Search Results for: wellbeing

March 4, 2016

When you can choose to work anywhere, where will you choose to work? ⁰

by Mark Eltringham • Flexible working, Insight Briefings, Premium Content, Technology, Workplace design

One of the great questions that hangs over workers in the new era of boundless work is this: When you can choose to work from anywhere, where will you choose to work? It’s not just a question for the growing army of workers who find themselves unfettered from the traditional times and places of work. They will naturally choose to work in the places they feel make them most productive and happy, which nurture their wellbeing and chime with their values. The challenge for the owners and the occupiers of offices is to create the working environments that will draw people to them. This is particularly important for those organisations with strong cultures who understand the role that physical presence plays in nurturing creativity and the way people exchange information, such as tech and creative firms. The terms of this conundrum and its possible solutions are the themes of our new briefing, produced in partnership with Connection. You can see it here.

March 3, 2016

Open plan offices linked to low engagement and workplace satisfaction levels ⁰

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

As we’ve pointed out before, while open plan working can bring cultural benefits such as improved communication and collaboration; the continuing popularity of the open plan office is largely down to cost. The reason the UK has more than twice as many open plan workers as the global average is primarily due to high real estate costs. Now a new report from Steelcase suggests that space and cost-saving strategies such as open plan offices and hot-desking could be impacting workplace satisfaction and engagement. UK employees are falling below the global average for almost all workplace satisfaction metrics, reporting a lack of control over their work environment (59 percent), difficulties concentrating (43 percent) and an inability to work without being interrupted (50 percent). These three factors were found to be central to fostering an engaged and satisfied workforce. Only 29 percent of UK workers are engaged, compared to 34 percent globally.

March 2, 2016

Why WELL rather than green is the new black in building design ⁰

by Darren Bilsborough • Comment, Environment, Facilities management, Wellbeing, Workplace design

Businesses that seek to occupy premium or grade A office accommodation are traditionally seduced by the next big thing. What was once a bespoke architectural design, then became an icon, a taller building, one made of glass and finally the inevitable iconic, tall, glass tower. Now it seems a good number of those businesses have moved on to green buildings as a must have upgrade to the skyscrapers of glass and steel. Green, it appears, is the new black. But is that really the next big thing or is being green merely the last big thing? Even worse, does going green in terms of building design actually deliver the types of benefits that an occupier or landlord was anticipating, beyond the significance of branding and an alignment with grade A quality office space? The green building narrative is a particularly powerful one and the growth of LEED and BREEAM rated buildings over the last decade is proof of that power.

February 25, 2016

Over half of UK employers will implement flexible working by next year ⁰

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

The UK is on the verge of a flexible working ‘tipping point’ with more than half of employers offering staff more choice of where to work. Working anywhere: A winning formula for good work? produced by Lancaster University’s Work Foundation, and commissioned by Citrix, reveals that 2017 will be the time when over half of organisations in the UK are likely to have adopted flexible working. It also predicts that over 70 percent of organisations will have followed suit by 2020. The Work Foundation, which hosted interviews with academics, business leaders and the public sector to glean insights around the theme of flexible working, supported by research with 500 managerial level employees within medium to large businesses, warns that there is still much to be done to address attitudes towards flexible working, from ensuring people don’t end up working longer hours to dealing with feelings of ‘disconnect’.

February 24, 2016

Too much choice at work just leads to paralysis by confusion ⁰

by Leeson Medhurst • Comment, Facilities management, Workplace design

There is a general acknowledgement within the realm of FM and workplace that its world is changing; and that organisations must be ready and able to adapt to the shifting landscape, or else slip through the cracks and go under. Various factors are contributing towards this drastic reform, including three key infrastructures: technology, corporate and social. The rise of technology will play a significant part in the inevitable workplace revolution, as will the workforce of tomorrow. In addition to these technological advancements, five generations are now making up our modern workforces. It is, therefore, imperative that organisations offer a working model and a workspace that can be tailored to suit the multitude of traditional and modern workers, in order to meet current and future needs. Embedded in our psyche is the belief that the more choices we are presented with, the better, but is that true?

February 23, 2016

Belief in a corporate wellness narrative is more important than action ⁰

by Mark Eltringham • Legal news, News, Wellbeing, Workplace

The complexities of wellness at work are laid bare in a new report from the US based pressure group Global Wellness Institute. The most eye-catching conclusion from The Future of Wellness at Work study is that it’s not actual wellness programmes that do most to boost worker health and productivity, but whether employees identify that company as ‘caring’. The report claims that ‘unwellness’ now costs the US around $2.2 trillion each year, equivalent to 12 percent of GDP. The report is published alongside a white paper which lays out the findings from a survey of American employees. Unlocking the Power of Company Caring gauges how employees feel about their work culture and wellness programmes. The main finding of the two reports is that to understand what has the most powerful impact on employee wellness ‘you must look well beyond the wellness programme’ itself. Instead, the pivotal factor is whether an employee identifies their company as caring about their health and wellness.

