Search Results for: manufacturing

November 13, 2017

New evidence low productivity is having a significant bearing on pay growth

by Sara Bean • News, Public Sector, Workplace

Most private sector workers are still not pushing for pay rises, despite falling real wages and low unemployment, according to the latest quarterly CIPD/The Adecco Group Labour Market Outlook survey. Only a quarter (24 percent) of employers in the private sector say they are under some or significant pressure to raise wages from the majority of their workforce, while almost four in ten private sector firms (38 percent) say they face no pressure at all to raise wages. The most common reason given by private sector employers (23 percent) for the lack of pressure to raise wages is a recognition among workers that the business cannot afford more generous pay increases, underlining the productivity challenge many firms face. The survey of more than 2,000 UK employers shows a slightly higher proportion of private sector employers (36 percent) cite either some or significant pay pressure to raise wages for certain roles, particularly among high and middle-skilled jobs.

October 26, 2017

Saudi Arabia announces plans for $500 billion mega city in region

by Neil Franklin • Cities, News, Technology

Following last week’s announcement that Toronto is to create a digital city along its waterfront, Saudi Arabia has unveiled plans to build a $500 billion ‘mega-city’ spanning parts of several countries. The plans announced this week are a response to the need for the kingdom to produce a more diverse economic base and will create a zone that will run on alternative energy and have its own legal system and employment laws. The region will be known as Neom, a name derived from terminology meaning ‘New Future’ and will span parts of Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Jordan along the Red Sea coastline as a 26,500 square kilometre development of previously untouched land (pictured). Plans inevitably include technologies such as driverless cars, drones and robots, and were unveiled by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman at the Future Investment Initiative in Riyadh this week. The zone is expected to cost around $500 billion (£380.5 billion) and will be powered entirely by renewable energy and focus on industries including energy, biotechnology, food, advanced manufacturing and entertainment.

October 25, 2017

Frederick Taylor was a man of his time not a whipping boy for ours

by Mark Eltringham • Comment, News, Workplace, Workplace design

Everybody likes a pantomime villain, and for many commentators on management and office design, they don’t come more dastardly than Frederick W. Taylor. Not only do pictures of him betray him as wealthy, white and starched, his ideas and the language in which they are couched are totally out of step with the way we think now. So for anybody writing about enlightened contemporary management practices, it’s no wonder that it is almost customary to start with a rejection of Taylorism in general and his theory of scientific management in particular. The gist of Taylorism laid out in his 1911 book The Principles of Scientific Management is that work should be analysed to establish the most efficient way of doing it, the right person to do that work must be chosen and managers are there to make sure that it all goes to plan. As far as workers are concerned, what we now think of as Taylorism is best (and partly unfairly) summed up as:‘You’re not paid to think. Shut up and do your job.’

October 23, 2017

An environmental psychology perspective on workplace design

by Nigel Oseland • Facilities management, Features, News, Wellbeing, Workplace design

I recently had the pleasure of travelling to Cape Town to present a keynote address at the Dare to Lead conference organised by Green Building Council South Africa (GBCSA). I had just 20 minutes to speak on a psychologist’s view of health, wellbeing and performance; that’s a huge subject area and pretty much my whole career condensed down to the typical time it takes to boil a pan of potatoes. So, I focused on just three psychological theories: motivation, personality and evolutionary psychology.

October 20, 2017

One-fifth of UK jobs under threat from automation, but some regions more at risk than others

by Mark Eltringham • News, Technology

Automation will affect one in five jobs across the UK, according to a new study from the thinktank Future Advocacy. According to the report, the risk of jobs being becoming automated is higher in some areas more than others and in the case of shadow chancellor John McDonnell’s west London constituency of Hayes and Harlington hits 40 percent, largely because it contains Heathrow Airport which employs a large number of people whose jobs are most at risk from automation. However, the report claims that a mere 2 percent of people surveyed were ‘very worried’ that they might be replaced by a machine, with a further 5 percent saying they were ‘fairly worried’.

October 19, 2017

Future office and changing business of work debated at Workplace Trends

by Sara Bean • Comment, Coworking, Facilities management, Technology, Wellbeing, Workplace design

Those working within the built environment are already in the change business, was the view of Neil Usher of workessence in his presentation at the Workplace Trends Conference which was held in London this week. This was apt, as the changing business of work’ was the theme of the conference. It’s a pretty common topic these days of course but a strong line up of speakers ensured some interesting discussions; which included the rise of the gig economy, the variety of ways people from different cultures perceive workplace design and predictions on the workplaces of the future. On the current design and fit out of the office, Usher was clear; that creating a fantastic workplace is independent of culture, location, the work style you want to create and the sector in which you’re working. His other mantra was that you can still work in an awful workplace with great technology, but not the other way around, which is why there is no excuse for not getting your technology right.

