May 20, 2016

It isn’t easy to grow big when being small makes you more innovative ⁰

by Matias Rodsevich • Comment, Technology, Workplace, Workplace design

Today one of the key challenges most companies face is being able to scale rapidly while still keeping the innovative edge. Startups have less decision-makers making it easier to take the risks needed to remain as innovative. As these companies grow, they often experience a downturn in innovation as management rises. In fact, many larger corporations are now attempting to harvest the success of startups by creating small internal companies. This begs the question do you have to stay small to be innovative? According to the Economist’s study on organizational agility, the main obstacles to improved responsiveness are slow decision-making, conflicting departmental goals and priorities, risk-averse cultures and silo-based information. This isn’t a problem that faces a select number of companies. A survey by McKinsey&Company found that 94 percent of managers are unhappy with their company’s innovation performance.

May 18, 2016

What the imminent arrival of driverless vehicles will mean for the way we work ⁰

by Mark Eltringham • Cities, Comment, Flexible working, Technology

Game changing technology doesn’t come any more disruptive than driverless vehicles. The problem is that we may find the whole idea easy to dismiss based on our past experiences of this sort of thing. Autonomous vehicles carry the whiff of Tomorrow’s World about them, yet they are about to go mainstream far sooner than we might think and their advent will have a major impact on the way we work and live. Both Ford and BMW have announced they intend to have fully autonomous vehicles on the roads within five years. That doesn’t mean the test models that are already on the roads but commercially available vehicles; Volvo will have 100 customers in Sweden and the UK using the vehicles next year. Tesla claims its cars will be driverless in two years. And it’s not just car makers who are intent on grabbing a share of this new market but computer makers like Google and Apple as well as sharing economy pioneers like Uber.

May 13, 2016

Graduates want meaningful work and a fully digitised workplace ⁰

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

Millennials entering the workforce want employment that offers meaningful work, ongoing learning opportunities and a fun workplace culture. This is according to a new study by Accenture on the workforce of the future which reveals that new graduates are increasingly digital, embracing new technologies, both to find work and on the job. The fourth annual Accenture Strategy 2016 U.S. College Graduate Employment Study found that the majority (70 percent) would rather work at a company that provides an employee experience built on a positive social atmosphere and receive a lower salary – up 10 percent on last year’s graduating class. Almost all (92 percent) of 2016 graduates said it is important to be employed at a company that demonstrates social responsibility. They are also three times as likely to prefer to work for a small or medium-sized company (44 percent), versus a large company (14 percent), indicating their preference for a smaller team environment.

May 9, 2016

Public neither knows nor cares about the coming era of smart cities ⁰

by Mark Eltringham • Cities, News, Technology

The smart city is the poster child for the new era of immersive digital living, but the British public remains ‘clueless or indifferent’ about the nature of smart cities and what they will mean for their lives, according to a new report entitled: Smart Cities – Time to involve the people published by the Institution of Engineering and Technology. The report claims that only 18 per cent of the British public has heard of a ‘smart city’ and many are unaware that city-wide technologies could improve the quality of life in urban areas. One third of respondents were unable to select the correct definition of a smart city from a list of options. Eight per cent of respondents opted for “a city that has a higher than average proportion of universities and colleges and aims to attract the most intellectual”. And a further five per cent saw it as “a city that has a strict cleaning regime for its buildings, roads and public places”.

May 6, 2016

Can building design presage the decline of the world’s tech giants?

by Mark Eltringham • Architecture, Comment, Technology, Workplace design

At the movies, buildings are often used to denote hubris. The ambitions and egos of Charles Foster Kane and Scarface are embodied in the pleasure domes and gilded cages they erect to themselves and their achievements. Of course, the day they move in is the day things invariably go badly wrong. In the real world too, monstrous edifices have often presaged a crash. The UK’s most ambitious and much talked about office building at the turn of the Millennium was British Airways’ Waterside, completed in 1998, just a year after Margaret Thatcher famously objected to the firm’s new modern tailfin designs by draping them with a hankie and three years before BA had to drop its ‘World’s Favourite Airline’ strapline because by then it was Lufthansa. Nowadays BA isn’t even the UK’s favourite airline, but Waterside remains a symbol of its era, albeit one that continues to influence the way we perceive building design.

May 4, 2016

London firmly established as global leader in tech and media start ups ⁰

by Sara Bean • Cities, Facilities management, News, Property, Technology

One new tech company has started every hour in London since 2012, which has firmly established the Capital as the global leader in tech and media start ups. According to property firm JLL, over the last five years, a massive 45,000 new tech businesses has been set up in London, with 98 percent of tech companies being start-ups and small businesses. There is migration from the West End to the City and the East, including ‘Silicon Roundabout’ in Old Street, but also new areas which are attracting technology and media companies. The growth of small business has also seen the average office footprint of T&M business fall over the last three years. JLL says for every one T&M company that moved out of Aldgate, Clerkenwell and Shoreditch over the last three years, two new tech and media companies moved in indicating the rapid consolidation of T&M business in the East.

