Search Results for: performance

April 12, 2015

Green Sky Thinking to focus on designing in sustainability for London ⁰

by Sara Bean • Environment, Facilities management, Wellbeing, Workplace design

Green infrastructure, social sustainability and intelligent design are the main themes for this year’s Green Sky Thinking event, which takes place between 20-24 April. The event includes a range of informal session and on-site talks that highlight what the organisers claim is best practice on how to ‘design in’ sustainability. The purpose of the programme, led by Open-City, is to enable those working within the built environment to see real life sustainable solutions, talking face to face with those responsible for designing, delivering and managing successful schemes. Its ultimate aim is to help them gain a holistic and cross-disciplinary understanding of how sustainable development is being practically applied across London, while understanding the current technologies, policy and thinking and how these translate into practice.

April 9, 2015

Why Facebook and other tech giants still apply mainstream office design ideas ⁰

by Charles Marks • Comment, Facilities management, Workplace design

This week Facebook moved into its new offices in Menlo Park, California. As you might expect they are somewhat out of the ordinary. Designed by Frank Gehry, they are bright, open and loaded with quirky and colourful design ideas. Yet upon closer inspection their underlying office design principles are often resolutely mainstream, not least the inclusion of what is billed as the world’s largest open plan office. In fact this has the personal backing of the CEO himself and has long been the core element in the brief because Facebook sees the idea of openness as being an essential part of its mission and business model. Mark Zuckerberg announced the opening of the building on his own Facebook page (where else?). In his official statement, he explains the thinking behind the design in an interesting way and it bears reproducing.

April 8, 2015

One in three employees have experienced conflict at work, reports CIPD

by Sara Bean • News, Wellbeing, Workplace

As many as one in ten employees are leaving their organisation as a result of workplace conflict, research from the CIPD has revealed. One in three UK employees (38%) have experienced some form of interpersonal conflict at work in the last year – this includes one in four (29%) who have had isolated disputes or clashes and a further one in four (28%) who report ongoing difficult relationships. However, there appears to be a clear power differential at play, with employees being most likely to perceive a lack of respect, bullying or harassment from their boss or other superiors and as many as 1 in 4 said that their line manager actively creates conflict. Employees reported conflicts as being most often with line managers or other superiors (36%) rather than with direct reports (10%). This results in individuals feeling stressed and can lead to a drop in commitment or motivation.

April 7, 2015

“Toxic” employees create stressed co-workers, with over half more likely to quit

by Sara Bean • News, Wellbeing, Workplace

Members of staff who have a negative influence on those around them, and create a poisonous atmosphere in the office, do not affect the overall productivity of their colleagues, but are more likely to make them want to leave. “Toxic employees” make their teammates 54 percent more likely to quit and cost employers up to three times more in hiring fees, finds “Toxic Employees in the Workplace” a new US-based report by Cornerstone. The indirect costs of toxic employees, as measured by the toll they take on co-workers, can have a far greater overall impact and create an even larger financial burden on the business than the direct costs of an employee’s misbehaviour. While these individuals have a negligible effect on the performance of their co-workers, the research suggests they have a stronger influence on stress and burnout than on day-to-day task completion.

April 2, 2015

UK labour productivity continues to flatline in spite of upturn

by Mark Eltringham • Knowledge, News, Workplace

UK labour productivity continues to flatline in spite of the recent economic upturn, according to a new report from the Office for National Statistics. Overall productivity as measured by output per hour fell by 0.2 percent in the fourth quarter of 2014 compared with the previous quarter. In 2014 as a whole, labour productivity was little changed from 2013, and slightly lower than in 2007, prior to the economic downturn. As ever, the devil is in the detail. There were notable increases in productivity in both manufacturing and construction but the modest gains in service industries obscure the fact that there is a great deal of variation across sectors and also the fact that any gains reflect a greater number of hours worked rather than an increase in the overall number of people employed or their underlying productivity.

April 2, 2015

New study explores link between workplace design and productivity

by Mark Eltringham • Flooring, News, Wellbeing, Workplace design

The latest report linking specific workplace design elements with increases in productivity and wellbeing has been published by flooring manufacturer Interface and organisational psychologist Cary Cooper. The Human Spaces report into The Global Impact of Biophilic Design in the Workplace, claims that employees who work in environments with natural elements report a 15 percent higher level of well being, are 6 percent more productive and 15 percent more creative overall. The report is based on a study of 7,600 office workers from 16 countries. It concludes that office design is so important to workers that a third (33 percent) of global respondents believe it would ‘unequivocally’ affect their decision whether or not to work somewhere. Design is particularly important in India (67 percent), Indonesia (62 percent) and the Philippines (60 percent).

