Search Results for: technology

July 13, 2015

Free Wi-Fi for agile workers is not quite as free as you’d like to think

by Mark Eltringham • Flexible working, News, Technology

One of the underlying drivers of agile working is supposedly the availability of ubiquitous free Wi-Fi. Yet according to new research, free Internet access may cost quite a bit more than firms might think. The study from Rethink Technology Research, Enterprise Apps Tech and iPass claims that North American and European business travellers spent at least £855 million in connectivity charges while on the road last year. The report, based on data from around 78 million business trips, includes the costs of 3G and 4G roaming data and paid Wi-FI connections that would have been cheaper of paid for in advance. The report is particularly critical of the practice of offering business users free Wi-FI with deliberately slow connection speeds to encourage them to pay for faster connections. It also highlights the well publicised problems of data security.

July 9, 2015

Many employers discourage home working, unless it is out of hours

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

A combination of tube and rail strikes causing travel disruption in London today, means many businesses will accede to requests to work from home. Yet a large number of UK employers are still reluctant to encourage home working. According to a recent report by Redcentric, despite the fact that that just under a third of UK office workers reported an increase in productivity when working outside of the workplace, 48 percent of respondents claimed that their employers didn’t allow them to work remotely, with 23 percent saying that their business simply didn’t like them doing it, for reasons such as data privacy and loss of productivity. Yet research by PMI Health Group shows nearly a third of staff feel pressured to routinely check and send emails from home, which suggests that employers tacitly encourage home-working, as long as it is on their terms.

July 9, 2015

Growing numbers of workers are ditching their laptops, claims study

by Neil Franklin • Flexible working, News, Technology

A growing number of European employees are shedding their laptops and instead using tablets as their sole device for work, according to a new study from technology research firm International Data Corporation. The report surveyed 2,000 UK, French and German workers and found that tablets are the only business device used by 40 percent of staff. Not everybody is ditching their keyboard so readily, however, as more and more people are using hybrids as their sole device because they need the functionality of the keyboard. The study found that just under a third of users rely solely on hybrids and the study expects this to rise to over half within a couple of years. This not only reflects the changing way we work but also has profound implications for the way we design and manage the places we work and the tools and systems we use to communicate with each other.

July 8, 2015

Productivity starts with people, advises CIPD ahead of today’s Budget

by Sara Bean • Flexible working, News, Workplace

Investing in people’s development and offering flexible working practices can help organisations boost productivity. This is according to research by the CIPD published ahead of today’s budget, which the Chancellor has said will put the emphasis on improving UK productivity. The report: Productivity: Getting the Best out of People, explores the factors that help to explain why some businesses have higher productivity than others and finds that there are clear links between productivity and how people are managed at work. The report finds that performance tends to be higher in businesses where there is a focus on higher quality products or services rather than only on low cost and where workplace culture is clearly aligned with the future direction of the business. Investment in workforce training and an intelligent approach to the implementation of ‘smart’ or agile working practices also has a positive impact.

July 6, 2015

People are outsourcing their own memories to the Internet, claims report

by Mark Eltringham • News, Technology, Wellbeing

We have outsourced our memory to the Internet and digital technology to such an extent that many of us are suffering from digital amnesia. That is the main finding of a new report from software developer Kaspersky Lab. The study of around 6,000 people claims that the seductive ease of access to a bottomless well of information is taking its toll on our natural ability to memorise and recall things for ourselves. Nearly all respondents (91 percent) across all age groups now agree that they “use the Internet as an online extension of their brain”. Around half of people now simply cannot be bothered to remember even basic facts and a quarter cheerfully even forget whatever facts they glean through search engines after they have made use of them. As with many things in the modern world, we are increasingly prone to treat even hard information as disposable.

July 6, 2015

Humans will remain at the heart of the emerging digital workplace

by Maciej Markowski • Comment, Flexible working, Technology, Workplace design

The speed of technological development over the last 30 years has been pretty mind blowing. Of course, some technologies came and went, for instance you would struggle finding fax machines in your office nowadays or people using Pagers to contact one another. It’s no wonder that in the early nineties futurologists predicted the death of the office. Technology was shaping the way we worked and was leading us away from office buildings towards a digital workplace. Yet videoconferencing hasn’t destroyed the need for business travel. Team meetings haven’t been abandoned because of messaging services like Yammer, Slack, Lync and Webex. We still do a lot of business face to face over coffee in a meeting room. Although technological advances have greatly improved the way we connect and do business, companies still appear to value human interaction.

