Search Results for: tech

July 21, 2015

Neocon highlights four of the world’s most important office design trends

by Neil Franklin • Comment, Events, Workplace design

We live in the Global Village, Marshall McLuhan’s idea from 1962 of an electronically contracted world in which attitudes, cultures and our political, business and legislative framework begin to pull together. Yet each nation is shaped by little differences. That is why the comedy programme The Office found an audience on both sides of the pond, but one that needed Wernham Hogg in Slough to become Dunder Mifflin in Scranton, Pennsylvania for it to work for the local audience. The central idea of the show has a universal appeal but needs a local voice. And what is true for The Office with a big O is also true for the office with a small o. This was the takeaway conclusion of a series of events staged in London and Manchester last week by Milliken and Humanscale. The touchstone for these events was a debate about the main conclusions of of June’s Neocon.

July 19, 2015

Weekly Insight on gender pay, green buildings, agile working and more

by Mark Eltringham • Architecture, Facilities management, Newsletter, Workplace, Workplace design

In this week’s issue; Mark Eltringham argues that the focus on a mythical gender pay gap, as repeated by the Prime Minister, obscures the real issues women (and a growing number of men) face; more evidence emerges to crush another myth, this time the one that equates the health impacts of sitting with smoking; the UK’s ‘greenest Government ever’ abandons its zero carbon buildings plans; Simon Heath questions the reported impact of robots on workplaces; Sara Bean on how firms are leaving remote working employees to fund their own kit; the under-reported and ongoing allure for employees of filthy lucre over flexible working opportunities; and the enduring suspicion of wearable technology in the British workplace. Subscribe for free quarterly issues of Work&Place and weekly news here, follow us on Twitter and join our LinkedIn Group to discuss these and other stories.

July 17, 2015

Do we really think the future of work involves our replacement by robots?

by Simon Heath • Comment, Flexible working, Technology, Workplace

A report published recently by my former colleagues at CBRE called “Fast Forward 2030: The Future of Work and the Workplace” claims that by 2025 so many people will be more interested in being happy and having creative roles that up to 50 percent of current occupations will be defunct. 35 years elapsed between the release of Orwell’s 1984 and the eponymous year and very little of Orwell’s dystopian vision came to pass. 2030 is a scant 16 years away so, even if one takes the exponential pace of change into account, it’s perhaps a bit of a stretch to think robots will have taken their seat at the table in quite the way we appear to think they will. Also unchanged one assumes are the attitudes of those who have a vested interest in the status quo or in dictating where the benefits of change will fall.

July 16, 2015

More evidence to dispel the idea that ‘sitting is the new smoking’

by Mark Eltringham • Briefing, News, Wellbeing

The apparently compelling idea that ‘sitting is the new smoking’ is given yet another shoeing by new research which confirms that long term standing at work can be harmful too, in both the short and long term. The study, “Long-Term Muscle Fatigue After Standing Work” is published in the journal Human Factors and available to read in full here. It found that prolonged standing is associated with a range of health issues including fatigue, leg cramps, and backaches, which can affect performance and cause significant discomfort in the short term and develop into something more in the long term. Over time, this type of sustained muscle fatigue can result in serious health consequences, according to the academics who carried out the research behind it. It confirms previous research which shows that health problems are associated with a lack of variation in working position, not a specific position.

July 13, 2015

Email still default comms tool for virtual teams, despite drawbacks

by Sara Bean • Flexible working, News, Technology

Email remains the preferred way corporate teams stay in touch, but there is a widening technological gap between the generations. Although it remains the most widely used form of communication (87 percent) email also has the greatest potential to cause misunderstanding in nearly half (49 percent) of teams. The survey from EF Corporate Solutions of over 800 executives based in Brazil, China, France, Germany, Middle East, Russia, UK and US, indicated that a primary cause for conflict stems from language barriers (39 percent) but 45 percent said there are also barriers to communication between associates over 50 and under 30 in the way they use technology. Respondents also suggest that email has the potential to cause ‘information overload’ and teams can suffer from a lack of interaction when it is the preferred communication method.

