Search Results for: engage

More than three-quarters of workers are reluctant to switch employer, finds CIPD

Little appetite among workers to switch employer finds CIPD There is little appetite among workers to switch employer, despite the growth in employment prospects in the UK. This is according to the CIPD quarterly Labour Market Outlook report which suggests that employment will again grow strongly in the final quarter of 2014 but wage growth is likely to remain subdued. The latest report shows that near-term employment expectations have risen to a seven year high, which can be partially attributed to fewer employers looking to make redundancies, as well as an expected continuation of the trend for many employers to be hiring new staff. The proportion of employers reporting hard-to-fill vacancies is broadly unchanged (44%) and two fifths of these are reported as ‘skill shortage’ vacancies. With over three-quarters (77%) of employees saying that they aren’t currently looking to change employers, there is a resultant reduction in churn amongst the existing workforce. This, combined with a growing number of EU immigrants and older people seeking work and an ongoing skills shortage, goes some way to explaining weak pay growth. (more…)

Worldwide fall in levels of trust by employees in their workplace leaders

Deterioration in levels of trust by staff towards workplace leadersThey say a fish rots from the head, and with overwhelming evidence this week that workplaces are torn by backbiting, lying and bitching, a global analysis on workplace trust reveals a deterioration in the levels of trust employees have for their bosses. Interaction Associates annual workplace trust research, Building Workplace Trust 2014/15, found that more than half of the people surveyed gave their organisation low marks for trust and effective leadership. More than half of the 500 people surveyed at companies worldwide, give their organisation low-to-poor marks for trust and effective leadership. When asked to rate the statement “Employees have a high level of trust in management and the organisation”, just four out of ten agreed. The majority (58%) found their organisation lacking, and in fact, trust may be going from bad to worse at many organisations, as  a quarter (26%) of those surveyed say they trust their boss less this year than in 2013.

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Two new reports claim firms and employees are out of step on flexible working

flexible workingThe two latest stones to be tossed into the flexible working maelstrom in the hope of creating a ripple both suggest that employers are out of step with the expectations of their staff when it comes to working hours and conditions. The CIPD launched a new report Getting Smart About Agile Working, at the start of its annual conference in Manchester on 5 November which claims that a third (35 percent) of employees would like to change their working arrangements with nearly half (43 percent) saying they would most like to change the start or finish time of their working day. Meanwhile a separate report from BUPA claims that half of employees of SMEs think their employees underestimate the part that benefits including flexible working have to play in the overall feel of the company, and a similar number (51 percent) believe that not offering such benefits damages an employer’s attractiveness to new recruits.

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Failure to adopt strategic facilities management costs UK £1bn annually

Strategic facilities managementA new report from the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) claims that over a quarter of UK organisations are failing to adopt a strategic approach to facilities management. For those firms without this approach, the annual average cost is calculated by the report’s authors as £120,000, suggesting a total cost to the economy of nearly £1 billion. The claim is based on a study of around 700 organisations in both the public and private sector and across a range of organisational types and sizes.  Around half of those with a ‘dedicated FM programme’ said that doing so had saved their organisation money, 59 per cent reported an increase in productivity, a fifth (21 percent)reported a drop in absenteeism and nearly half (49 percent) claimed it had made them more attractive to customers. The best results were recorded in the public sector with 70 per cent saying strategic facilities management had increased productivity and 71 percent claiming they had seen an increase in employee engagement.

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BIM adoption set to soar in UK and US over next two years, claims report

BIM Level 2Building owners are embracing building information modelling (BIM) as a powerful technology benefitting the design process, managing project schedules, controlling costs and minimizing project errors, according to the recent McGraw-Hill Construction SmartMarket Report “The Business Value of BIM for Owners”. The latest report focuses on the business value of BIM from the perspective of building owners in the United States and United Kingdom for whom the technology has been deployed. Initially adopted as a design tool and later evolving into an important tool for contractors, its adoption among building owners is expanding, the report claims, and that building owners are becoming more directly involved as “their power is even greater to align BIM use with their specific goals, engage more effectively with all stakeholders and extend the value of BIM beyond construction into facility management.” The study claims that 40 percent of US owners and 38 percent of UK owners expect that more than 75 percent of their projects will involve the technology in just two years.

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Report claims business ethics are linked to performance

business ethicsCompanies with well defined and consistent ethical policies are both more stable and more commercially successful, according to a new report published this week by the Chartered Management Institute. Based on a self-reporting survey of 2,500 CMI members the study found that over a third (37 percent) of managers in growing companies rate their own ethics as high, compared to just 19 percent in businesses that are contracting, which suggests a correlation if not causation. Just under a third (29 percent) of managers rate their organisation’s ethical standards as mediocre or poor. Senior managers also appear to have a more positive idea of their own organisation’s ethical standards than those in more junior and front line roles. Nearly half (48 percent) of senior managers believe their organisation has excellent ethical behaviour, compared to just a fifth (22 percent) of junior managers.

