Search Results for: health

February 20, 2015

Job automation seen as a key digital challenge in new policy report

by Mark Eltringham • News, Public Sector, Technology, Workplace

Whichever party or coalition forms the next UK Government will face a raft of serious challenges with the emerging digital economy, including making plans for the automation of up to a third of existing jobs. That is the main conclusion of a new report published this week by The House of Lords. Make or Break: The UK’s Digital Future, argues that the next 20 years will present the UK with a range of profound challenges and opportunities and it is incumbent on the Government to address them at the earliest opportunity. As well as imminent and well known issues such as the need to roll out ultrafast broadband countrywide and the development of skills and digital clusters, the report also highlights the particular issue of what to do about the claim that up to 35 percent of jobs over the next two decades will be automated.

February 17, 2015

Employment confidence is increasing, but so is the pay divide finds CIPD

by Sara Bean • News, Public Sector, Workplace

The UK workforce is seeing an increasing pay divide between employers that can now afford to increase wages by 2 percent or more and those that are stuck in a pay freeze. According to the latest Labour Market Outlook from the CIPD, almost half of the UK workforce saw either a pay freeze or a pay cut (3% pay cut, 39% pay freeze) in the twelve months to December 2014. In contrast, a similar proportion (40%) have received a pay increase of 2 percent or more and less than a fifth (18%) fall in the middle ground of people who have received a pay increase in the 0.1-1.99 percent corridor. As well as identifying a growing pay divide, the report finds employment confidence is set to remain strong over the next three months with around two thirds of employers (65%) planning to recruit new employees.

February 13, 2015

Our personal choices can tell us a lot about the state of the economy

by Alison Kitchingman • Comment, Products, Workplace design

The announcement by Pantone that its Colour of the Year for 2014 was a muted reddish brown called Marsala was met with the annual carping about the subjectivity of the whole thing. Yet there are two things we know for sure. One is that Pantone puts a lot of time and effort into making its decision and looks at a range of social and economic factors, fashions and tastes before making its decision. The other is that this idea that you can gauge trends by tracking changes in taste has some high profile adherents. One of them is Alan Greenspan, perhaps the world’s most famous living economist, former Chairman of the Federal Reserve and a great believer in the idea that you can get a good idea of the health of the economy by looking at the length of women’s hemlines and heels and the amount of money men invest in underwear and ties.

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 3, 2015

Government publishes details of UK’s digital infrastructure for first time

by Mark Eltringham • Flexible working, News, Public Sector, Technology

The UK government has today published new information about over 13,000 miles of publicly owned digital infrastructure and outlined steps to ensure that these networks are used to improve connectivity for users and businesses across the country. Each year the government claims to spend around £1.5 billion of taxpayers’ money on public sector networks, including signal masts, fibre optics, and cables but had no comprehensive database of the details of the current infrastructure. The Government now hopes that the publication of the details of the nation’s public digital infrastructure will allow its spare capacity to be used effectively, to minimise the chance that a lack of knowledge will lead to unnecessary duplication and to allow more parts of the UK to enjoy better digital coverage and enhance the benefits of flexible working.

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 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.

January 28, 2015

How well designed office hives can foster swarm intelligence

by Lee Parsons • Comment, Facilities management, Workplace design

A beehive in your back-garden is hardly ideal, nor is stumbling across an ants’ nest while searching for a picnic spot. However, these swarms have become the inspiration for a revolutionary new way of working. Swarm intelligence describes how a group of people find effective solutions to difficult problems and their ability to adapt automatically to changing environments and work as a team of equals. To get the full benefits of swarm intelligence, we need to make sure that our offices have areas where staff can collaborate. There can be no rigid structures or process chains that ideas have to go through. The flow of knowledge shouldn’t be restricted. It should be allowed to flood through our businesses and offices and take no account of whether the people sharing knowledge, ideas and opinions have been with a company for five days or five years.

January 27, 2015

Employers need to do more to attract and train older workers says REC

by Sara Bean • News, Workplace

Employers need to provide more training opportunities for older workers and how they advertise jobs to attract recruits over 55, according to the results of a survey issued by the Recruitment and Employment Confederation (REC). Asked to identify the most important change businesses should make to encourage applications from jobseekers aged 55 and over, almost four in ten (37%) respondents highlighted issues around advertising, while a third (34%) indicated that they should be providing more opportunities for older workers to upskill or reskill. Twenty percent said that businesses need to be more careful with language used in job adverts while 17 percent said that hirers need to look beyond posting jobs exclusively online. Evidence for the business case for retaining, retraining and recruiting older workers will be published by the Department for Work and Pensions in March.

January 26, 2015

Flexible working improves the quality and quantity of sleep

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

Morning Sun by Edward Hopper

Giving employees more control over their work schedules may help curb sleep deficiency, according to health researchers in the US. A team led by Orfeu M. Buxton, associate professor of bio-behavioural health at Penn State University set out to explore the question of whether family-friendly work practices and other forms of flexible working had any impact on the quantity and quality of sleep. They results are published this month in the journal Sleep Health. Of the nearly 500 employees from an IT company surveyed over a period of a year, the researchers found that employees who were able to enjoy more control over their working day also enjoyed an average of eight minutes more sleep per night than those with rigid working hours. The research also found that participants’ perceptions of their sleep quality also improved.

January 22, 2015

How can we leave the open plan behind while desktop work endures?

by Sara Bean • Comment, Flexible working, Technology, Workplace design

With all the chatter regarding BYOD and wearable tech, you’d think that the average worker must roam free. Yet worldwide, over three quarters (79 percent) of office workers still use a desktop computer; just over a third (36 percent) have devices that allow for mobility and only 39 percent of office workers can work from alternative places at least once a week. Those were just some of the results of a global survey carried out by Steelcase into levels of satisfaction amongst office workers. And far from encouraging mobile working the survey found that well over half (57 percent) of companies do not have facilities for mobile workers and external suppliers. Such low levels of mobility had led a significant proportion (41 percent) of the 7324 participants from 10 countries, to say they were “not satisfied” with their work environment.

January 16, 2015

‘Squeezed generation’ of middle-aged workers take most sick days

by Sara Bean • News, Wellbeing, Workplace

Employers’ concerns regarding the ageing workforce are usually based on the belief older workers will tend to struggle more with health problems. However, new data from AXA PPP healthcare reveals it’s the middle band of workers (30-49) that take more sick days than any other age group; averaging 2.3 sick days in the past six months; with a quarter of these workers taking three or four days off sick. Twelve per cent of this middle age group have taken the equivalent of a working week off sick (5 or 6 days) in the past six months, double the number of 18-29 year olds (6%) and just 5 per cent of those 50-69. This ‘squeezed generation,’ faced with the pressures of balancing work and home, takes least positive steps to help ensure good health; has a fairly negative outlook regarding their jobs and is more stressed than other age group.