Columnists
June 17, 2014
Is it time to stamp out e-cigarettes in your workplace?
by Pam Loch • Comment, Facilities management, Workplace
Electronic cigarettes, love them or hate them, they are here, but are they here to stay? Since 1 July 2007, smoking in enclosed or substantially enclosed public places and workplaces in the UK has been prohibited. E-cigarettes however emit water vapour rather than smoke and therefore could be legally used in public places and workplaces. […]
June 13, 2014
Employers may need to take a disciplined approach to the World Cup
by Richard Barker • Comment, Flexible working, Workplace
With the World Cup now underway, many football fans will be gripped with football fever over the next month, but employers could face HR headaches as a result. Given the time difference in Brazil, games at this year’s World Cup will take place during the late afternoon and evenings in the UK. England’s opening game […]
June 9, 2014
Queen’s Speech was light on employment legislation, but don’t forget flexible work changes
by Pam Loch • Comment, Legal news, Workplace
This year’s Queen’s Speech was the last before the 2015 general election and included a relatively light legislative programme of just 11 new bills. Some of the key employment changes being proposed include changes to childcare, the national minimum wage, and zero-hours contracts. But in fact a key development which was not included in the Queen’s […]
May 29, 2014
What is expense management costing you and your business?
by Richard Gyles • Comment, Workplace
Time is money. That’s why organisations are placing an ever-growing emphasis on improving productivity and streamlining administrative processes to encourage employees to focus on value-added activities. So I’m staggered by how many otherwise forward-thinking companies are still reliant on old-fashioned, paper-based expense management processes. Expenses are an obvious time-sink for claimants themselves and is often […]
May 28, 2014
Money alone isn’t enough to attract and hold on to Gen Y employees
by Jessica Pryce-Jones • Comment, Flexible working, Workplace
The retention of Gen Y employees is key for all organisations. No organisation wants to invest in their next generation of management only to find that they leave, and someone new needs to be trained. But the 20-30 year old workers of Gen Y exhibit a new-found job mobility. Which makes for a ticking time-bomb […]
May 27, 2014
A third of UK workers would welcome a digital assistant to free up their time
by Mark Eltringham • Comment, News, Technology
In the 2008 Pixar film WALL-E, humans have fled the planet they have destroyed in an orgy of garbage-generating mass-consumerism and been reduced to morbidly obese, sedentary lumps living vicariously through screens and whose every need is catered for by the machines around them. Well, they say the best science fiction is really about the […]
May 16, 2014
We need to add another dimension to meet the stress management challenge
by Mark Eltringham • Comment, Workplace, Workplace design
As always, any discussion of stress starts with the headline figures. Work-related stress is evidently the UK’s biggest cause of lost working days. According to the HSE’s most recent data, around 10.4 million days were lost to it in 2012, the most significant cause of absenteeism and a massive 40 per cent of all work-related […]
May 15, 2014
What Lord of the Flies teaches us about Pfizer’s approach to empowerment
by Mark Eltringham • Comment, Workplace
Just how detached some senior business people are from reality is evident whenever a light shines briefly into the recesses of their minds. For Ian Read, the CEO of Pfizer, a moment’s illumination arrived when he pulled a coin from his pocket as he testified to a parliamentary committee on the proposed takeover of Astra […]
May 14, 2014
Spending on office furniture becomes a US political football
by Mark Eltringham • Comment, Furniture, Public Sector, Workplace design
We’ve mentioned this before but when it comes to riling those who see public sector spending as inherently wasteful, nothing gets their backs up quite so much as the buying of lightbulbs and office furniture. You can come up with your own theories on why that might be (and I hope you do), but it’s […]
May 13, 2014
Workplace design, Facebook likes and the need of companies to be your friend
by Mark Eltringham • Comment, Environment, Facilities management, Workplace design
Companies put an awful lot of time and money into getting people to like them on social media these days. While it would be easy to see the like button on Facebook as the primary conduit for this corporate neediness, but it cuts across many aspects of the ways in which companies work, including their […]
June 17, 2014
Workplace ergonomics changed forever twenty years ago thanks to one design
by Justin Miller • Comment, Furniture, Workplace design
By common consent, the office is a little over 100 years old, with most commentators agreeing that the first true office as we understand it was the Larkin Building, designed by Frank Lloyd Wright in 1904. Yet ninety years after this building ushered in the 20th Century workplace, there was another seismic shift in office […]