May 3, 2016

Remote working may be the answer to the housing crisis, claims report ⁰

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

A new report from techUK and Citrix claims that the UK’s housing crisis is exacerbated by the majority of workers (59 percent) working on the basis that there is greater potential for securing employment by living and working in large cities. The Housing Crisis: a Digital Solution (download) is based on data from YouGov research into the expectations of 1,243 UK knowledge workers with the potential to enjoy remote working. The report claims that the burden that location-dependent work places on large cities could be significantly reduced by allowing workers to work remotely, as over half of British workers (54 per cent) stated they would be likely to relocate to a rural area if they could still perform their role to the same level. However, while many workers would relocate if they could, connectivity, transport and corporate culture were all cited as challenges to achieving this especially when 48 per cent of rural premises don’t have access to high-speed broadband internet.

May 3, 2016

Pointless admin and inadequate technology cost UK £60 billion a year ⁰

by Mark Eltringham • News, Technology, Workplace

Inadequate and poorly performing technology coupled with the burden of pointless administrative tasks are having a major negative effect on the UK’s productivity, costing businesses around £60 billion a year. That is the conclusion of a new report from workforce management consultants Kronos. According to the report, The £60Bn Question: Is Employee Engagement the Driver of Business Success?, employees spend around 7 percent of their time on unnecessary admin and 82 percent struggle to complete their daily tasks. According to the line managers that took part in the survey, 77 percent claim that outdated technology is the biggest challenge they face and 72 percent believe that they are hampered by the need to carry out tasks that could be automated. Many respondents also cited a lack of engagement as an issue with 34 percent claiming rating their organisation enjoying high levels of engagement and 59 percent claiming their chief exec was more interested in the bottom line than employees.

April 30, 2016

UK’s best workplaces + Great workplace puzzle + Digital future ⁰

by Sara Bean • Facilities management, Flexible working, Newsletter, Technology, Wellbeing, Work&Place, Workplace, Workplace design

In this week’s Newsletter see the latest issue of Work&Place, which features Ian Ellison’s look at the workplace puzzle and what an esoteric Marxist French philosopher can teach us about workspace. Mark Eltringham says that despite debates about technology, culture, buildings and design – it all comes down to the human element; and Sara Bean finds that unlike men, when women start having children, they’re promotion and pay prospects suffers. In news, driverless vehicles will have a significant impact on the real estate sector; evidence that organisations which support mobile technology see a rise in productivity; and a new partnership aims to drive sustainable property development in Europe. The UK’s best workplaces are announced and a new study confirms that the digital future will mean a reliance on physical office space will recede. Download our Insight Briefing, produced in partnership with Connection, on the boundless office; visit our new events page, follow us on Twitter and join our LinkedIn Group to discuss these and other stories.

April 29, 2016

9 in 10 UK office workers stressed by meeting room technology ⁰

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

Meeting room technology which does not work seamlessly is a hindrance for productivity, with 86 percent experiencing serious “meeting stress” when grappling with it during meetings, according to research from Vanson Bourne and Barco. Among the biggest challenges for UK employees were sharing content and screens, and finding the right cables to connect to devices. In trying to deal with problems, staff are wasting significant amounts of their valuable time: 60 percent try to fix problems themselves, 49 percent call support, 30 percent end up giving up. 15 percent even postpone meetings until technology problems can be fixed. The vast majority (90 percent) actually pre-prepare for failures: preparing handouts as alternatives to tech, coordinating with IT in advance, and 44 percent even do a tech rehearsal. As a result of struggling with technology in meeting rooms, a quarter of UK office workers have missed important deadlines, and some have even missed out on personal opportunities like promotions (7 percent).

April 27, 2016

Digital divide in businesses is holding back the British economy ⁰

by Mark Eltringham • News, Technology

A digital divide is opening up across the British economy, with just over half (55 percent) of “pioneer” firms adopting digital technologies and processes, while the other half (45 percent) are falling behind, according to new research by the CBI and IBM. Despite the UK taking top place globally for e-commerce and fifth place for the availability of technology, it ranks only fourteenth in the world for company-level adoption of digital technology, with many companies struggling to digitise their businesses at the rate of peers in other countries. Companies cite a mix of connectivity challenges and security concerns as barriers to digital adoption, but predominantly they are hindered by a lack of appropriate skills inside their business (42 percent of firms) and an unclear return on investment (33 percent). The report’s findings for the UK echo those of a global study carried out by Cognizant.

April 27, 2016

The digital future of work is more about humans than machines, claims study ⁰

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

The claims that robots will render the human species redundant are largely exaggerated suggests a new report from Cognizant’s Centre for the Future of Work and the Economist Intelligence Unit. But we will have to find a new path and it may be one that emphasises human strengths and characteristics working alongside robots. The study of 420 managers in Europe and the US explores the future of the workplace in an increasingly automated world and suggest we will also see the emergence of new jobs involved in the design of augmented reality and avatars as well as a generally greater emphasis on robot-human partnerships in an increasingly digital world. The study claims, unsurprisingly, that the reliance on physical office space will recede, forcing businesses to employ intelligent workplaces which will monitor workers’ environment, needs and even moods.