Search Results for: sit stand

February 26, 2015

London reveals latest plans to move cars, bikes and people underground

by Mark Eltringham • Cities, News, Property, Public Sector

The Mayor of London has revealed the latest plans to move the city’s pedestrians, bikes and cars underground and elevated on decking. The latest proposals would see a number of the capital’s major roads mounted or buried with the space saved at ground level converted to greener and more pleasant uses (and property development obv). An announcement from the Greater London Authority claims that over 70 sites across London have been considered for the scheme which will include new tunnels, fly-unders and decking. It follows hard on the heels of another proposal to create the Underline, a network of cycle lanes and walkways based on the city’s existing web of unused tunnels. The roads proposed for the new scheme include the A4 in Hammersmith, the A13 in East London and sections of the North Circular Road.

February 26, 2015

Over half of employers reject mandatory quotas for women on boards

by Sara Bean • Legal news, News, Workplace

The Women on Boards review published by Lord Davies in February 2011 looked at the obstacles that prevent many women from reaching senior positions in business, such as FTSE 350 corporate boards; and set a target of 25 per cent of board positions being held by women by 2015. As the anniversary of the report approaches, new research by the CIPD, business leaders and Business and Women & Equalities Minister Jo Swinson MP, has revealed resistance to the idea of mandatory female quotas as mooted by some EU members, with over half those polled suggesting that the government should instead set a more ambitious voluntary target to improve gender diversity in boardrooms post-2015. Two thirds of respondents said that an open and supportive culture that encourages gender diversity would be a more effective way of improving gender diversity at board level.

February 25, 2015

The pressing need for more women to forge careers in STEM disciplines

by Mark Eltringham • Facilities management, News, Property, Technology, Workplace

One of the most pressing economic challenges facing the UK is producing enough qualified professionals in the key science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM) disciplines. And, as a number of new reports make clear, the problem is compounded by the failure of enough women to develop careers in those areas that will define the country’s economic future. It was a point raised in a recent Government report into the UK’s digital future. Writing for the BBC earlier this month Dame Prof Ann Dowling the President of the Royal Academy of Engineering laid out the scale of the problem; by 2022 the UK will need at least 1.82 million new engineering, science and technology professionals. What is also becoming clear is that, while many women are keen to develop STEM careers, they face a series of obstacles at every step.

February 24, 2015

Design Museum Awards: the buildings may be accessible, but the language isn’t

by Simon Heath • Architecture, Comment, Workplace design

One of the fundamental challenges when asked to offer a critique of something is that you may find that you actually like a great deal of what you are presented with. And this is precisely the challenge offered up by the shortlist for The Designs of the Year awards, organised annually by London’s Design Museum to honour work “that promotes or delivers change, enables access, extends design practice or captures the spirit of the year”. It would be churlish indeed to take issue with projects that seek to address the provision of education in deprived areas; remove pollutants from the air and from the oceans; advance technological solutions to help people with impaired sight or mobility and improve sanitation to eliminate the diarrhoea which kills approximately 1.8 million people annually, primarily children under the age of 5.

February 13, 2015

New report highlights the borderless and liquid nature of the diverse workplace

by Sara Bean • Architecture, Flexible working, News, Workplace design

Predicting the office the future is not an exact science, but sometimes a report comes along which does a decent job of cutting through the fog and pointing us in the right direction. The Kinnarps’ Trend Report 2015, published this week by the firm’s future labs workshops, draws out some important themes for the new diverse workplace; the borderless and liquid nature of modern working life, how co-working clusters are now a mature trend, why designers need to consider the introvert as well as the collaborative extrovert worker; wellness as the new sustainability and the fact that people will and should be allowed, to modify the environment in which they work. Five key trends were identified in the report, the impact these have on working life are examined and suggestions made on how designers can apply them in their workplace design strategies.

February 12, 2015

RIBA calls for next Parliament to focus on the built environment

by Sara Bean • Architecture, News, Property, Public Sector

The Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) has called on all parliamentary candidates to focus on the built environment in the forthcoming general election. Along with a renewed focus on building more quality homes and schools, RIBA is campaigning for improving the planning process; developing flood-proof communities; delivering energy efficient buildings and retrofitting those that are not; and providing a good quality built environment to accommodate an ageing population and encourage more people to become healthier. The #BuildaBetterBritain campaign is based on RIBA’s report and recommendations, Building a Better Britain: A vision for the next Government. RIBA has created a campaign website to enable architects and constituents to find and make contact with their candidates.

