Search Results for: commuting

September 3, 2015

Three quarters of US workers avoid the office to get important work done ⁰

by Mark Eltringham • Flexible working, News, Wellbeing

Three quarters (76 percent) of US workers surveyed by online job site FlexJobs say that when they need to get important work done, they avoid the office completely. Of over 2,600 respondents, 50 percent reported that their home is their location of choice to be most productive on important work-related projects. Another 12 percent said they would choose a coffee shop, coworking space, library, or other place besides the office. Fourteen percent would choose the office but only outside standard hours, leaving less than a quarter who prefer the actual office during regular working hours as a place to complete important work. The main reasons for fleeing the corporate embrace were to avoid interruptions from colleagues (cited by 76 percent), escape distractions (74 percent), evade office politics (71 percent), reduce the stress of commuting (68 percent) and work in more comfortable surroundings (65 percent).

September 3, 2015

Traffic congestion costing UK firms £4.5 billion a year, claims report ⁰

by Mark Eltringham • Flexible working, News

The daily grind of commuting to work is not only taking its toll on the health, wellbeing and fuses of employees, it is also costing businesses billions of pounds a year in lost working hours, claims a new report from fleet management firm Lex Autolease. The study, part of the firm’s annual survey of trends in corporate car use, estimates that employees spend around 13 percent of their work-related journey times held up by jams and congestion and that the 1,041 people surveyed also spent an average of 70 minutes each day in their car travelling to and from work. In addition, around one in twenty (5 percent) of people commute for more than three hours each day, while just 8 percent said they were based from home so commuting wasn’t an issue. The study concludes that this costs UK employers some £4.5 billion each year.

August 18, 2015

Car sharing and longer commutes are the keys to workforce mobility ⁰

by Mark Eltringham • Cities, Flexible working, News

The Government should introduce new policies to incentivise people to car share and travel further afield to find work. Those are two of the key finding of a new report, On The Move, from the think tank Policy Exchange which sets out ways to improve the mobility of the British workforce. Making it easier for people to commute twenty minutes further afield would put them in touch with at least one additional major urban area and potentially 10,000 more job opportunities, according to the report. Additionally, it suggests that drivers who offer fellow commuters a lift should be given a tax break. The authors claim that in a third of local authorities that make up the eight city regions no major employment sites (defined as having 5,000 or more jobs) are within a twenty minute commute by public transport and 80 percent of these Local Authorities have an unemployment rate above the national average.

July 14, 2015

Homeworkers left to fund their own technology by stingy bosses

by Sara Bean • Comment, Facilities management, Flexible working, News

Last week we learnt that for some employers, homeworking is only to be encouraged when it’s out of hours. Now new research from Regus suggests that only around a third of people encouraged by their employers to work from home (35 percent) receive any contributions from their firm to fund the fit-out. The survey of over 4,000 senior business people found that the majority (82 percent) of employers refuse to cover all the costs incurred for creating and maintaining a work space for homeworkers. This proves costly for staff, as a quarter (25 percent) of respondents said that it would take a whole monthly salary for them to fit-out their home, while the average cost of running a home office in the UK is almost £2,000 a year. Nearly half (43 percent) of workers think that most companies encouraging their employees to work from home are simply trying to transfer the workspace cost onto the employee.

July 9, 2015

London transport shuts down ….. agile workers unaffected …..

by Paul Carder • Cities, Comment, Flexible working, Wellbeing

London’s Financial Times reported this morning, “The worst London Underground strike in more than a decade saw millions of Londoners struggle to get to work”. It is chaos, here in the UK capital – the top global city in PwC’s Cities of Opportunity ranking. It is a sorry state of affairs, as in a scene reminiscent of 1970s union-crippled Britain, the “workers” representatives couldn’t agree with “the management”. “Workers” and “management”…we thought we had overcome that particular divide in business and society, didn’t we? But, some people have a vested interest in keeping it very much alive. In the large, industrialized, unionized industries such as transport, it lives on. Only last year, UNITE union leader Len McCluskey addressed his supporters in Liverpool as “sisters and brothers” like some mid-20th century socialist (which, of course, he is).

June 8, 2015

Three reasons why National Work From Home Day has it all wrong

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

Last Friday was National Work From Home Day in the UK. Each year, the TUC and organisers Work Wise seem to take this as an opportunity to analyse data about the uptake of flexible working and arrive at the wrong conclusions. This year, its analysis of the ONS Labour Force Survey found that the number of people regularly working from home had increased by more than 800,000 since 2005, taking the total to over 4.2 million. These are solid enough data, but what are we to make of TUC General Secretary Frances O’Grady’s conclusion that: “these figures show millions of British workers have adopted homeworking and are enjoying a better work-life balance, while saving time and money on costly commuting that benefits no-one”? There are several reasons to suggest that he’s got that wrong to a large extent.