February 5, 2016

Embracing the inevitable rise of the robots in the workplace ⁰

by Gary Chandler • Comment, Flexible working, Technology, Workplace design

We often have reason these days to speculate on the truth of an idea known as Amara’s Law. First coined by the researcher Roy Amara it states that “we tend to overestimate the effect of a technology in the short run and underestimate the effect in the long run”. But defining what we mean by short and long term can be very difficult when technology is changing so quickly. Nothing better illustrates this than the issue of how automation will transform society and workplaces. For the past few years, the effects have mainly been the subject of academic and scientific research alongside some lurid headlines in the mainstream media. So, a fairly typical 2013 paper from researchers at Oxford University assessed the risk faced by over 700 professions and discovered that nearly half of all jobs in the US could be categorised as at high risk of automation. Less academic studies such as a report published last year by Deloitte draw similar conclusions.

February 2, 2016

Stress is now a fact of life for the vast majority of employees ⁰

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

Excessive stress threatens the wellbeing of employees across the UK and the rest of Europe, with 88 percent of British workers regularly experiencing stress at work, according to research by payroll software firm ADP. Nearly half (43 percent) of UK employees go further to say that stress is a constant factor in their roles and that they feel stressed ‘often’ or ‘very often’. In fact, just 12 percent of employees feel that they never experience workplace stress while 79 percent of UK workers feel that their employer is trying to help them manage stress levels. The report, The Workforce View in Europe 2015/16, surveyed 11,257 working adults across Europe, including 1,500 employees in the UK. It found that many employees now believe flexible working will help them deal with stress and achieve a better work life balance while over three-quarters (79 percent) of UK respondents feel their employer is trying to help them manage stress.

January 30, 2016

Coworking goes mainstream + Sit stand working + Future for tech offices ⁰

by Sara Bean • Facilities management, Flexible working, Newsletter, Property, Wellbeing, Workplace, Workplace design

In this week’s Insight newsletter; Mark Eltringham analyses the impact of the sit-stand movement and suggests that the I-phone is a very isolating piece of equipment; Georgi Georgiev says remote work is no longer just a freelancer’s game; and Paul Goodchild explains why co-working is shaping office design more than you’d imagine. A new report outlines the key future property trends for TMT workplaces; parents are at greater risk of burn out as they strive for work life balance; fewer than one in ten (8 percent) of UK organisations currently have a standalone wellbeing strategy; the positive benefits of active work are revealed and the UK’s CEO’s worries about cyber-risks. Download the latest issue of Work&Place and access an Insight Briefing produced in partnership with Connection, which looks at agile working in the public sector. Visit our new events page, follow us on Twitter and join our LinkedIn Group to discuss these and other stories.

January 29, 2016

Delivering the low-down on the sit-stand workstation phenomenon ⁰

by Ashley Hayward • Comment, Furniture, Wellbeing, Workplace design

While the UK, US, Australia and other nations continue to treat them as something of a novelty, across Sweden, Norway and Finland, over 80 per cent of office workers use sit-stand desks. Offering employees a height adjustable work station is now mandatory in Denmark. However, sit-stand working is still in its infancy in the UK, with only 2 per cent of similar workers having access to variable-height workstations. Given the huge amount of news coverage devoted to the subject of sedentary lifestyles in the last couple of years, ‘sit-stand’ and ‘active working’ have become buzz terms in UK workplace design. The ‘On Your Feet Britain’* campaign has raised awareness of the health perils risked by the many Brits who spend an average of 8.5 hours a day sitting, whether at their desk or slumped in front of the telly. Inevitably, savvy employers will be asking themselves if they can afford to ignore the problem.

January 19, 2016

More than half of US firms allow smoking in the workplace, study finds ⁰

by Mark Eltringham • Legal news, News, Wellbeing

Now here’s a thing. It appears that more than half of American workplaces continue to allow smoking in the workplace. That is the possibly surprising finding of a new study from the US based Society for Human Resource Management, in spite of the facts that there are laws prohibiting the practice in many US states, the majority of employers have formal smoking policies and that a 2012 report from the Center for Disease Control and Prevention declared a majority of US workplaces to be smoke-free. The report is based on a survey of HR managers working for 376 organisations across the country and found that just over one-half (53 percent) of respondents indicated their firms allowed smoking in the workplace. The study also found that more than four-fifths (85 percent) had a formal, written smoking policy in place while 8 percent had an informal, unwritten smoking policy. Of those with a formal policy, 58 percent have designated smoking spaces.

January 12, 2016

A cynic’s field guide to workplace terminology, part three ⁰

by Simon Heath • Comment, Facilities management, Technology, Workplace, Workplace design

A New Year and a new chance for some people to heap more fresh corporate bullshit onto the already steaming pile. No matter how often writers like the ever excellent Lucy Kellaway mock and deride the propensity of people in organisations to apply cliches and nonsense in lieu of thought and imagination, we have to face an annual fresh tide of drivel and lazy thinking. So predictable is this yearly onslaught, that it appears to now be a subject for trendspotters, as a recent feature in The Telegraph highlighted. Of course, this is just general corporate speak and does not even begin to scratch the surface of what we have to endure in the more parochial world of workplace design and management. Which is why I have produced the latest update to my continually expanding lexicon of regrettable workplace terminology. You can read parts one and two here and here.