Search Results for: organisations

UK leads the world in talent, but it needs the right culture in which to thrive

by • Comment, Technology, Workplace, Workplace design

London at nightWe should never take the UK’s talent base for granted. According to a new report from Deloitte, when it comes to employment levels of people in knowledge based jobs in high skill sectors such as digital media, banking, legal services, software development, telecoms and publishing, London is comfortably the world’s leading city. The study found that London employed 1.5 million people in the 22 sectors surveyed, compared with 1.2 million in New York, 784,000 in Los Angeles, 630,000 in Hong Kong and 425,000 in Boston. The report also predicts that London will enjoy rapid growth in employment levels in these sectors over the next seven years, adding around 100,000 more people and that while a decline in employment is foreseen in financial services, this will be more than offset by strong growth in creative and media businesses.

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Looking back on a year in which the office sought a clearer sense of identity

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

JanusIt’s not often that workplace management becomes national business news but that happened at the end of February when  the world became very interested for a while in the way we design and manage offices. The reason for this was the decision by Yahoo to ban homeworking for staff at its headquarters.  The resultant period of shirt-rending at this challenge to received wisdom told us more about the changing view of the workplace than the actual decision by Yahoo. As the dust settled, we discovered that the Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer had based her decision to change working practices on data from the company’s network that showed people working from home didn’t log on to the company Virtual Private Network as much as those in the office.

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Time to refresh BYOD policies, as Smartglasses get set to improve workplace efficiency

by • News, Technology

Smartglasses will bring innovation to workplace efficiency say Gartner

Employers may soon need to add wearable computers to the list of BYOD in the office. According to analysts Gardner, over the next five years, corporate adoption of Smartglasses such as Google Glass will rise to ten per cent. Although of particular relevance for companies with offsite workers, such as field service personnel and inspectors, some of the basic functions of smartglasses could help bring added efficiency across the workplace. Their widespread adoption depends heavily on the apps and services being developed, but, the analysts say, apps will emerge that do specific tasks with smartglasses, which may cause organisations to provide them for a wider range of employees, while many other workers will simply wear their personal smartglasses at work. More →

Employers advised to take a more preventative approach on Stress Awareness Day

by • News, Workplace

Employers encouraged to take a more preventative approach on Stress Awareness DayToday is national stress awareness day. According to the HSE stress accounted for a massive 40 per cent of all work-related illnesses last year, which resulted in a loss of 10.4 million working days. As well as being a major contributor to long term physical illnesses, including obesity, stress also contributes to poor workplace performance caused by lack of concentration. The financial cost to the UK has been estimated at £60 billion or about £1,000 per man, woman and child. Yet according to the International Stress Management Association (ISMA) most organisations tackle stress at the wrong end. They wait until someone becomes ill, and then start to provide services to improve their health. This is too late. More →

Interview: Greg Lindsay on engineering serendipity and harnessing chaos

by • Flexible working, Workplace, Workplace design

Render of Plaza at Zappos offices in LA

Render of Plaza at Zappos offices in LA

Greg Lindsay is a journalist and urbanist. He is a contributing writer for Fast Company and co-author of the international bestseller Aerotropolis: The Way We’ll Live Next as well as a visiting scholar at New York University’s Rudin Center for Transportation Policy & Management, a senior fellow of the World Policy Institute, and a research affiliate of the New England Complex Systems Institute. He is also one of the main speakers at this year’s Worktech conference in London on 19 and 20 November. In this frank and enlightening interview he offers his thoughts on how firms can engineer serendipity into their workplaces and cultures and how the way we design offices is already taking clues from the way we plan urban environments.

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EU must develop ambitious plans for retrofitting buildings to hit energy targets

by • Environment, News, Property

EU must develop ambitious plans for retrofitting buildings to hit energy targetsWith just six months remaining until they are required to deliver long-term strategies on renovation, EU Member States are being urged to develop ambitious plans for retrofitting their buildings. Under the Energy Efficiency Directive, EU Member States must establish “a long-term strategy for mobilising investment in the renovation of the national stock of residential and commercial buildings, both public and private” from 30 April 2014. The World Green Building Council’s Europe Regional Network (of which the UK Green Building Council is a member) and the Renovate Europe Campaign are calling on EU nations to seize the opportunity by publishing strategies that will help ensure investment in jobs and growth, and help deliver lower energy bills for struggling European citizens. More →