July 13, 2015

Free Wi-Fi for agile workers is not quite as free as you’d like to think

by Mark Eltringham • Flexible working, News, Technology

One of the underlying drivers of agile working is supposedly the availability of ubiquitous free Wi-Fi. Yet according to new research, free Internet access may cost quite a bit more than firms might think. The study from Rethink Technology Research, Enterprise Apps Tech and iPass claims that North American and European business travellers spent at least £855 million in connectivity charges while on the road last year. The report, based on data from around 78 million business trips, includes the costs of 3G and 4G roaming data and paid Wi-FI connections that would have been cheaper of paid for in advance. The report is particularly critical of the practice of offering business users free Wi-FI with deliberately slow connection speeds to encourage them to pay for faster connections. It also highlights the well publicised problems of data security.

July 11, 2015

Agile workers beat strikes + World’s healthiest building + 3D printed office

by Sara Bean • Facilities management, Flexible working, Newsletter, Technology, Wellbeing, Workplace

In this week’s issue; Paul Carder points out agile workers were unaffected by tube and train strikes; Maciej Markowski says despite digital technological advances, companies still appear to value human interaction and Sara Bean suggests employers only encourage home-working when it is on their terms. Mark Eltringham finds two new reasons to dislike tall buildings and argues employers attempt to manage stress in the workplace in the wrong way. We learn that a Chinese 3D printing firm plans to print a fully functioning office in Dubai; Melbourne claims to have the healthiest workplace in the world and an alarming report finds that the Internet is reducing our ability to memorise and recall things for ourselves. Subscribe for free quarterly issues of Work&Place and via the subscription form in the right hand sidebar for weekly news, follow us on Twitter and join our LinkedIn Group to discuss these and other stories.

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).

July 9, 2015

Many employers discourage home working, unless it is out of hours

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

A combination of tube and rail strikes causing travel disruption in London today, means many businesses will accede to requests to work from home. Yet a large number of UK employers are still reluctant to encourage home working. According to a recent report by Redcentric, despite the fact that that just under a third of UK office workers reported an increase in productivity when working outside of the workplace, 48 percent of respondents claimed that their employers didn’t allow them to work remotely, with 23 percent saying that their business simply didn’t like them doing it, for reasons such as data privacy and loss of productivity. Yet research by PMI Health Group shows nearly a third of staff feel pressured to routinely check and send emails from home, which suggests that employers tacitly encourage home-working, as long as it is on their terms.

July 9, 2015

Growing numbers of workers are ditching their laptops, claims study

by Neil Franklin • Flexible working, News, Technology

A growing number of European employees are shedding their laptops and instead using tablets as their sole device for work, according to a new study from technology research firm International Data Corporation. The report surveyed 2,000 UK, French and German workers and found that tablets are the only business device used by 40 percent of staff. Not everybody is ditching their keyboard so readily, however, as more and more people are using hybrids as their sole device because they need the functionality of the keyboard. The study found that just under a third of users rely solely on hybrids and the study expects this to rise to over half within a couple of years. This not only reflects the changing way we work but also has profound implications for the way we design and manage the places we work and the tools and systems we use to communicate with each other.

July 8, 2015

Productivity starts with people, advises CIPD ahead of today’s Budget

by Sara Bean • Flexible working, News, Workplace

Investing in people’s development and offering flexible working practices can help organisations boost productivity. This is according to research by the CIPD published ahead of today’s budget, which the Chancellor has said will put the emphasis on improving UK productivity. The report: Productivity: Getting the Best out of People, explores the factors that help to explain why some businesses have higher productivity than others and finds that there are clear links between productivity and how people are managed at work. The report finds that performance tends to be higher in businesses where there is a focus on higher quality products or services rather than only on low cost and where workplace culture is clearly aligned with the future direction of the business. Investment in workforce training and an intelligent approach to the implementation of ‘smart’ or agile working practices also has a positive impact.

July 6, 2015

People are outsourcing their own memories to the Internet, claims report

by Mark Eltringham • News, Technology, Wellbeing

We have outsourced our memory to the Internet and digital technology to such an extent that many of us are suffering from digital amnesia. That is the main finding of a new report from software developer Kaspersky Lab. The study of around 6,000 people claims that the seductive ease of access to a bottomless well of information is taking its toll on our natural ability to memorise and recall things for ourselves. Nearly all respondents (91 percent) across all age groups now agree that they “use the Internet as an online extension of their brain”. Around half of people now simply cannot be bothered to remember even basic facts and a quarter cheerfully even forget whatever facts they glean through search engines after they have made use of them. As with many things in the modern world, we are increasingly prone to treat even hard information as disposable.