Search Results for: governments

July 28, 2016

Growing number of people past retirement age still work to boost income ⁰

by Mark Eltringham • Legal news, News, Wellbeing

For all that everybody bangs on about Millennials, it’s increasingly apparent that the workforce in most nations is actually getting older and that it’s not just Governments who are keen to keep older staff in work, but also people themselves. A new study from MetLife based on Government data claims that nearly one in seven over-65s in the UK are boosting their retirement income by working, earning around £296 in addition per week. The data suggests that the numbers of over-65s working has increased from just 8 percent of the pensioner population to 13 percent in the last ten years, the equivalent of 1.1 million people. Median earnings from working are £296 a week adding up to annual pay of nearly £15,400. The need to keep working is underlined by the continuing squeeze on saving and investment income, which generates just £312 a year for pensioners on average. The proportion of pensioners earning money from investments has dropped from 72 percent in 2004/05 to around 64 percent now. Around 72 percent of all pensioners have private or company pensions compared with 66 percent a decade ago.

July 12, 2016

Major European telecoms firms to drive roll out of 5G across continent ⁰

by Mark Eltringham • Cities, Legal news, News, Technology

A coalition of twenty major European telecommunications firms has come together to drive the rapid creation of a continent wide 5G network and warn national Governments and the EU of the dangers of over-regulation. The seven page document entitled the 5G Manifesto for timely deployment of 5G in Europe, is backed by firms such as Vodafone, Telenor, Orange, Nokia, BT, Ericsson, Telefonica, Deutsche Telekom, and Hutchison. Its core aim is to showcase the technology on a large scale by 2018 and launch a commercial network capability in at least one city in every EU nation by 2020. The document outlines the features and benefits of the technology but also sets out the potential risks posed by over-regulation, including the possible threat to net neutrality, the principle that Internet service providers should enable access to all content and applications regardless of the source, and without favouring or blocking particular products or websites

July 4, 2016

Government should stop using technology to put lipstick on a pig, says report ⁰

by Mark Eltringham • News, Public Sector, Technology

A new report from Brunel University London claims there needs to be a complete turnaround in the way governments and researchers think about how digital technologies can change the public sector. The report was published to coincide with the 11th National Digital Conference in London. The working paper, which invites feedback from practitioners in the field, explains how the only coherent way to achieve any real impact is to embed the potential of technology in the instruments that make governments’ policies real. Policy instruments are the tools that governments use to drive change in the economy and society and include licences, information campaigns and more tangible things like public services and infrastructure. The paper, entitled; Digital Government: Overcoming the Systemic Failure of Transformation, claims that even the most recent approaches still come from the perspective of technology, not the core policy-making functions of government.

June 28, 2016

Countries aware of but not harnessing full potential of older workers ⁰

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

The idea of a fixed retirement age looks increasingly distant in countries around the world and perhaps none more so than the US. According to a study from the Pew Research Center, based on data from the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics, more US over 65s are working than at any time covered in the analysis, and they are working longer hours. As of May, nearly a fifth (18.8 percent) of over 65s worked full or part time, up from 12.8 percent in 2000. Intriguingly, the study also shows that this represents a significant greying of the workplace as in the overall population, 59.9 percent of Americans are currently in jobs, down from 64.4 percent in 2000. The same pattern is evident even in workers significantly older than 65. Even the over 75s are working at higher rates than they did before the 2008 recession, the only age groups about which that can be said, according to Pew, emphasising the fact that the workplace is getting older rather than younger as is commonly assumed.

June 28, 2016

Workers can’t improve productivity when they don’t know what it means ⁰

by Sara Bean • Flexible working, News, Workplace

There’s been a lot of debate surrounding the productivity gap over the past few years, but there’s still much confusion on how best to measure it. Now a new study claims that around half of UK office workers don’t fully understand what ‘productivity’ actually means. The survey, by PageGroup highlights a clear disconnect between employers’ continued push for increased productivity and employees’ understanding of what this really entails. Only 55 per cent of the 1,000 office workers surveyed completely understand what productivity means. For instance, the most popular definitions chosen by respondents were finishing all tasks within their deadlines (37 percent), and getting all their work done within working hours (26 percent). With the vast majority (86 percent) saying that they work out of contracted hours – and around four in ten (39 percent) doing so often or always – it is clear why they might think that they are falling down in that second regard.