Employers need to ‘up their game’ as 1 in 4 employees admit to looking for a new job

by • News, Public Sector, Workplace

Employers need to 'up their game' as 1 in 4 employees look for a new job

Job seeking intentions are at their highest since spring 2011, as fewer organisations implement recruitment freezes. According to the CIPD/Halogen Employee Outlook survey, 24 per cent of employees in the private and voluntary sectors, and 23 per cent in the public sector, are looking for a new job. The greatest motivator to move jobs is disengagement (71% compared with 9% who are engaged), followed by job dissatisfaction (62%, compared with 10%), and those facing pressure every day (45% compared with 19% who never feel under excessive pressure). More than 3 in 5 (61%) said that an opportunity to progress within their role is important to them, but a shocking one in four employees (27%) said that they had never had a performance review at work. More →

More law firms introducing flexible working, but progress remains slow

by • Flexible working, Legal news, Workplace

SisyphusWhen it comes to the adoption of flexible working, law firms have proved to be one of the more intransigent sectors in the UK. But there are signs of change with news that more firms in Scotland are embracing new working practices. A survey of 3,400 solicitors carried out by the Law Society of Scotland found an increasing number were making use of flexible working. The research shows that while the majority of respondents (77 percent) continue to work full time, two thirds are now allowed to work away from their main place of work although take-up remains sluggish with only a quarter doing so at least once a week. In marked contrast to other professions, around two thirds of respondents did not access emails and work files while away from the office.

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‘Beleaguered’ UK workforce is poorly motivated and unproductive

by • Flexible working, News, Workplace

UK workers are lacking motivation and job satisfaction, with over half either feeling neutral or unhappy about going to work most days, only one in four very satisfied with their jobs and 20 per cent who dread going to work. According to a new report, ‘The Forgotten Workforce’ a series of blows to UK workers, including cuts to their working hours, increasingly inconsistent working patterns, pay freezes, and introduction of zero hours – coupled with little or no investment in technology to support employees – has led to a UK workforce lacking morale and disengaged from the business. An efficient business needs an efficient workforce. If this cycle continues, businesses will face increasingly poor productivity and the UK economic recovery will suffer warns the report. More →

What the endless debate about HS2 can teach us about how we work

by • Comment, Flexible working, Technology

A man working on a train

A man working on a train

One of the most fascinating aspects of the debate about whether the UK should spend £50 billion (or whatever you think it might be) on the new HS2 rail network, is the way in which it has formed a touchstone for a discussion about how we work. But people on both sides of this debate can have things either spectacularly or misguidedly wrong. On one side, the people behind the scheme, including the Government, used the jaw-dropping assumption that nobody worked on trains as the foundation of a business case. That was the familiar sight of large organisations working their relentless way towards a number they wanted, regardless of inconvenient facts. This idea has now been so widely discredited and mocked that it has been dropped completely from the latest business case, tellingly the sixth in just three years. And yet on the other side, we have people arguing that we should travel less and use videoconferencing as an alternative to face to face meetings, which can be almost as problematic.

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‘Them and us’ mentality rife, as third of staff report low levels of trust in senior managers

by • News, Workplace

Level of trust in senior managers not as high as they believeA counterproductive “them and us” mentality is being bred in too many of the UK’s workplaces, as more than one in three employees report that their level of trust in senior managers is weak (34%), According to the latest research by the CIPD, while an overwhelming majority report that they trust in their colleagues and line managers to some or a great extent (92% and 80% respectively), trust ratings increase with an employee’s seniority, with senior managers much more likely to report strong trust between employees and senior management than non-managerial workers. Creating a better level of trust isn’t difficult however, with the majority of employees pointing to simple and effective practices such as ‘approachable’, ‘competent’  and ‘consistent leaders’ who ‘act with honesty and integrity’ and ‘lead by example’. More →

Global urbanisation trends present UK cities with new opportunities

by • Comment, Environment, Property, Technology

Country_Mouse1There is a great deal of talk about the growing urbanisation of the world right now, and its effects on societies, economies and individuals. The numbers of people involved are daunting, especially in the developing world.  As a  result, many countries are currently experiencing the sort of upheaval we in Britain experienced nearly 300 years ago, and they are doing so in a very compressed time span compared to the 150 years it took in Britain. But the changing nature of cities is also apparent in the UK where it is having an effect not only in the country’s only megacity but in regional centres too.  For places such as Manchester, Birmingham, Bristol and Glasgow the challenges presented by a new generation of initiatives focussed on urbanisation can be profound and mark an opportunity to shift at least some of the UK’s economic focus away from London.

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