Search Results for: working from home

November 3, 2017

Growing need for a flexible workplace creates fresh challenges for employers

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

Many businesses are misaligned with their people, with nearly half of employees not understanding their company’s strategic objectives, according to new research published by The Ludic Group, which claims that the changing nature of workforces and the growing need for a flexible workplace are creating fresh challenges for communication, collaboration and engagement. The research suggests that the impact of technology is causing digital chaos, with businesses struggling to get the communications balance right. With the number of channels and tools increasing almost half of people (44 percent) want to hear more from employers. Perhaps surprisingly, one in five (20 percent) individuals said that their firm has not used any tools or techniques to communicate with them. This lack of communication results in people being disconnected from the business strategy, with only half of individuals (50 percent) reported fully aligned with their company’s objectives and 44 percent not knowing or understanding what these are. Alongside this, people increasingly want to design their own working experience and expect more flexibility from their employers.

October 25, 2017

Frederick Taylor was a man of his time not a whipping boy for ours

by Mark Eltringham • Comment, News, Workplace, Workplace design

Everybody likes a pantomime villain, and for many commentators on management and office design, they don’t come more dastardly than Frederick W. Taylor. Not only do pictures of him betray him as wealthy, white and starched, his ideas and the language in which they are couched are totally out of step with the way we think now. So for anybody writing about enlightened contemporary management practices, it’s no wonder that it is almost customary to start with a rejection of Taylorism in general and his theory of scientific management in particular. The gist of Taylorism laid out in his 1911 book The Principles of Scientific Management is that work should be analysed to establish the most efficient way of doing it, the right person to do that work must be chosen and managers are there to make sure that it all goes to plan. As far as workers are concerned, what we now think of as Taylorism is best (and partly unfairly) summed up as:‘You’re not paid to think. Shut up and do your job.’

October 23, 2017

Freelancers to make up a majority of US workforce within a decade

by Mark Eltringham • Flexible working, News

Freelance website Upwork and the Freelancers Union have published the results of a report called Freelancing in America: 2017, which the sponsors claim is the most comprehensive measure of the US independent workforce, (but given their vested interests probably needs you to add a pinch of salt and always worth reading Trustpilot reviews). The fourth annual study estimates that 57.3 million Americans are freelancing (36 percent of the US workforce) and contribute approximately $1.4 trillion annually to the economy, an increase of almost 30 percent since last year.

October 17, 2017

Majority of workers are sleep deprived and stressed, negatively impacting their performance and wellbeing

by Mark Eltringham • News, Wellbeing

Over three quarters (77 percent) of British workers admit that having a bad night’s sleep negatively impacts their working day, with 27 percent claiming that they feel exhausted on a daily basis, according to a new study from jobsite CV Library. The study explored the attitudes of 1,300 workers around the topic of sleep and the workplace and was conducted with input from Neuroscientist Professor Jim Horne. The research claims that three quarters of Brits (74.5 percent) cite workplace stress as a key cause of their disrupted rest, with a further 92.5 percent admitting that a stress-related disrupted sleep negatively affects their emotions. What’s more, while the majority of workers (58.9 percent) would like to get 7-8 hours of sleep a night, only 26.1 percent currently achieve this, with most people (56.8 percent) actually receiving 5-7 hours. The research claims that sleep deprivation is most likely to affect an employee’s ability to stay focused (72.7 percent) as well as their ability to deal with challenging situations (46.5 percent) and make important decisions (34.2 percent).
More →

October 9, 2017

Our Twentieth Century approach to ergonomics has to change

by Mark Eltringham • Comment, Flexible working, Technology, Wellbeing, Workplace design

One of the big problems with the way some people talk about the term ‘ergonomic’ is that they tend to use it to describe the design of objects when really it’s about the relationship between a person and the things around them. It’s an abstract idea, about the relationships between design, facilities and management, so is dependent on a number of variables. When those variables change, what we understand to be good ergonomics changes too. The principle of ergonomics as we now understand it first came to prominence in the wake of the intensive growth in the use of computers. The legacy of this fixed view can be an approach based on an idea of desk-bound employees with a computer, whereas how we work now bears little resemblance to how we worked 20 years ago.

October 9, 2017

World Mental Health Day is a day to recognise our duty of care

by David Hope • Wellbeing

The five-year period since August 2012 has seen a 40 percent rise in mental health issues contributing to absenteeism in the workplace. Our data reveals this from examining more than 13 million days of absence across some 180,000 employees. With an estimated 31 million people working in the UK, this percentage rise is the equivalent of 4.34 million Days Lost Per Employee (DLPE) – or more precisely, an additional 1.25 million more days lost due to mental health in 2017 than 2012. And, in June to August this year, it was the most common reason for absenteeism in the UK.

This tells us two things that you don’t need to be a statistician to deduct. That there has been a steep increase in mental health absenteeism in recent years and that the summer months adds additional stress upon individuals. And this is at a time when we’d hope to be rewarded with some R&R time.

Holidays, and children being home from school, have a clear impact here, and these stresses can more often than not be carried over in to the workplace. But, with children back at school and the holiday season now over, we predict that absenteeism due to mental health issues will drop over the next three months and should account for 0.13 DLPE in November compared with 0.14 in August.

This is all very well but there’s no point in delivering this data if it’s not used in a positive way. We encourage employers to take a look at these trends and recognise who could be affected and where this may impact their business. And in doing so, implement policies accordingly to support those that are living with, or could be susceptible to, mental health issues.

