Search Results for: tech

August 30, 2017

British public continues to be wary of driverless cars

by Mark Eltringham • AI, News, Technology

The majority of British people (66 percent) would be uncomfortable travelling in a driverless car at 70mph, according to a new study by the Institution of Mechanical Engineers. The news follows last week’s announcement that the Government has awarded a contract to test platoons of driverless lorries on major British roads by the end of next year. According to the findings, younger people tend to be more accepting of the technology ? with 45 percent of 25-36 year olds saying they would be comfortable in a 70mph driverless car, compared to just 13 percent for 65-74 year olds and 8 percent for the over 75s. Women tended to be more cautious about the technology, with 72 percent saying they would be uncomfortable compared to 60 percent for men.

August 25, 2017

UK serviced office take-up more than doubles in first half of 2017

by Neil Franklin • News, Property

Serviced office take up across the UK has increased by 176 percent in the first half of 2017, reaching 1.07 million sq ft compared to the same period in 2016, which saw 386,750 sq ft acquired, according to real estate adviser Savills. The firm claims that while Central London saw a significant increase with take-up reaching 860,368 sq ft in the first six months, property markets outside the capital also saw substantial growth. Savills research shows that the M25 office market saw take-up by serviced office operators rise from 44,676 sq ft in the same period last year to 109,886 sq ft in the first half of 2017, while in the regional markets, serviced offices, including coworking spaces, accounted for 4 percent of overall office take-up in the first half of the year at 95,987 sq ft, compared to 41,568 sq ft during the same period in 2016.

August 24, 2017

Too much information is leading to a communications overload for many employees

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

Employees are experiencing ‘communications overload’ as a result of their organisation’s attempts to keep them continually informed, a new survey claims. According to research by Clarizen, 81 percent of employers say despite taking steps to improve communication among employees, they still lack a way to keep projects on track and provide management oversight. This is because efforts to improve collaboration among employees by opening new lines of communication can have the opposite effect. Instead, employees suffer from the modern workplace malady known as ‘communication overload,’ a productivity-killing infirmity characterised by too many meaningless meetings and an excessive number of emails, notifications and alerts that are devoid of importance, context or urgency. A common challenge reported by a majority of respondents is that employees, departments and teams are spread across several sites, or team members work from home. 70 percent say they need to go beyond creating additional lines of communication, and facilitate better collaboration among employees so they can work together to meet objectives, coordinate activities and monitor progress.

August 23, 2017

I’ve got some real estate here in my bag

by Paul Carder • Comment, Flexible working, Property, Technology

Let us be lovers,
We’ll marry our fortunes together.
I’ve got some real estate
Here in my bag.
So we bought a pack of cigarettes,
And Mrs. Wagner’s pies,
And walked off
To look for America.
“Kathy”, I said,
As we boarded a Greyhound in Pittsburgh,
Michigan seems like a dream to me now.

August 23, 2017

UK employers concerned for future of the post Brexit economy despite booming jobs market

by Neil Franklin • News, Workplace

Employer confidence in the UK economy has moved into negative territory, according to the latest JobsOutlook survey by the Recruitment & Employment Confederation (REC). The net balance fell from +6 per cent last month to -3 per cent in the latest report, as 31 per cent of employers now expect the economy to worsen and just 28 per cent expect it to improve. Employers are still looking to hire, with one in five (19 per cent) planning to increase permanent headcount in the next three months. Confidence in making hiring and investment decisions remains positive with a net balance of 10 per cent, but is at its lowest for the past year. In addition to signs of deteriorating employer confidence, consumers are also becoming more pessimistic. The GfK’s index of consumer confidence fell to -12, equalling last year’s post-referendum low.

August 21, 2017

Office sector undergoing transformational structural disruption in response to changing supply and demand

by Mark Eltringham • News, Property

Amid varying economic performances and property fundamentals, North American and European office leasing markets are generally performing well as they undergo an important shift in dynamics influenced by trends transforming both occupier demand and the supply of new product. Traditional drivers of demand are being joined by emerging disruptors that will increasingly shape the future of the office-space market and commercial real estate as a whole. These are some of the key trends noted in Avison Young’s Mid-Year 2017 North America and Europe Office Market Report. According to the report, of the 64 office markets tracked in North America and Europe, which comprise almost 6 billion square feet, market-wide vacancy rates decreased in 40 of the markets as nearly 52 million square feet was absorbed. Occupiers’ desire for new products remains strong and developers have responded, according to the report, with more than 62 million sq. ft. of office space was completed during the 12-month period ending June 30, 2017.