February 11, 2015

BIFM and CIPD launch Workplace Conversation to discuss future of work

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

The BIFM and the CIPD have launched a joint initiative that aims to examine the evolution of the working environment and the future of work. The Workplace Conversation, project, which was announced by BIFM Chief Executive, Gareth Tancred, at the Workplace Futures conference yesterday, builds on the agreement made between the two bodies last year to collaborate on ways the ‘custodians of two of the most important drivers of business performance – people and place’ could build bridges between the two disciplines. The project will aim to identify and define the challenges, ideas and opportunities on how work is enabled, both now and in the future, and will explore topics such as the emergence of new technologies, economic forces and flexible working alternatives, and their impact on business performance and the way people work.

February 9, 2015

The open plan remains an important office design element

by Paul Goodchild • Comment, Facilities management, Workplace design

For half a century the default office design model in large parts of the world has been the open plan. Even though that continues to be the case, a growing number of voices are questioning this hegemony and suggesting there may be better ways of designing offices that balance the advantages of the open plan while eliminating or mitigating drawbacks. On the face of it, the case for working in open plan offices is clear cut. Not only are they believed to be more conducive to collaborative work, open plan workstations take up around half the space of cellular offices. As well as taking up less space, a crucial consideration is that fit-out costs are typically around 25 per cent lower, even in eye wateringly expensive commercial property hotspots such as London.

January 30, 2015

Political focus on regulation misses real workplace issues, says CIPD

by Sara Bean • Legal news, News, Workplace

One of the key policies of the Coalition Government is its Red Tape Challenge, intended to ‘roll back’ as many ‘restrictive’ employment regulations as possible. Such deregulation has been lambasted by the Labour party for its negative effect on employer / employee relations and workplace performance. As the parties gear up for the election May this argument looks set to intensify. Yet according to a major new report from the CIPD, Employment Regulation and the Labour Market, neither approach is likely to have any impact on UK labour market outcomes, suggesting there isn’t a case for the next Government to either deregulate or strengthen employment rights. Instead, the CIPD is urging policymakers to focus efforts on improving productivity through a much stronger focus on workplace practices, increasing awareness of existing rights and enforcing them more effectively.

January 29, 2015

Wellness programmes may be causing more problems than they solve

by Mark Eltringham • Knowledge, News, Wellbeing, Workplace

Far from making employees healthier, a corporate focus on their wellness may actually be making them unhappier and more prone to illnesses. That is the conclusion of a new book published by two researchers at Cass Business School and Stockholm University. In the book, The Wellness Syndrome, the authors Andre Spicer and Carl Cederström claim that the fixation with monitoring wellbeing and initiating wellness programmes may be having the obverse effect to that intended. The book argues that an obsession with wellness obliges some people to pretend to be happy at work, even when they are not and that the pressure to fit with a corporate notion of what constitutes a ‘well’ person makes them depressed and anxious that they will be labelled by their employer and colleagues if they don’t fit an ideal.

January 29, 2015

Latest commercial buildings listings illuminate changing world of work

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

The latest fourteen buildings to be listed as part of the Post-War Commercial Buildings Project have been announced by the UK Government’s Department for Culture, Media and Sport. The project was initiated by English Heritage in 2011 as a way of recognising the significance and diversity of commercial buildings and acknowledging their unique proneness to change. According to English Heritage the latest fourteen Grade II listed entries (as well as a number of others assessed but deemed of lesser significance) also highlight how the design of commercial buildings reflected the changing world of work up to the cut off point of 1984. Although the projects are predominantly in the South East, there are listings for commercial buildings in Leeds, Newcastle-upon-Tyne and Birmingham.

January 28, 2015

Digital revolution continues to transform the way we work

by Mark Eltringham • Facilities management, Flexible working, Technology, Workplace

The full extent of the way digital technology is transforming British working life is apparent in new research published by Brunel University. The study – essentially a snapshot of the digital revolution in 2015 – found that 98 percent of the 830 businesses surveyed have a website, 8 in 10 manage finances online, 53 percent provide flexible working and 63 percent see innovation as a way to improve customer satisfaction. However, the study also reveals a major gulf between big business and SMEs, with larger firms significantly more digitised than their smaller contemporaries. This raises concerns over the preparedness of the SME sector at a time when the Government’s growth agenda has prioritised nurturing and supporting new and evolving enterprises – and for whom the digital battleground has broken down traditional barriers to entry.