May 27, 2015

Majority of employers want to promote mental wellbeing in the workplace

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

Eighty-four percent of employers believe they have a responsibility to provide a work environment that promotes mental well-being, according to a new Buck Consultants at Xerox survey report “Promoting Mental Well-being: Addressing Worker Stress and Psychosocial Risks,” released last week at the Global Centre for Healthy Workplaces Annual Summit in Brazil. The Global Survey on Health Promotion and Workplace Wellness Strategies – with a strong focus on companies in the United States, United Kingdom, Brazil and Singapore – found that more than one-third of employers rate the stress level within their organization as “high or very high.” However, over two-thirds of employers offer flexible work schedules, and more than half offer telecommuting to mitigate work-related stress, while more than half of employers rate their organization as very or extremely supportive of the mental well-being of their employees.

May 13, 2015

The May issue of Work&Place is available for you to read online

by Mark Eltringham • News, Premium Content, Work&Place

The May issue of Work&Place is now available to view online in two formats. If there is a theme for this quarter’s issue, it is the intersection of the different physical and technological spaces which make up the modern workplace. This not only throws up fascinating topics and ideas, it also has profound implications for the way we create, manage and inhabit these spaces and is also eroding many of the old demarcations between professions. The issue maintains its international perspective and features many of the world’s most prominent workplace thinkers. Of course, this is not a one way street and you can join the discussion with the Work&Place contributors and many others. We hope that you will take up this opportunity to ask questions, challenge the writers, or to make a related point at the Work&Place LinkedIn Group or via Twitter.

May 11, 2015

Does declining productivity spell the end for IT and property directors?

by John Blackwell • Comment, Facilities management, Property, Technology, Work&Place

When it comes to increasing organisational output, which in turn directly relates to real wage growth and higher living standards, the only determinant is productivity, measured in terms of output per hour worked. This is at the heart of all businesses and is essential for growth. The basic facts on productivity are clear. For over a decade, productivity has been painfully weak across all the major economies. The UK has performed particularly badly, with productivity having declined by 3.7 percent since 2008. A recent OECD report went as far as saying: “weak labour productivity since 2004 has been holding back real wages and well-being. The sustainability of economic expansion and further progress in living standards rest on boosting productivity growth, which is a key challenge for the coming years”.

April 20, 2015

Uptake of flexible working at UK firms continues to gather pace ⁰

by Mark Eltringham • Flexible working, News, Workplace

In the last three years the adoption of flexible working by UK organisations has increased by over a third (37 percent), according to new research published by recruitment consultants Robert Half. The study, based on interviews with 200 HR Directors also claims that concerns that remote working without direct physical supervision leads to a decrease in productivity are increasingly unfounded. The research reveals that 60 percent believe giving employees greater autonomy over working styles and practices including remote working and flexi-time results in increased productivity. Respondents also increasingly believe that offering greater autonomy to employees results in positive business benefits. Over half (51 percent) thought greater employee autonomy boosts creativity and almost half (45 percent) believe it makes employees easier to manage.

April 14, 2015

The workplace as a strategic resource: a real life CEO’s perspective

by Jim Ware • Facilities management, Furniture, Workplace design

Raise your hand if you agree: “The workplace is obviously a strategic resource.” We facilities management professionals know that to be true. But if you often feel like a voice in the wilderness when speaking to anyone other than a fellow workplace professional, you are not alone. For many if not most senior executives, their facilities are a necessary evil that always cost too much. That reality frustrates me as much as it does you. So my colleague Paul Carder and I conducted two extensive research projects in 2012 and 2013 aimed at making the case (mostly to FM professionals themselves) that facilities and workplaces are incredibly strategic – and very poorly understood. And while we’ve gotten a lot of positive feedback about the work, we haven’t seen much change in mindsets, management practices or outcomes.

March 30, 2015

Driverless cars will transform the UK economy by 2030, claims report

by Mark Eltringham • Flexible working, News, Technology, Workplace design

A new study from the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT) and KPMG claims that the development of connected and autonomous vehicles will help generate 320,000 jobs in the UK and deliver huge benefits to society and the economy. The first ever comprehensive analysis of the opportunities provided by the new technology claims that by 2030 driverless cars will deliver a £51 billion boost to the UK economy, reduce congestion and carbon emissions and cut serious road traffic accidents by more than 25,000. By that time all new cars will incorporate some form of connectivity, according to the report’s authors. It also predicts that the UK will be a global leader in the production of this next generation of vehicles, with the support of Government including financial backing. The study was presented at last week’s SMMT conference in London.