August 18, 2017

Board buy-in is key to closing employment gap for disabled people in workplace

by Sara Bean • Facilities management, Flexible working, News, Wellbeing, Workplace, Workplace design

There continues to be a significant gap between the employment rate of disabled people and the rest of the population; according to the Office for National Statistics, just 49 percent of disabled people of working age are in employment. This is why getting genuine buy-in from the top is key to improving levels of disability disclosure and helping to facilitate requests for workplace adjustments. That was the conclusion of a recent round table hosted by the Recruitment Industry Disability Initiative (RIDI) which also found that while some HR and diversity specialists are sceptical about the level of support available from senior leadership teams, once the topic is brought to the attention of the board, the response is often overwhelmingly positive. Practical ways in which leaders can bolster disability initiatives shared at the event include; identifying disability champions within the business who can communicate their own stories, implementing unconscious bias training, instigating & reverse-mentoring initiatives where senior managers are partnered with disabled colleagues and leading by example by being open about their own disabilities.

August 17, 2017

How workplace design shapes and reflects organisational hierarchies

by Angela Love • Comment, Facilities management, Workplace design

The roots of the open plan office can be traced back to the 1960s when post-capitalism was beginning to emerge as a political and intellectual movement. The social and political upheaval that followed World War Two and the emphasis on the autonomous, motivated and engaged worker combined to inspire designers and architects to develop a new and more “modern” way of working. A mode of work characterised by an increased emphasis on social relations and flattened hierarchies. The open plan office was heralded as the ‘office of the future’; a progressive, transformative and near utopian design concept which would enable its occupants to thrive and succeed in a more socialist world. Yet the proponents of the open plan do not appear to have been fulfilled in large corporate businesses in the UK. I’d like to suggest that this failure is not a design fault but rather a problem caused by a clash of ideologies. Upon closer inspection, it appears that these larger corporations have not fully been able to shift into the social-democratic model of collaborative, open working styles.

August 15, 2017

UK organisations remain unprepared to deal with effects of cyber attack

by Mark Eltringham • News, Technology

A new report from insurance broker Lockton, claims that UK businesses are unprepared for the potential length and severity of a cyber security breach. In ‘Cyber Aftershock: How UK companies underestimate the seismic waves produced by a data breach’, the firm claims that fully half of UK companies (50 percent) expect to be entirely operational 48 hours after a large-scale cyber security breach. The survey of senior decision-makers shows that only 2 percent of UK businesses think a breach will affect them for more than 10 days. The report challenges these ways of thinking and sets out the key steps organisations should now be taking.

August 14, 2017

Seven ways in which flexible working is making our lives more rigid

by Mark Eltringham • Comment, Flexible working, Technology

One of the main reasons why books such as Catch 22 and 1984 make such mediocre films, is because celluloid struggles to capture the books’ preoccupation with the ways in which language can be used to subvert meaning and rationality. We don’t always have to lean on the bookcase to see how this works. It’s been evident recently in the coverage of the massive growth of zero hours working worldwide, although they have now been banned in New Zealand. There are now up to 1.5 million people on zero hours contracts in the UK and the adjective most commonly associated with the practice in the media coverage has been ‘flexible’, despite the fact that from the perspective of the majority of the people working on such contracts they are anything but. It’s yet another example of the subversion in our use of the term flexible working. It’s Doublespeak; an expression which means something completely different to, or indeed the opposite of, the thing it is describing.

August 14, 2017

Mayor announces plans to boost digital connectivity across London

by Neil Franklin • Cities, News, Technology

The Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, has announced a package of measures which he claims will boost digital connectivity across the capital and tackle London’s areas of poor connectivity – known as ‘not-spots’ – including the appointment of a troubleshooting ‘Not Spot Team’. Meanwhile, Transport for London is working to bring mobile connectivity to London Underground tunnels – one of the most high-profile not spots in the country. In spite of Brexit, London is still widely regarded as Europe’s leading technology hub, with a growing sector of over 40,000 digital technology businesses employing almost 200,000 people, as well as major bases of many leading global tech companies. But while the capital leads the way in tech growth, there are parts of the city where slow and unreliable broadband is a source of concern and frustration for businesses and residents alike, such as in Rotherhithe and parts of Westminster and the City of London.

August 14, 2017

Google wins approval for new London headquarters

by Mark Eltringham • Cities, News, Property

Google’s much talked about plan to build a new London headquarters in King’s Cross has been approved by Camden Council. The building, designed by Thomas Heatherwick and BIG in collaboration with BDP replicates some of the campus facilities now associated with a tech campus including a garden, 200m jogging track on the roof, swimming pool, massage parlours exercise rooms and facilities for badminton, five-a-side football and basketball. The finished 11-storey building will be more than one million square feet in size of which Google will occupy 650,000 sq ft. Motorised timber blinds on the outside of the building keep direct sunlight out. Solar panels on the roof will deliver an annual output of 20MWh. The main contractor Lendlease will start on site next year on a contract believed to be worth around £350m.