April 18, 2018

Business leaders struggling to keep up with demands of individuals and technological developments in the workplace

by Mark Eltringham • Flexible working, News, Technology, Workplace

Organisations are struggling to keep pace with workplace shifts including skills gaps, the development of artificial intelligence, the demands of employees and new social expectations, according to the latest Human Capital Trends report from Deloitte. In its 2018 edition, The Rise of the Social Enterprise, Deloitte focuses on the growing expectations of individuals and the pace at which technology is shaping organisations’ human capital priorities.

April 18, 2018

Getting meeting room management and room booking software right

by Neil Franklin • Company news, Facilities management, Technology, Workplace design

Meetings and booking of conference rooms and resources are an essential part of any business and unless you have a system to effectively manage and optimise these processes, organising a meeting can be overwhelming and time-consuming. According to a study made by thinkgrowth.org the average employee spends about five hours in meetings per week and four hours preparing for these meetings. The numbers are not decreasing. In fact, meeting frequency is increasing each year and it is clear that business meetings aren’t going away anytime soon.

April 18, 2018

Employee productivity is being hindered by information overload

by Sara Bean • Technology, Workplace

Employee productivity is being hindered by information overload, finds survey More than a third of employees’ waste significant chunks the working day because of difficulties retrieving valuable information, with two-fifths of businesses admitting to having no processes in place to capture, record and retrieve business communications. The research conducted by 3Gem on behalf of TeleWare, claims that 36 percent of employees have wasted a lot of the working day attempting to resolve an issue when they have forgotten valuable information. A similar number (34 percent) explained that forgetting information has led them to deal ineffectively with customers, suppliers or clients. While around a quarter have missed important deadlines (26 percent) or let their colleagues down (25 percent) due to not having the necessary information front of mind. Britain is not doing very well when it comes to workplace productivity. According to the latest G7 productivity analysis from ONS, in terms of output per hour worked, the UK scored 15.1 percent below the average for the rest of the G7 advanced economies.

April 17, 2018

Robots will lead to increased productivity without stealing jobs, but wages will fall

by Sara Bean • Automation, News, Technology, Workplace

Robots will not as feared steal people’s jobs and will eventually improve productivity, but they will undercut workers’ contribution sufficiently to depress their wages. According to the third report in Barclays Impact Series, titled Robots at the gate: Humans and technology at work, technology is fundamentally re-shaping the nature of work, and the implications of this re-shaping process will accelerate in coming decades. The report authored by Barclays’ Research team and supported by the Barclays Social Innovation Facility sets today’s technological advancements in the context of historical precedent and argues that robotics and Artificial Intelligence do not portend a jobless future. However, these new technologies have important macroeconomic consequences, such as wage disinflation, which will likely continue in the years or even decades to come. The report also argues that productivity spurts lag behind technological leaps, as it can take years or even decades for an economy to figure out how to best use a new technology. Eventually, economies of scale are reached, consumer behaviour adapts, companies refine their business models and productivity growth finally kicks in. More →

April 16, 2018

Artificial intelligence should have a clear ethical dimension, claims new government report

by Mark Eltringham • Automation, News, Technology

While the UK is in a strong position to be a world leader in the development of artificial intelligence which would deliver a major boost to the economy, ethics should be at the heart of its development, according to a new report from the House of Lords. AI should never be given the “autonomous power to hurt, destroy or deceive” people, it adds. The Lords’ report called on the government to support businesses in the field. It also recommended that people be educated to work alongside AI in the jobs of the future. It said that such education would “mitigate the negative effects” on jobs which are possible as AI develops.

April 10, 2018

British employers are failing to prepare staff for automation

by Mark Eltringham • Automation, News, Technology

UK employees aren’t being equipped with the skills required by an automated workplace, according to a new study from ADP. The findings suggest that despite a third (32 percent) of workers believing their job will be automated within 10 years and one in ten (10 percent) predicting it will happen in two, half of those affected (49 percent) say their employer isn’t preparing to train or reskill them for the new world of work. ADP surveyed 1,300 UK working adults across the country as part of The Workforce View in Europe 2018, which gives a snapshot of employees’ views about their jobs, workplace and career plans. The report claims that thousands of workers are worried about the prospect of mass automation and how this will impact their own career prospects if they aren’t prepared with the right skills.

