Search Results for: values

August 30, 2018

Flexible hours and opportunities for growth help reduce graduate job-hopping

by Sara Bean • Flexible working, News, Workplace

The latest generation of workplace recruits, the so-called Gen Z graduates, are more likely to stay in their first role if flexible working and mentoring is on offer, new research claims. According to graduate jobs board Milkround, while over half (55 percent) of new graduates’ plan to stay in their first role for less than two years, 76 percent can be encouraged to stay longer with training/mentorship and 63 percent with flexible hours. They are also ambitious and have high expectations, with 65 percent believing they will work in their dream industry. This impacts what is expected of employers and could hold the key to encouraging this new generation to stay in roles longer. This change in expectations begins before they start their new role – 68 percent of graduates are calling for more detailed job descriptions and 57 percent would like to have an open line of communication with their line manager from the moment they accept a job.

August 21, 2018

How do you make your company culture work for everyone?

by Jonathan Richards • Comment, Workplace

Company culture is the bedrock of any business. And it has been thrown into sharp focus in recent months with many high-profile scandals hitting the headlines such as the discrimination case at Uber. In light of this, many businesses are now investing in – even living and breathing – their company culture. This is of course, great news for employees. Shouting about how your company culture is like being part of a family and how everyone mucks in together may have swayed a new recruits’ decision during their interview. However, have you stopped to think how accessible your culture will be to new team members? Close-knit can often translate to the ‘in-crowd’ and office politics can get in the way of a pleasant working environment if the culture is too close.

August 17, 2018

Employees reveal truth about company culture

by Neil Franklin • News, Workplace

Organisations must do more to engage with their people and meet their personal expectations if they want a positive work culture, highlights a new research white paper by leading HR and payroll supplier, MHR. ‘Company Culture: Don’t Just Throw Money at The Issue’ explores the real experience of UK employees and their true thoughts about their employers. The paper, based on findings from a survey of 1174 UK employees by YouGov on behalf of MHR, reveals that 49% of employees believe the portrayed public image of the company they work for matches the actual experience of working there. The research shows that employees are generally happy with the culture at their workplace, with 70% of people agreeing their company’s ethos is well communicated to staff, and 61% saying they would feel comfortable speaking to their manager if they felt the company wasn’t delivering on its aims.

August 9, 2018

How will Crossrail impact the office landscape of London and beyond?

by Lars Brown • Comment, Property

We are now just a few months away from the grand opening of the central section of Crossrail, the 118km long railway line spanning London and the South East which will, once completed, will deliver a direct connection between all of London’s main employment centres; linking Heathrow with Paddington, the West End, the City and Canary Wharf. This ambitious redevelopment plan will bring huge positive change to the City and is estimated to generate over 850,000 new jobs in the Capital, as well as making the lives of those already working in London easier and more efficient.

July 19, 2018

When it comes to change management, culture sometimes eats strategy for breakfast

by Gary Chandler • Features, Flexible working, Workplace design

21st Century organisations are under constant pressure to evolve. They are beset by a number of forces that demand they change constantly. These include the need to restructure the organisation, adapt to new technologies, respond to competitors and changes in the economy and legislative environment. Inevitably, this constant need to change affects both people and the built environment in very profound ways. However, according to a study of Culture and Change Management published by the Katzenbach Center, only around half of all transformation initiatives meet their objects over time. Among the biggest obstacles to successful change management cited by the study is change fatigue, which is characterised by a lack of empathy and a widespread failure to engage with the change process.

July 17, 2018

Businesses told to consider the interests of workers and other stakeholders in new code

by Neil Franklin • News

The Financial Reporting Council (FRC) has published its new Corporate Governance Code in a bid to improve trust in UK business. The new Code will remain on the “comply or explain” basis mandatory for which it has been criticised in the past, but has been broadly welcomed by industry bodies. The code sets out a number of recommendations aimed at improving culture and trust in business, of which it suggests at least one be applied. They include having a director appointed from the workforce, a formal workforce advisory panel and a designated non-executive director. The Code will apply to accounting periods from January 2019 and is applicable to all companies with a premium listing.

July 11, 2018

A beauty industry veteran makes the case for corporate wellness

by Leena Jain • Comment, Wellbeing, Workplace design

Wellness is a term that today transcends the consumer and business worlds, but it is so much more than a buzzword. Today, the wellbeing of employees is essential for organisations to flourish, so much so that the term has in many ways replaced ‘productivity’ as the way to measure the success of an organisation. Both the beauty and workplace design sectors are very personal areas of high emotional involvement. There is a very real and physical contact with these products — in beauty, women are particularly (and increasingly men too) engaged in developing a customised routine because it gives them a sense of happiness, wellbeing and identity.

July 5, 2018

Why a Google office simply does not work for everybody ⁰

by Dr Caroline M. Burns • Comment, Facilities management, Technology, Workplace design

The open plan office versus closed debate rages on, and rather than running out of steam in the face of all of the evidence and reasoned argument put forward one one side or the other by many industry thought-leaders, it seems to have nine lives. Those grand and ground-breaking new offices occupied by the world’s tech giants seem to be particularly popular examples of why highly open and transparent workplaces do, or don’t work, especially those headline-grabbing offices created around the world by Google. This public debate has led to some very interesting and insightful discussions in various forums (to which I have contributed), inspiring me to synthesise the key themes into four reasons why a Google office is not necessarily the right type of office for your organisation. Many thanks in particular are due to David Rostie and Kay Sargent for their valuable online contributions to the debates which inspired this article.

