Search Results for: human resources

January 28, 2019

UK leading the way in digital transformation strategy

IT consultancy Infosys has released new research, the Infosys Digital Radar 2019, which it claims reveals the digital transformation maturity of businesses around the world in 2018, and what it takes to navigate the next stage of their journey. Its main claim is that to become digitally advanced, organisations need to run multiple digital initiatives at scale at the same time. It suggests that organisations in the UK are now significantly ahead of the global average when it comes to their digital transformation, including countries like the United States and Germany.

November 30, 2018

How the way we interact with technology is changing the way we think

by Charles Marks • Comment, Technology, Workplace design

We are all familiar with the emoticon, the little symbol we use to strengthen whatever it is we really mean or would like to convey in a text, chat, message or email. The symbols have become more important as these forms of communication have supplanted some forms of face to face contact. Researchers have now learned that our brains no longer treat emoticons as a form of punctuation, but have started to respond to it as if it were a real face. A study published in the journal Social Neuroscience found that the part of the brain that is activated when we look at real faces is now triggered by smileys too. It’s yet another example of how our brains are adapting to the changing demands placed on them by technology, a subject that not only has profound implications for the way we relate to technology but also the way we work and the ways we design and manage our surroundings and especially how we maintain focus and interact with our colleagues.

November 8, 2018

Your relationship with your boss may be playing a role in your stress levels

by Martin Turner and Matthew Slater • Comment, Wellbeing

Everybody knows how horrible it is to be stressed out at work. Sadly, across the world, employees are being subjected to increasing work demands and, as a result, work stress is on the rise. As we try to understand the root of the problem, we often end up blaming our boss. But is that really fair? Our new study, published in The Leadership Quarterly, suggests that your relationship with your boss does influence how you respond to stress.

November 6, 2018

Employers struggle to understand what motivates people in new generation of megacities

by Neil Franklin • Cities, News, Workplace

Mercer has published the results of an extensive study that examines the needs of workers in the world’s fastest-growing cities across four key factors – human, health, money and work. The study provides insight into the motivations of workers against the backdrop of fierce competition for their talent. The study, People first: driving growth in emerging megacities (registration required), is based on a survey of 7,200 workers and 577 employers in 15 current and future megacities across seven countries, namely Brazil, China, India, Kenya, Mexico, Morocco and Nigeria. As defined by the United Nations, these 15 cities will have a combined population of 150 million people by 2030 and share strong, projected GDP.

October 19, 2018

Smart spaces and the other top technology trends for 2019

by Mark Eltringham • News, Technology, Workplace design

Technology researcher Gartner has highlighted the top strategic technology trends it believes organisations should be aware of in 2019. Gartner defines a strategic technology trend as one with ‘substantial disruptive potential that is beginning to break out of an emerging state into broader impact and use, or which are rapidly growing trends with a high degree of volatility reaching tipping points over the next five years’. One of the interesting points to note is the inclusion of the physical workplace yet again, as we highlighted in our recent feature on the trends shaping office design.

October 11, 2018

How the media oversold standing desks as a fix for inactivity at work

by Catriona Bonfiglioli and Josephine Chau • Features, Wellbeing, Workplace design

Sitting is so culturally ingrained at work, at the wheel, in front of the TV and at the movies, it takes a great effort to imagine doing these things standing up, let alone pedalling as you work at a bike desk. So, when the world’s first specific guidelines on sitting and moving at work were published, they generated headlines such as: Abandon your chair for four hours to stay healthy, office workers are told and: Stand up at your desk for two hours a day, new guidelines say. But what many media reports did not mention was the guidelines were based on limited evidence. They were also co-authored by someone with commercial links to standing desks (desks you raise and lower to work at standing or sitting), a link not declared when the guidelines were first published in a journal. Media reports also overplayed the dangers of sitting at work, incorrectly saying it wiped out the benefits of exercise. Our new study reveals the nature of this media coverage and its role in overselling standing desks as a solution to inactivity at work.

October 10, 2018

CIB sets out a roadmap for the creation of intelligent and responsive buildings

by Mark Eltringham • Architecture, Facilities management, News, Property, Wellbeing, Workplace design

The International Council for Research and Innovation in Building and Construction (CIB) has published a free roadmap written by members of the W098 Commission and CIBSE Intelligent Buildings Group, which presents collective ideas for the creation of intelligent and responsive buildings for current needs and the future. Intelligent buildings present a number of challenges, according to the authors. They must be responsive to people’s needs including their health and wellbeing; be sustainable in the use of resources as well as incorporating the most useful parts of the evolving technologies.

More UK workers ready to change jobs as confidence in economy grows

September 11, 2018

Extending reporting requirements may help close gender pay gap say MPs

by Sara Bean • Legal news, News, Workplace

Employers should be required to publish a narrative and action plan under Gender Pay Gap reporting requirements, the inquiry on executive pay and the gender-pay gap by the Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) Select Committee has recommended today. It has found that the requirements to publish data which came into force in April this year represents a ‘small but welcome step towards ensuring that women can make their fullest possible contribution in the workplace and to the economy’, but it calls for the Government to be more ambitious. Detailed statistics should be provided to aid analysis and organisations should explain what they are doing to tackle their gender pay gaps. Under the new rules employers would have to provide some narrative reporting alongside their gender pay statistics, with an action plan setting out how pay gaps are being and will be addressed, including objectives and targets. Subsequent reports would include progress against this action plan, including targets set. More →

June 22, 2018

Organisations are easily distracted from the task of creating a great workplace strategy

by Chris Hood • Comment, Facilities management, Property, Workplace design

Earlier this month The Once Alternative Workplace Strategies 2018 workplace study was published. This study is the only known longitudinal workplace study and it was recently resurfaced by a group of volunteers to maintain a comparative thread of data on the evolution of workplace thought and practice now going back many years. Unfortunately, the results of this global study demonstrate that a high percentage of companies still see once alternative and now modern workplace strategies as a real estate initiative and not the opportunity to reinvent their businesses in deeper and more transformational ways. Workplace innovation is a litmus test for management quality and leadership. This isn’t about real estate, it’s actually about people and business outcomes.

June 14, 2018

Nearly half of employees still assigned to same place as the traditional office clings on

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

The worry over a loss in productivity when people are able to work anywhere is entirely unfounded, and what we once called “alternative”, we have come to call current and future workplace strategies, a new report claims. Yet the new study, ‘The Once Alternative Workplace Strategies’, which was conducted and released by Advanced Workplace Associates (AWA), Global Workplace Analytics and Haworth Inc, found that nearly half of employees are still permanently assigned to one space; with no change since 2008. The research pinpoints five leading trends within today’s workplaces and compares the findings to the initial research from more than a decade ago. More →

June 1, 2018

How our noisy world was foreseen by the 20th Century’s great minds

by Charles Marks • Comment, Wellbeing, Workplace design

Over the past few years we’ve become more aware of the problems associated with the pace and clatter of modern life and not least among them its noise. Authors like Susan Cain have highlighted not only how distracting noise can be for everybody but how it affects different personality types in different ways. She is perhaps the world’s most high profile proponent of the idea that sometimes we need to work quietly and alone and is the author of Quiet: the power of introverts in a world that can’t stop talking and the person responsible for this now famous and archetypal TED Talk presented on the effects of sound and the need for more silence and privacy. But she is not alone in making these claims, nor is she the first person to do so and the warning signs have been around for quite some time. The first calls for people to heed the racket of modern life came at least a hundred years ago as we began the 20th Century transition to office based life with its distractions of noisy things and people.