April 2, 2015

CIBSE launches updated guide to environmental building design

by Mark Eltringham • Architecture, Environment, Facilities management, News, Property

The Chartered Institution of Building Services Engineers (CIBSE) has published the latest edition of Guide A: Environmental Design which the organisation claims is ‘the premier technical reference source for designers and installers of building services, especially low energy and sustainable buildings’. As well as updates to legislation and new research, the edition includes a completely new chapter which identifies specific requirements for achieving quality in environmental building design: adopting a holistic approach as well as a system to assure the quality of design calculations and decisions. The other chapters deal with a specific aspect of design including criteria such as comfort and ambient weather and methods of calculation for performance, heating and ventilation systems, methods for thermal comfort evaluation, energy demand and so on.

April 2, 2015

Flexible working and recognition linked to happiness at work

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

The eternal quest for happiness is the subject of two new reports which conclude that if you want to feel more satisfied with your working life, it’s important to feel as if you are in control of it. New research from Professor Andy Charlwood at Loughborough University claims that government and employer policies that give people greater flexibility to choose the hours they work helps to foster their wellbeing and that overworked people are less satisfied with their lives and experience lower levels of psychological wellbeing overall. A second, less scientific study commissioned by US software provider InLoox claims that one of the most important determinants of happiness at work is an ability to work unsupervised or not to report to anybody at all so, if you must have a job, make sure you’re in charge.

March 30, 2015

Gamification remains a mystery to employees and unused by many firms

by Mark Eltringham • News, Wellbeing, Workplace

Although it’s currently one of the most talked about workplace ideas, gamification remains a mystery to many workers and even HR professionals keen on the idea are probably not doing much about it. Those are two of the findings of a report from consultancy Penna based on interviews with 2,000 HR directors and employees. The study set out to explore how well senior HR professionals understood gamification, its uses and their perception of the barriers to adoption. Researchers also asked employees about their level of ‘everyday engagement’ with gamification and whether they recognise it as a concept. Over half (52 percent) of HR directors claim to be ‘massively interested’ in the idea although 44 percent also agreed that their organisation was ‘not at all interested’. Remarkably the survey also found that 89 percent of employees don’t even know what it is.

March 27, 2015

Civil service addresses work conditions and careers of disabled employees

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

The UK Cabinet Office has published a report in partnership with Disability Rights UK to look at ways the Civil Service can better support the careers of its 27,000 staff with disabilities and health conditions. The report claims that ensuring that disabled employees ‘fulfil their potential makes basic business sense and would significantly enhance the Service’s performance.’ It claims that there has been some progress since the last report on the subject in 1998, but that barriers remain. Nearly 9 percent of civil service employees now claim to have a disability which is more than double the reported rate of 4.1 percent in 1998. The report identifies the underlying challenges and looks to share best practice. It notes that while there is strong commitment to disability equality from senior champions, this has not been translated into line manager action and cultural change.

March 25, 2015

Report identifies the challenges and opportunities of workplace wellbeing

by Mark Eltringham • Briefing, News, Wellbeing, Workplace, Workplace design

Much of what has been called workplace strategy in recent years has been more about cutting costs than supporting people, often to the detriment of the latter. That is the central claim of a new report authored by Kate Lister and Tom Harnish of Global Workplace Analytics and sponsored by office furniture maker Knoll. The paper, What’s Good for People? Moving from Wellness to Well-Being, explores how better workplaces, processes and practices can improve workplace wellbeing, employee engagement and organisational performance. The study starts from the premise that people are dealing with unprecedented stresses and pressures in the workplace which now need to be addressed in the context of a recovering economy, the limits of an approach that focuses on doing more with less and an increasingly scant pool of human resources and talents.

March 20, 2015

Happiness and wellbeing must be at the heart of the economy finds new report

by Sara Bean • Flexible working, News, Wellbeing, Workplace

To mark International Day of Happiness, a major new report has revealed that a country’s GDP fails to reflect levels of people’s happiness, which, it says, “are not easily reducible to monetary values”. Wellbeing and policy was commissioned by the Legatum Institute, which established the Commission on Wellbeing and Policy to advance the policy debate on social wellbeing and is chaired by the former head of the civil service Lord Gus O’Donnell. It finds there is growing recognition that the measures of a country’s progress need to include the wellbeing of its citizens. The report adds that with job satisfaction on a long-term downward trend in most advanced countries, and people ranking time spent with their manager as among their least happy moments in the day, there’s a lot more employers can be doing to address levels of wellbeing and happiness at work.