October 18, 2017

Report warns of growing cybersecurity threat to organisations by their own staff

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

An overwhelming majority of employees are deliberately seeking out information they are not permitted to access, exposing a major cybersecurity problem among today’s workforce, claims new research published by One Identity. The survey, conducted by Dimensional Research, polled more than 900 IT security professionals on trends and challenges related to managing employee access to corporate data. Among key findings, a remarkable 92 percent of respondents report that employees at their organisations try to access information that is not necessary for their day-to-day work – with nearly one in four (23 percent) admitting this behaviour happens frequently. Most alarmingly, the report indicates that IT security professionals themselves are among the worst offenders of corporate data snooping. One in three respondents admit to having accessed sensitive information that is not necessary for their day-to-day work.

October 11, 2017

UK improves opportunities for young workers, but faces longer term challenges from automation

by Mark Eltringham • News, Workplace

The UK could boost GDP by £43 billion if it reduces the number of young people not in education, employment or training (NEET) to match Germany, the best performing EU country. This is equivalent to a GDP increase of around £7,500 per 18-24 year old, according to estimates in PwC’s latest Young Workers Index. This year, the UK reached its highest position since the Index began in 2006, climbing to 18th out of 35 OECD countries from 20th last year. The UK’s improvement reflects lower youth unemployment and NEET rates as the economic recovery from the financial crisis has continued, but it still lags behind many other OECD countries, with Switzerland, Iceland and Germany leading the pack.

October 5, 2017

Stop whinging about robots taking your job and develop the skills you need for a new era of work

by Mark Eltringham • Automation, News, Workplace

A report from researchers at Pearson, Nesta and the University of Oxford called The Future of Skills: Employment in 2030 claims that while the new era of robots, automation and artificial intelligence in the workplace will be disruptive, it will not spell the end of work and people need to develop new skills to meet its challenges. The study claims to take an entirely new approach to forecasting employment and skill demands in the US and UK. In contrast to many recent headlines, the study finds that many jobs today will still be in demand by 2030 and beyond. However, while jobs may remain, the skills needed for success are changing. The researchers combined diverse human expertise with active machine learning to produce a more nuanced view of future employment trends. Using this innovative approach, the study forecasts that only one in five workers are in occupations that face a high likelihood of decline.

September 22, 2017

An inability to develop skills at all ages leaves people unprepared for the future of work

by Mark Eltringham • News, Workplace

Efforts to fully realise people’s economic potential in countries at all stages of development are falling short due to ineffective deployment of skills throughout the workforce, development of skills appropriate for the future of work and adequate promotion of ongoing learning for those already in employment. These failures to translate investment in education during the formative years into opportunities for higher-quality work during the working lifetime contributes to income inequality by blocking the two pathways to social inclusion, education and work, according to the World Economic Forum’s Human Capital Report 2017. The report measures 130 countries against four key areas of human capital development; Capacity, largely determined by past investment in formal education; Deployment, the application and accumulation of skills through work; Development, the formal education of the next generation workforce and continued upskilling and reskilling of existing workers; and Know-how, the breadth and depth of specialised skills-use at work. Countries’ performance is also measured across five distinct age groups or generations: 0-14 years; 15-24 years; 25-54 years; 55-64 years; and 65 years and over.

September 21, 2017

British organisations must step up to the challenges of artificial intelligence, robotics and automation

by Mark Eltringham • Automation, News, Technology

A report published by the RSA think-tank has encouraged UK businesses to embrace artificial intelligence, automation and robotics. arguing that new technology has the potential to raise productivity levels, boost flagging living standards, and phase out ‘dull, dirty and dangerous’ tasks in favour of more purposeful and human-centric work. The Age of Automation report warns, however, that the UK is fast becoming a ‘laggard’ in the adoption of new machines and called on UK business leaders to accelerate their take-up of technology. The RSA found that sales of robots to the UK decreased over 2014-15, with British firms falling behind the US, France, Germany, Spain and Italy. A YouGov poll of UK business leaders, commissioned by the RSA, found that UK business leaders are currently wary of adopting AI and robotics, with just fourteen percent of firms currently investing in this technology or soon planning to. Twenty-nine percent of businesses believe AI & robotics to be too expensive or not yet proven and twenty percent want to invest but believe it will take several years to ‘seriously adopt’ the new technology.

September 8, 2017

Economic gains from digitisation, robotics and AI must benefit workers says TUC

by Sara Bean • Automation, News, Technology, Workplace

In the same week that Gartner offered some useful insights into the building blocks for a successful digital workplace, the TUC has published its views on the impact of digitisation, arguing that the economic gains from digitisation, robotics and artificial intelligence (AI) should be used to benefit working people. This would include reversing policies to raise the state pension age. The report Shaping Our Digital Future explores how the next technological revolution will impact on jobs and wages. Previous waves of technological change have not led to an overall loss of jobs, but have disrupted the types of job people do. And with the most recent wave of industrial change, rewards from higher productivity have gone predominantly to business owners, rather than being shared across the workforce through better wages and working conditions.