June 8, 2016

Cities must lead the way in cutting carbon emissions says IEA ⁰

by Sara Bean • Cities, Environment, Facilities management, News, Technology

With urban areas accounting for up to two-thirds of the potential to reduce global carbon emissions, cities must take the lead in the transition to low-carbon energy, says the International Energy Agency (IEA) in its annual report. Offering long-term pathways that could limit the global temperature increase to no more than 2°C, in line with the goals set at the Paris climate conference (COP21) in December 2015, the report suggests that the most cost-effective approach involves deploying low-carbon options in cities, especially in emerging and developing economies. Because buildings provide useful space to self-generate the electricity they consume: by 2050, rooftop solar could technically meet one-third of electricity demand. Such buildings offer significant demand potential for the roll-out of the most efficient technologies, like energy-efficient windows and appliances. However, international collaboration is essential, claims the report.

May 12, 2016

Making sense of the relentless babble about flexible working

by Mark Eltringham • Comment, Facilities management, Flexible working, Workplace design

Not a day goes by when some organisation or other isn’t found extolling the virtues of flexible working or urging everybody to adopt the practice. While it’s easy to be cynical about the results of surveys from technology companies which are a staple part of this media onslaught, they are actually on to something. And that is why governments, employers and their associations and employees are all attracted to the idea of flexible working as a way of achieving whatever it is they want. The result is the stew of motivations, ideas and terminology that can lead commentators to make grand and daft pronouncements about flexible working; pronouncing it dead, most famously in the case of Yahoo but more subtly in the case of the grand new Xanadus being created in Silicon Valley by the area’s Charles Foster Kanes, or as the harbinger of death for the office based on the notion that somehow we’ll all be working in exactly the same way at some point in the future.

April 22, 2016

LEED certified green buildings in Canada reach a significant milestone ⁰

by Sara Bean • Environment, Facilities management, News, Property, Workplace design

LEED certified buildings in Canada have led to a cumulative reduction of over one million tonnes of CO2e in greenhouse gas emissions – the equivalent of taking 238,377 cars off the road for a year. Along with this milestone the Canada Green Building Council (CaGBC) announced that in the first quarter of 2016 it certified the 1000th LEED Gold project in Canada. LEED Gold, the second most rigorous level of certification, now makes up 38 per cent of all LEED certified projects in Canada – the highest percentage of all levels. This is evidence of the industry’s enhanced capability to achieve higher levels of building performance. Among the most notable projects that earned LEED certification in the first quarter of this year was the certified LEED Platinum TELUS Garden Office Tower in Vancouver, BC, a one million square foot development in the heart of downtown Vancouver that features one of Vancouver’s largest solar panel collections on the office’s rooftop.

April 5, 2016

BIFM launches new guide to construction and design processes ⁰

by Neil Franklin • Facilities management, News, Technology

The British Institute of Facilities Management (BIFM) has launched its new ‘Operational Readiness Guide: A guide to ensuring long term effectiveness in the design and construction process’. The guide aims to ‘equip facilities management professionals with the skills, knowledge and guidance to effectively engage at each stage of the design and construction process to deliver greater value to the end user organisations that occupy the buildings.’ Its launch coincides with the first day that centrally procured public sector projects in the UK will require the implementation of Building Information Modelling (BIM) at Level 2. The authors claims that in order for FMs ‘to deliver long term effectiveness and relevance for the end user facilities management professionals need to be engaged from the start and learnings and insights from operators applied to close the gap between building design and performance’.

March 10, 2016

Staff believe 91 percent of UK firms will no longer be competitive by 2020 ⁰

by Mark Eltringham • News, Technology, Workplace

Studies using 2020 as an apocalyptic landmark are thinner on the ground these days as we get closer to the actual year, so it’s great to see the old chestnut given another roasting in a new report from tech consultancy Infomentum. The headline stat from their new Beyond Digital report is that 91 percent of UK employees believe that new technology will mean that their current businesses will no long be competitive by 2020 unless they face up to the challenges of the digital economy. The report, based on a study of over 1000 office workers, examines how new technology is set to disrupt businesses and employment. Around 50 percent of respondents believe their employers will have to invest in new technology in order to fend off extinction. The survey also suggests that organisations resort to bandwagon jumping when it comes to new technology rather than assessing their needs before making decisions.

March 7, 2016

Government talks a good game on technology, then fails to deliver ⁰

by Mark Eltringham • Comment, Flexible working, News, Technology

Last week, the UK Cabinet Office Minister Matt Hancock delivered a speech to the Institute of Directors, outlining details of the government’s Cyber First programme which aims to develop the skills needed to address the security threats posed by the digital revoluution. The speech was full of the usual stuff about the ‘interconnected world’. It even suggested at one point that the UK has ‘one of the most digitally advanced governments in the world’. Recent developments would suggest that this is slightly wide of the mark, to put it mildly. According to a February report from the regulator Ofcom, the UK’s broadband infrastructure continues to lag behind other countries, held back by BT’s characteristically inept and self-serving monopoly of cable infrastructure. Now the government has confirmed it scrapped its flagship mobile infrastructure project which set out to reduce the number of ‘not spots’ in the country.

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.