Search Results for: mental

July 28, 2016

Working in an office is NOT as bad as smoking, whatever you might read ⁰

by Mark Eltringham • Comment, Knowledge, Wellbeing, Workplace, Workplace design

There is a lurid headline in today’s Telegraph proclaiming that ‘Working in an office is as bad as smoking’. It’s been picked up by a number of other news outlets, has been splashed all over search engines and will no doubt join the stream of misleading narrative that distorts the subject and encourages designers to come up with nonsense like this. So, in an almost certainly vain attempt to close the sluice gates, we would encourage people to read the source material. In this case that is a piece of research in The Lancet medical journal published yesterday. What the report actually concludes is that ‘in addition to morbidity and premature mortality, physical inactivity is responsible for a substantial economic burden. This paper provides further justification to prioritise promotion of regular physical activity worldwide as part of a comprehensive strategy to reduce non-communicable diseases’. In other words, it supports an existing, well understood conclusion.

July 26, 2016

Working with people and on complex tasks slows cognitive decline ⁰

by Mark Eltringham • Knowledge, News, Wellbeing

Working on complex tasks and work that is based on interactions with other people rather than data or things appear to protect against cognitive decline, according to research presented at the Alzheimer’s Association’s International Conference in Toronto. Researchers in two separate studies claim that people whose work requires complex thinking and activities are better able to withstand the wider causes of cognitive decline. The results suggest that working with people, rather than data or physical things, contributed the most to the protective effect and could offset the widely reported effects of a Western diet on cognitive ability. Researchers found that people with increased white matter hyperintensities (WMHs) – white spots that appear on brain scans and are commonly associated with Alzheimer’s and cognitive decline – could better tolerate WMH-related damage if they worked primarily with other people rather than with things or data.

July 26, 2016

Workplace design that hands people control is the key to their wellbeing ⁰

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

Giving employees more control over workplace design is the single most important contributing factor to their wellbeing, according to a new study. The Workplace & Wellbeing report examines the workplace design factors that influence wellbeing. The research team discovered that an invitation to participate in the design of the work environment raised levels of wellbeing, although increasing the level of participation did not necessarily increase the level of wellbeing. The research was led by the Royal College of Art’s Helen Hamlyn Centre for Design in partnership with architects Gensler and supported by a consortium of leading industry names: Milliken, Bupa, Royal Bank of Scotland, Kinnarps and Shell. The context for this project lies with a current ‘wellbeing deficit’ in the workplace which means absence from work costs the UK economy more than £14 billion a year according to the Confederation of British Industry.

July 25, 2016

Many UK workers don’t think current employee benefits meet their needs ⁰

by Mark Eltringham • Flexible working, News, Wellbeing

A new study published to coincide with Smarter Working Day (today, apparently) claims that almost half of UK workers (48 percent) don’t think their current employee benefits package is tailored to their needs. The study of 1,000 UK workers published by payroll lending provider SalaryFinance claims that 38 percent of UK workers currently have access to flexible working although only 26 percent say they prefer the chance of flexible working to financial and psychological wellbeing benefits. Fewer than one in five (19 percent) currently have access to benefits designed to support mental wellbeing, such as counselling services, and only one in four (26 percent) receive financial wellbeing support from their employer. In contrast, one in three (32 percent) receive ad hoc incentives such as free lunches, birthday cakes and duvet days. With 58 percent of people saying that their employer has never asked for feedback on their benefits programme, employers could be falling out of touch with the needs of staff, claims the research.

July 25, 2016

Businesses worldwide ready to welcome robots into workplace ⁰

by Mark Eltringham • Property, Technology, Workplace

Businesses are ready to embrace the new era of robot workers, automation and artificial intelligence, according to a new report. The Robotic Workforce Research study by AI specialists Genfour claims that more than half of respondents globally are ready to embrace the arrival of robots in the workplace. Almost half of respondents believe that between 10 and 30 percent could be subject to automation. Across all businesses in the UK and US, 94 percent responded that they would either embrace robots or felt a robotic future would be inevitable. Almost half (46 per cent) of UK businesses say they are set to welcome robots at work. A similar proportion (47 per cent) believe it is inevitable, and a third (32 per cent) believe they’ll be able to automate as much as 20 per cent of their business as soon as the technology becomes available. Just seven per cent are worried robots would steal jobs and 16 per cent currently have not planned automation.

July 20, 2016

We need to keep a more open mind about open plan office design

by Maciej Markowski • Comment, Facilities management, Workplace design

Most people will be aware that there has been an historic and enduring debate about whether open plan offices are a good or a bad thing. Past articles whether in the Guardian, Dezeen or across the pond in the Washington Post would typically suggest that they diminish productivity and foster a number of other workplace ills. However introducing open plan design principles into your office is almost certainly a good idea. You really just need to make sure that you provide your employees with a choice of settings that allows them to work somewhere that suits the task in hand whether it’s space for concentration or privacy for confidential conversations in order to make it work. It’s a complex and contentious issue so it’s worth asking where open plan works and where it really doesn’t. If you ask many employees working in open plan offices what is bothering them, they’ll probably tell you two things: that they cannot focus and they have no privacy.