July 6, 2015

World’s first 3D printed office building to be created in Dubai

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

Could this be the shape of things to come? A Chinese 3D printing firm has announced that it has plans to print a fully functioning office in Dubai (where else?). The company, WinSun, will use a 20 foot tall printer to create the components for the 2,000 sq. ft. building which will then be assembled by hand. The local developers behind the scheme claim that the technology, once perfected, will cut project delivery times by as much as 70 percent, waste by up to 60 percent and labour by between 50 and 80 percent, compared to traditional methods of office construction. WinSun has a track record of printing affordable housing in its native country, but this is the first time that it has applied its large scale 3D printing technology to an office building. It also plans to print interior architectural elements and office furniture for the building.

July 3, 2015

One in five Americans would change jobs for better work-life balance

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

More than half of US and Canadian employees report feeling overworked and burnt out (53 percent), yet the overwhelming majority (86 percent) say they are still happy at work. According to the inaugural Staples Advantage Workplace Index employees are working longer days, with about a quarter of them regularly working after the standard workday is done. A key motivator is to advance in the organization, with nearly two-thirds of respondents seeing themselves as managers in the next five years. Though employees are largely conditioned to working longer hours, about one in five do expect to change jobs in the next twelve months. Steps employers can take to improve happiness levels include; adding more office perks, improving office technology and providing a better office design. Alongside this, with employees working longer days and on weekends, the biggest request is for employers to provide more flexibility. More →

July 2, 2015

Over half of workers feel required to work on holiday, and it’s becoming the norm

by Sara Bean • Flexible working, News, Technology, Wellbeing, Workplace

Mobile technology is acknowledged as a boon to flexible working, but can very easily spill into an unhealthy work/life balance. This is most in evidence around summer holiday time, as illustrated by the latest poll on the subject by the Institute of Leadership & Management (ILM). It surveyed more than 1,000 UK workers and managers to find that more than half of workers (61%) feel obligated to work while on leave. The ILM suggests this is the negative side effect of modern technology, as people are contactable anytime and anywhere. 64 percent read and send emails during their time off, 28 percent take business phone calls and 8 percent go into the office. Meanwhile, only 28 percent of those surveyed reported that they had had arguments with friends and family about their working on holiday, down from 37 percent two years ago, which seems to indicate that it is fast becoming the norm to be constantly switched on.

July 2, 2015

Employees prefer diverse working experiences to traditional career ladder

by Sara Bean • Flexible working, News, Workplace

Employees value a varied working experience and flexibility over traditional, linear career progression, a global study published by the Top Employers Institute claims. The Career & Succession Management Report identifies the global developments forcing employers to rethink career and succession management strategies. These include skill shortages resulting in a global competition for best talent and an increased risk of losing business-critical knowledge due to the ageing of the workforce. There is also a new generation of workers seeking diverse work assignments and flexibility, who are taking greater responsibility for their own career management, resulting in less loyalty to employers and less interest in the traditional step-by-step climbing of career ladders. The findings suggest that HR needs to move from assuring the smooth succession of leadership to concentrate more on wider long-term staff engagement and retention.

June 30, 2015

Settings, silence, serendipity, wellbeing and other lessons from Neocon

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

The trick with visits to exhibitions like Neocon, the huge office design event which has just wrapped up in Chicago, is to stay focussed on the wood as much as the trees. So as well as identifying new products, you can also work out the themes pursued by the exhibitors and organisers which are invariably based on the ideas they are currently discussing with their clients. The show becomes a microcosm of what is happening in the outside world. At this year’s Neocon, some of the most readily identifiable themes included the dissipation of the workplace, the creation of work settings, privacy, ergonomics, wellbeing and serendipity. With the possible exception of the age old problem of ergonomics, these all relate to our changing relationship with work and workplaces, not least how we can work from anywhere and what this means both functionally and aesthetically.

June 30, 2015

Number of mobile workers in US will exceed 105 million by 2020

by Sara Bean • Flexible working, News, Technology

Mobile workers will account for nearly three quarters (72.3 percent) of the US workforce by 2020, thanks to the increasing affordability of smartphones and tablets and growing acceptance of corporate Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) schemes. According to a new forecast from International Data Corporation (IDC), the US mobile worker population will grow at a steady rate over the next five years, increasing from 96.2 million in 2015 to 105.4 million in 2020. Innovations in technology such as biometric readers, wearables, voice control, near-field communications (NFC), and augmented reality are already increasing productivity and enabling workers to work in completely new ways. In a recent IDC survey, 69.1 percent of those responsible for managing mobility within their organisation had seen a reduction in costs as a result of implementing BYOD programmes.