Organisations should ensure their stress management policies are up-to-date, that staff are encouraged and comfortable raising stress related anxieties and concerns and line managers have sufficient training. By doing so, employers will see the benefit to their workforce in both health and productivity while making significant healthcare cost savings, too. There is a raft of information out there to help with this and HR and OH professionals are skilled at recognising signs and trends and helping those that require assistance. Every year World Mental Health Day recognises this awful illness and it deserves close attention. Because as corporate entities we don’t just have a commitment to the bottom line, we have a very serious obligation and duty of care to the wellbeing of our employees.

______________________________________

David Hope is CEO of FirstCare

October 6, 2017

Seven workplace stories you should read this week

by Mark Eltringham • Features, Flexible working, Property, Technology, Workplace design

Poland has a rapidly ageing population but has just cut its state retirement age

Why IBM is bucking the trend and demanding its workers return to the office

US cities are offering all sorts of incentives for Amazon to move there

India is looking to create ten billion sq. ft. of green smart cities

WeWork’s $20 billion punt on the future of work

Does colour really affect the way we think and behave?

The silent killer of productivity and wellbeing is lack of civility

October 4, 2017

Convergence of work and life defines September London workplace design shows

by Paul Goodchild • Comment, Events, Flexible working, Furniture, Workplace design

It has always been a characteristic of the 100% Design exhibition that it has segmented along the demarcations of workplace, home, interiors, kitchens and bedrooms. This used to make perfect sense as the same distinctions existed in our lives, reflected in the form and function of the products we allocated to those spaces. This is no longer the case to anywhere like the same extent and consequently, the workplace section of the show is full of products that could make the crossover into a domestic, cafe or hotel setting with not an eyebrow raised. That is not to say that the mainstay products of the workplace – desks, task chairs, storage, screens – are no more. They are still specified in vast numbers. It is just that the interesting aspects of workplace design are to be found in its shared and public spaces. It is here where we witness the convergence that characterises modern working life. We might still talk about work life balance (too much) but there is a growing realisation that the distinction grows more meaningless with each passing year.

October 2, 2017

Time to start a new culture to tackle stigma on mental wellbeing issues in the workplace

by Kate Cooper • Comment, Wellbeing

As a recent Workplace Insight story reported, UK workers are still uncomfortable about having honest conversations at work, with nearly two thirds (61 percent) feel they keep an aspect of their lives hidden in the workplace. Family difficulties (46 percent) was the most likely hidden issue at work, followed by mental health (31 percent). Talking about mental wellbeing worries to employers can be very distressing for individuals and not only make a person’s condition worse, but also, leave their career in a worse place according to our latest thought leadership research report: Mind Culture. Our latest research study shows that more than half (51 percent) of survey respondents who had confided in their line manager about a mental health issue did not receive any extra support. Even worse, 8 percent respondents faced negative consequences, including being sacked or forced out, demoted or subjected to disciplinary action.

September 28, 2017

How smart workplaces increase performance and attractiveness ⁰

by Kati Barklund • Case studies, Facilities management, Premium Content, Technology, Work&Place, Workplace design

The workplace can and should be used as a strategic tool to support work and cooperation, to shape the experience of the brand and to produce competitive advantage for the organization. Even when not used as a strategic tool the workplace still affects all these parts and there is always a risk that the workplace has instead a negative impact if we are not aware of the relationship and really use workplace as a strategic tool to affect attractiveness, productivity, efficiency and sustainability. The workplace makes a great difference and it is becoming an important differentiator between successful and less successful organizations. I also strongly believe that the workplace management area is a key for us in the FM industry to bring FM to a higher level, to shift from cost focus to more value focus, and this is something we need to do together within the FM industry and we really should take the driver’s seat. But, let’s start from the beginning.

September 26, 2017

Growing concerns about staff wellbeing will transform real estate over coming years, claims study

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

The UK commercial property market will be transformed over the next few years as a growing number of firms use their workplaces to address the physical and mental wellbeing of staff, claims a new report from law firm CMS. The report, Smart Healthy Agile, is based around the findings of a survey of 1,000 office workers and 350 real estate firms. It claims that the most common problems associated with office life and sedentary lifestyles, such as weight gain, stress, depression and musculoskeletal disorders are encouraging employers to adopt a different approach to working culture and office design.

September 22, 2017

An inability to develop skills at all ages leaves people unprepared for the future of work

by Mark Eltringham • News, Workplace

Efforts to fully realise people’s economic potential in countries at all stages of development are falling short due to ineffective deployment of skills throughout the workforce, development of skills appropriate for the future of work and adequate promotion of ongoing learning for those already in employment. These failures to translate investment in education during the formative years into opportunities for higher-quality work during the working lifetime contributes to income inequality by blocking the two pathways to social inclusion, education and work, according to the World Economic Forum’s Human Capital Report 2017. The report measures 130 countries against four key areas of human capital development; Capacity, largely determined by past investment in formal education; Deployment, the application and accumulation of skills through work; Development, the formal education of the next generation workforce and continued upskilling and reskilling of existing workers; and Know-how, the breadth and depth of specialised skills-use at work. Countries’ performance is also measured across five distinct age groups or generations: 0-14 years; 15-24 years; 25-54 years; 55-64 years; and 65 years and over.