July 20, 2016

Public health body calls for vaping rooms and extra breaks for e-cigarette users ⁰

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

For those who recall the endless arguments about the rights of smokers and non-smokers that took place both before and after the ban on smoking in public places, the news that Public Health England has advised employers to set up vaping rooms for e-cigarette users will have a familiar feel. The governmental body claims that employers should make it comparatively easier for people to vape in an effort to persuade more smokers to kick their tobacco habit in favour of vaping, which it claims is 95 percent safer. While it acknowledges that smokers are commonly obliged to huddle outside buildings to indulge their habit, the advice suggests that being forced to vape outdoors as well only serves to “undermine their ability to quit smoking”. The advice suggests that of the 2.8 million people who now vape in the UK, the overwhelming majority are former smokers. However, although their habit is less harmful than tobacco smoking, employers treat both groups in the same way.

July 18, 2016

Opportunities and challenges crystallise for smart cities and buildings ⁰

by Mark Eltringham • Case studies, Cities, Facilities management, News, Workplace design

Global law firm Osborne Clarke has released its fourth research report on smart cities and the future of the built environment. The new edition addresses a number of key issues related to the built environment and poses what it suggests are the two key questions: How can the built environment become smarter? And what are the challenges and obstacles that might prevent this from happening? The report looks at case studies cross Europe and interviews experts in an attempt to discover how smart built environments ‘leverage data, new technology and innovative and collaborative thinking to deliver services that benefit citizens’. The report concludes that a fundamental shift in thinking is already well underway but it is patchy and still faces a large number of major obstacles, not least a silo mentality in decision making which restricts the ability of organisations to innovate and achieve results across a broad base of objectives.

July 13, 2016

Gensler publishes latest US and UK Workplace Surveys for 2016 ⁰

by Mark Eltringham • Architecture, Facilities management, Features, Flexible working, Workplace design

Gensler has announced the results of its Workplace Survey 2016 for both the UK and the US. Key claims of the UK report based on a study of 1,210 respondents include that the UK workforce seems to be divided into ‘haves and have-nots’, with mid and lower-tier workers confined to poor quality environments, 67 per cent of the workforce feel drained due to their office environment at the end of each day and that ‘innovators’ spend just 3.5 days of the working week in the office, highlighting the need for greater flexibility. Meanwhile, the key finding of the US study of 4,000 respondents is that a statistical link between the quality and functional make-up of the workplace and the level of innovation employees ascribe to their organisation, and found that a workplace that prioritises both individual and group work creates ‘an ecosystem of innovation’ across organisations and is a crucial predictor of how innovative an employee sees their company to be.

July 11, 2016

Multi-tasking and workplace distractions don’t allow us to focus on the essentials

by Charles Marks • Comment, Knowledge, Workplace, Workplace design

Although the structure of our brains is largely the same as that of our hunter-gatherer prehistoric ancestors, that does not mean they are immutable. Research shows that the way our brains change in response to technology and the changing workplace suggests they are subject to a certain degree of ‘rewiring’. For example, a recent study found that the emotional response of adults to smileys in emails and texts is exactly the same as they would have to real faces. Tellingly, however, this appears to be learned behaviour because babies do not exhibit the same response. One other aspect of working life that is now proven to change the way our brains work – and not in a good way – is multitasking. Research published by Kep Kee Loh and Ryota Kanai of the University of Sussex found that “Individuals who engage in heavier media-multitasking are found to perform worse on cognitive control tasks and exhibit more socio-emotional difficulties”.

July 11, 2016

Momentum grows to make BIM standard for global construction industry ⁰

by Mark Eltringham • Architecture, Facilities management, Knowledge, Technology, Workplace design

According to a new survey from research firm Timetric’s Construction Intelligence Center (CIC), momentum is growing towards the universal implementation of Building Information Modelling across the construction industry worldwide, with the highest percentage of respondents claiming that it will be the future of the industry. In related news, the UK BIM Alliance will be launched in October and will take over from the UK BIM Task Group as the emphasis is now on making Building Information Modelling the standard approach to construction. The industry alliance has been set up to respond to the UK Government’s challenges in meeting Level 2 requirements. The group will be branded the UK BIM Alliance, and is planned to be officially launched this October. The challenge now faced is to transform from industry mobilisation for Level 2 to make BIM, the standard approach to construction for the entire UK Construction Industry.

July 6, 2016

Ability to meet failure with resilience is a vital management skill ⁰

by Sara Bean • News, Wellbeing, Workplace

The political fallout since the Brexit vote has left many feeling that the UK’s politicians could do with brushing up their leadership skills and prompted debate on whether some of those whose ambitions have been derailed might bounce back. A timely report from the Chartered Management Institute offers advice on the management skills they might need to employ in times of uncertainty. The report claims that within the world of business, unsupportive cultures leave managers to struggle with the fall-out from crises. Most managers (94 percent) have faced crises during their career, but only half (55 percent) have handled them professionally, according to Bouncing Back: Leadership lessons in resilience. The absence of professional management ranks as a major factor in the cause of crises in the survey of 1,100 managers; 78 percent blamed a lack of support from senior management and 68 percent cited culture failure as responsible.