April 6, 2018

Quarter of people are ready to welcome robots as our new overlords

by Mark Eltringham • Automation, News, Technology

Around a quarter of British people would happily replace MPs with robots, according to a study of 6,000 individuals from Reboot Digital Marketing and Mindshare. The surveys asked people whether they would prefer machines or humans in eight different occupations and scenarios. It found that when making car comparisons with the intention to eventually purchase, a significant percentage of Brits would want robots (60 percent) aiding them instead of humans (40 percent). Thereafter, Brits would be most inclined to accept music and film recommendations from artificial intelligence at 49 percent – though 51 percent would still opt to do so from other people. Even though most respondents (75 percent) would still prefer humans to be MP’s, 25 percent would elect robots to be in this position of power.

April 3, 2018

Nearly half of large organisations will adopt artificial intelligence in the workplace by 2019

by Mark Eltringham • Automation, News, Technology

Chatbots and voice assistants powered by artificial intelligence are starting to gain traction in the workplace of large organisations, according to a report from tech firm Spiceworks. The report, based on a survey of 500 IT professionals in organisations across North America and Europe, found that within the next 12 months, 40 percent of large businesses – those with more than 500 employees – expect to implement one or more intelligent assistants or AI chatbots on company-owned devices, compared to 25 percent of mid-size companies and 27 percent of small businesses. The findings indicate that although adoption is on the rise, some organisations are holding back due to a lack of use cases in the workplace and privacy concerns.

March 30, 2018

UK remains a world leader in technological innovation

by Mark Eltringham • News, Technology

A new report from KPMG suggests that the UK is the third most dynamic global centre of innovation, disruption and technological development behind the US and China. KPMG’s 2018 Global Technology Innovation Report surveyed almost 800 global business executives to reveal the world’s top technology innovation hubs. Of those surveyed, 19 per cent named the UK as the third most promising market for tech breakthroughs behind China at 26 per cent and the US at 39 per cent.

March 28, 2018

Call for more internship opportunities to help employers close skills gap

by Sara Bean • News, Technology, Workplace

It should come as little surprise that graduates who have undertaken an internship are more likely to have honed the skills businesses needs, one of the main findings of the Institute of Student Employers (ISE) annual Development Survey, which launches today (28 March 2018) at the ISE Student Development Conference. The report found that 63 percent of employers believed graduates who had undertaken work experience had the required soft skills, yet less than half (48 percent) thought this of graduates in general. According to the report the five most common graduate skills gaps are; managing up (5 percent of employers believed graduates had this skill); dealing with conflict (12 percent); negotiating/influencing (17 percent); commercial awareness (23 percent and resilience (31 percent). This is why closing skills gaps is a priority for businesses with 74 percent of employers taking specific actions to tackle the issue in 2017. Changes to recruitment and on-the-job training were the most common actions and 16 percent of organisations improved their internship development programmes specifically to close skills gaps.

March 23, 2018

Employees demand more, not less automation in the workplace

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

Over half (52 percent) of workers in a new poll have admitted looking for a new job because of frustrations over what they see as outdated ways of thinking around work practices and automation at their current company. The Digital Work Report 2018 commissioned by Wrike, surveyed just over 3,000 workers from across the UK, France and Germany, and highlighted a number of perceived benefits around automation, but its findings suggest that calls for greater adoption by employees are not being taken seriously. Nearly half of those surveyed (45 percent) in the UK believe automation would give their company a competitive advantage. However, while 39 percent are considering automation tools for some of their job functions, just 4 percent of UK companies have an automation strategy (i.e. planning to implement tools/techniques within next 12-24 months) for the whole company – considerably lower than European counterparts in Germany and France (both at 8 percent).