we can learn from nature, particularly within the workplace environment. The transformation of an organisation’s real estate, facilities management, IT and HR functions into a workplace ecosystem, as proposed by the Stoddart Review, has been discussed for some time.