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Religious leaders have their say on ongoing work-life balance debate

chief rabbi work-life balanceThe UK’s Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis has appealed to people to free themselves from digital slavery for at least one day a week. Speaking in The Times, the Chief Rabbi (pictured above) calls on all people to give up their smartphones, tablets and other devices for at least a day a week as part of a campaign to revive adherence to the Jewish custom of the Shabbat in which people do not work between sunset on Friday and Saturday. He has been joined in his call by the Archbishop of Canterbury and The Pope, both of whom have urged people earlier this year to focus less time gazing into the unblinking eye of their devices and instead focussing on the real world, its issues and the people around them as a way of achieving a better work-life balance. The Chief Rabbi claims in the interview that the ceaseless need to respond to electronic messages distracts people from family life, communal living and spiritual reflection.

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Awareness of benefits of BIM growing in US and UK, but implementation lags

BIM Level 2Building owners on both sides of the Atlantic are increasingly aware of the benefits of Building Information Modelling (BIM), even though they may not yet use it directly, according to a new report published by McGraw Hill Construction in partnership with Autodesk and Skanska. The report, The Business Value of BIM for Owners, suggests that this pent-up demand will be unleashed in the near future with 40 percent of US owners and 38 percent of UK owners predicting that more than 75 percent of their projects will involve BIM in just two years, with a particularly high level of growth in the US. Growth in the UK is being driven by the approaching implementation of a central government mandate requiring use of BIM on all national public projects by 2016, with over two thirds (67 percent) of UK owners reporting that the mandate is already having a high impact on their use of BIM. Owners in the UK are also more generally aware of the benefits of BIM and have more experience of it in practice.

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BCO announces winners of national awards for Britain’s best workplaces

Britain's best workplaces - One RiversideThe BCO has announced the winners of its prestigious annual National Awards to honour what it considers Britain’s best workplaces. The overall winner was Number One Riverside in Rochdale (above). The office, home to Rochdale Metropolitan Borough Council, was also recognised as the Best Corporate Workplace in the UK, and topped a list of six other award winners recognised for excellence in office space.  Number One Riverside was singled out by the judges for its consolidation of the Council’s estate from 33 buildings into one. The project is also the centrepiece for the first phase of a major regeneration in the borough of Rochdale, ‘providing a new civic office that promotes new ways of working and creates a sense of community, engagement and social transparency.’ The building was commended by the judges for its incorporation of a range of public space alongside the workplace, including a library and cafe and customer service facilities.

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A feeling of togetherness is essential and motivating, so why would we kill off the office?

It is still depressingly commonplace to read proclamations of the death of the office. These are usually appended to some survey or other about the rise of flexible working or a case study of a workplace devoid of desks (or, more likely, one in which none are pictured). Of course, the actual conclusion we can draw from such things is that the office as we once knew it is now dead or mutating into something else, but that’s true for every aspect of modern life. The constant factor that ensures offices will always exist, in some form or other is the human they serve. We know that because, as Tom Allen proved at MIT in the 1980s, people communicate less well the greater the physical distance between them. Now new research from Stanford University shows how the very idea of ‘togetherness’ can have a significant impact on the way people perform. The study, by researchers Priyanka Carr and Gregory Walton was published in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology and concluded that ‘social cues that signal an invitation to work with others can fuel intrinsic motivation’.

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Generation Y make the most trusting managers, finds ILM report

Generation Y are the most trusting managers finds ILM reportMaintaining high levels of trust at work helps to foster an engaged and productive atmosphere, finds a new report by the Institute of Leadership & Management (ILM), which reveals the youngest generation to be the most trusting and those working within the public sector the least trusting. The truth about trust, honesty and integrity at work found that the millennial generation of managers (born 1981 onwards), are the most likely to trust those within their organisation (54%), followed by baby boomers (born between 1946–1964), almost half of whom (45%) say they trust everyone or almost everyone. Generation X, those born between 1965–1980, had the lowest level of respondents saying they trust everyone or almost everyone (44%) at work. The research also reveals that the five fundamental skills and qualities that leaders need in order to be trusted are openness, effective communication, the ability to make decisions, integrity and competence in their role. (more…)

Universal application of open plan has led to global privacy crisis, claims report

open planA major new report from office furniture maker Steelcase claims that the universal provision of open plan offices means that organisations are facing an unprecedented privacy crisis with their employees. The claim is based on international research carried out by market researchers IPSOS and the Workspace Futures Team of Steelcase which found that a remarkable 85 percent of people are dissatisfied with their working environment and cannot concentrate. Nearly a third (31 percent) now routinely leave the office to get work done in private. The authors of the report claim that this does not mean a reversal of the decades long shift away from cellular offices but rather a move to create offices that offer a range of work settings to give people a choice of where and how to work. More than 10,000 workers across 14 countries were questioned about their office environments and working patterns.

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