July 5, 2018

Responsible office fit-out toolkit published by Building Better Partnerships

by Neil Franklin • News, Property, Workplace design

Commercial property trade body Building Better Partnerships (BBP) has today published its latest free industry guidance – Responsible Fit-Out Toolkit: Offices. The Toolkit claims to provide guidance for owners and occupiers on how to integrate sustainability and wellbeing into an office fit-out. The authors claim that while workplace design plays a pivotal role in demonstrating a business’s values and can have an immense impact on the comfort and productivity of those working within and visiting a space, opportunities are rarely fully appreciated.

June 28, 2018

Ten demonstrable truths about the workplace you may not know

by Kerstin Sailer • Comment, Facilities management, Features, Workplace design

The science of the workplace has gained a lot of interest over the last few years, highlighting recurring patterns of human behaviour as well as how organisational behaviour relates to office design. In theory, knowledge from this growing body of research could be used to inform design. In practice, this is rarely the case. A survey of 420 architects and designers highlighted a large gap between research and practice: while 80 percent of respondents agreed that more evidence was needed on the impact of design, 68 percent admitted they never reviewed literature and 71 percent said they never engaged in any sort of post-occupancy evaluation. Only 5 percent undertake a formal POE and just 1 percent do so in a rigorous fashion. Not a single practitioner reported a report on the occupied scheme, despite its importance in understanding the impact of a design.

June 25, 2018

Leading with purpose is the signature strength of a great leader

by Ben Renshaw • Comment, Workplace

David was a reluctant leader. We were introduced through his HR Director; however, he was not happy to see me. He didn’t believe in personal development and he didn’t want to spend time with a coach. He also didn’t have a lot of choice as he’d recently attended an assessment centre to inform his future and there were some consistent themes about his leadership style that needed to be addressed. Key comments included his hypercritical style that would cut people down, unrealistic pace that gave people no time to deliver quality and a tendency to be overly directive which would crush people’s freedom.

Know your past to understand your future

Early in our relationship I asked him about his philosophy about leadership to learn why he did what he did and what he thought about the value of his role. It was a short conversation. David’s response was that he wasn’t a leader, he was a technocrat (although he was already accountable for over 3,000 people), and his role was to deliver the numbers. I realized that going head on into leadership was not the answer. I suggested that we step back and explore what had shaped his career so far and to explore implications for his future. He agreed and quickly told me that his life had been uneventful and therefore it would be a short conversation. Two hours later we were still in the middle of running through David’s life experience and we had to reschedule for the next day. Three more hours and David had painted a rich picture of his lifeline and the impact on his career and leadership.

There were three key values that stood out from his story – doing the right thing, setting high standards and getting the job done. These were paramount for David, strongly influenced by his father who had been a significant role model. When we looked at his purpose David was less clear. He knew that he thrived on change and challenging the status quo. He was at his best when required to achieve stretching targets. He was passionate about showing loyalty to others, including friends and family. We explored his purpose until he arrived at an end point, ”Being a creator of opportunity”. This resonated wholeheartedly and ignited his fire.

Leading leaders

I asked David what it would be like if rather than thinking traditionally about adopting a leadership role he committed to being purpose-led? He was unsure at first because it didn’t seem tangible enough. I followed up by challenging him to define what being purpose-led would look like if he was to follow being a creator of opportunity on a daily basis? He described the following:

• seek new horizons for the company to grow;
• encourage people to develop and succeed;
• embrace problems as a way to learn and continuously improve;
• build relationships to develop better outcomes;
• stay energized to be at the top of his game;
• leave a legacy for the company, products and people to be in a better place than when he arrived.

By connecting with the evidence of being purpose-led, David tapped into his own internal drive to be the best he could be. I then asked him to consider what would happen if these six factors became the backbone of his own leadership framework. He got it. For the first time David was able to make an authentic linkage between what was most important to him and leadership, rather than it appearing like a dry theoretical concept.

Next, we evolved his framework into a living and breathing way of leading. We created a map which gave him the clarity about what his leadership could look like:

David found that by putting his purpose at the heart of his leadership he was able to integrate what was most important for him and remove previous conflict about how to lead.

What is your purpose?

Purpose is the catalyst for personal meaning and reason for being. Your purpose is the glue that binds teams together and the inspiration that enables organizations to outperform. It is the meeting point between your passion and your talent. When you are on purpose you unlock the necessary skillset to thrive in today’s complex world.

So, what is your purpose? To discover your purpose requires an open mind and a genuine willingness focused on peak experiences in your life. Here are three steps to help you find your purpose:

1. Identify peak moments. Ask yourself, when have you been at your best? Most fulfilled? Happiest? For instance, playing sports, travelling the world, hitting goals.
2. Make meaning. What was it about these events that made them so significant? For example, unleashing passion, learning new things and achieving success.
3. Define your why. Reflect upon why your big themes inspire you and how you would describe your ultimate reason for existence.

Once you have found your purpose you are in a position to define what success would look like to be purpose-led. Translating your success measures into actions enables you to lead with purpose every-day. This will become what you are known for, what you are appreciated for and what will bring you ultimate fulfilment.

______________________________

Ben Renshaw is a leadership thinker, speaker, coach and author of eight books, including LEAD! and SuperCoaching. https://www.benrenshaw.com His new book, Purpose, is now available.

June 20, 2018

Asian investment in City of London offices now hitting record levels

by Mark Eltringham • News, Property

Asian money is pouring into office investments in the Square Mile at a pace rarely seen before, according to a new analysis by Savills. About £3.4 billion of Asian capital has been invested in London offices already this year, according to a study from the property consultancy. That is 70 per cent of the total volume and a record high for the first six months of a year. In the past three months alone, Asian buyers have snapped up £3.5 billion of buildings in London’s financial district. This is the highest figure for a second quarter since 2007, when the commercial property market was at its peak just before the credit crunch hit, according to Savills.