Search Results for: happiness

February 13, 2014

Why do we bother going to work? Good question.

by Mark Eltringham • Comment, Facilities management, Flexible working, Workplace

While the UK Government continues to explore new ways of getting people back to work more quickly following (or even during) illness, there are a number of counterpart questions that they continue to fastidiously ignore, one of which is ‘why bother?’. We might all ask ourselves that from time to time, whether petulantly or as a pressure-relieving alternative to ramming a co-worker’s head through a window or a laptop in a dumpster. But there are also reasons to raise the question coldly, rationally and with full awareness of all the facts, not least when it comes to assessing the increasing cost of going to work in the first place. Put simply, for many people it makes little or no financial sense to go to work.

January 25, 2014

Latest issue of Insight now available to view online

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

The latest issue of our weekly newsletter is now available to view online here. This week: Ilkka Kakko argues that designing for serendipity is about more than facilitating chance meetings; Mark Eltringham looks for the missing link between offices and avocados; we report on the ongoing recovery in the construction and property markets; raise questions about what happiness at work really means; and Sara Bean argues that we should never assume that working from home is the best way for an individual to work. If you don’t already subscribe, please do by adding your email in the box on the home page and we’ll make sure you see the freshest thinking on workplace design and management each week.

December 10, 2013

More than half of UK’s increasingly disengaged workforce looking to switch jobs

by Mark Eltringham • News, Workplace

Staff disengagement is already costing the UK economy dear, and is also one of the reasons why nearly half of all UK employees are currently looking to leave their current jobs over the next year, a contrast of two new surveys reveals. The first report, from private healthcare provider BUPA, found that disengaged and unhealthy staff cost the UK economy around £6 billion each year. The second report from Investors in People (IIP) – a Government created business improvement agency – claims that just under half of all British employees (47 percent) are considering whether to move jobs during 2014. This represents some 14 million individuals so if you lend both reports credence, employers may have serious issues retaining their best employees as the jobs market picks up.

December 6, 2013

Extended rights to flexible working could prove a logistical headache for employers

by Pam Loch • Comment, Flexible working, Workplace

A recent decision by the government could result in emptier offices on Fridays and Mondays as staff vie with each other to work from home. This is because from April 2014 onwards, employers will have to be prepared to consider flexible working requests from any employee, not just for employees who have children under the age of 17 or responsibilities as carers. One of the more challenging areas for employers is how to manage condensed hours requests and to keep enough staff covering core office hours, without affecting the business. This could result in employers having to juggle competing flexible working requests from employees who they may not be able to accommodate all at the same time. More →

November 29, 2013

The meaningful aspects of what we do give us the greatest rewards

by Annie Gurton • Comment, Workplace

Charles Handy recently explained to attendees at Worktech 13 London why money is not the main motivating factor for employees; while at the same event, Claudia Hamm-Barstow of Jones Lang LaSalle added that the dream workplace is “a place where the company adds value to the employee experience, people feel valued and welcomed, the organisation feels meaningful, the work is rewarding and importantly there are no stupid rules”. According to The Human Givens Institute neither of these statements should be at all surprising. But The Human Givens theory adds that we also need to be respected, to feel in control, to have self-esteem, privacy and community. And, most crucially of all, we need to have purpose and meaning in our lives. More →

November 26, 2013

Control over their work space helps satisfy people’s basic emotional needs

by Annie Gurton • Comment, Workplace design

In the second of two pieces to mark the seventieth anniversary of Abraham Maslow’s ‘hierarchy of needs’ Annie Gurton writes: Workers need an element of control in their surroundings. As Maslow said in the 1940s, humans are fundamentally, simple creatures. We need air, water, food and security, but along with those basic physiological needs we have a set of emotional needs. If these are not met we do not die, but we become emotionally distressed. When it comes to designing office space, it is important that our basic emotional needs are met if we are to feel happy. Workers need to have privacy yet feel connected to others. They need to have a sense of community yet feel that they are respected.

November 13, 2013

Workplace Week highlights the changing shape of the office

by Richard Byatt • Comment, Events, Facilities management, Workplace design

‘High Street’ at Network Rail’s Milton Keynes base

This year’s Workplace Week which took place last week was a great success, with more people participating and more money raised for charity. Across the week, over 500 people took part, visiting innovative workplaces, attending the Workplace Week Convention or going along to one of the many Fringe events. Workplace Week is organised by Advanced Workplace Associates and supported by CoreNet Global, BCS, RICS, FMA and BIFM. All proceeds go to the Children in Need charity. Around 60 people joined the speakers at the headquarters of PWC on London’s Southbank for the Workplace Week Convention to discuss ‘Driving productivity through the connected organisation.’ The informal atmosphere and roundtable format encouraged participation, with a focus on developments in organisational design, change management and technology.

October 29, 2013

‘Beleaguered’ UK workforce is poorly motivated and unproductive

by Sara Bean • Flexible working, News, Workplace

UK workers are lacking motivation and job satisfaction, with over half either feeling neutral or unhappy about going to work most days, only one in four very satisfied with their jobs and 20 per cent who dread going to work. According to a new report, ‘The Forgotten Workforce’ a series of blows to UK workers, including cuts to their working hours, increasingly inconsistent working patterns, pay freezes, and introduction of zero hours – coupled with little or no investment in technology to support employees – has led to a UK workforce lacking morale and disengaged from the business. An efficient business needs an efficient workforce. If this cycle continues, businesses will face increasingly poor productivity and the UK economic recovery will suffer warns the report. More →

September 27, 2013

What’s wrong with adopting a more positive approach to work and workplaces?

by Mark Eltringham • Comment, Facilities management, Public Sector, Workplace, Workplace design

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Has there ever been a UK government more interested in the workplace than this one? Most of it has been about cutting costs of course, so the majority of announcements emanating from the Cabinet Office have been about procurement, design and environmental performance. David Cameron even at one point announced that he wanted to measure people’s happiness. The questions needed to work out how happy we are proposed by the Office for National Statistics as a result would have had a very familiar feel for anybody who has ever completed a workplace satisfaction survey even if they miss the most blindingly obvious point that when you’re skint and in mortal fear of losing your job, most other things about work lose their lustre.

July 26, 2013

Report: How will the future affect us or can we effect the future?

by Sara Bean • Furniture, Knowledge, News

Workplace furniture specialist Kinnarps has published its Trend Report 2013, which is the culmination of detailed research across European markets and thought leaders, conducted in partnership with Stockholm based futurologists Kairos Future. The study distilled a broad overview of emerging and established trends, across Kinnarps’ European markets, to focus on eight key themes that will influence the workplace of the future. According to the report, big changes are already apparent in our society, but these will come to have an altogether greater impact on the way we evaluate our working environment. More →

July 11, 2013

Personalised design and office plants proven to boost wellness and performance

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

Allowing staff to make design decisions in a workspace enhanced with office plants can increase wellbeing and wellness by as much as 47 per cent, increase creativity by 45 per cent and increase productivity by 38 per cent, new research has revealed. Visitors at this year’s Chelsea Flower Show were challenged to take part in the study which measured their creativity, happiness and productivity as they experienced a range of different workspace designs. The findings, which would be expected to translate to a significant increase in business profitability, confront the popular belief that plants and art are an unnecessary or even wasteful element of the business environment. Results from this and related scientific investigations indicate that across all measures of psychological comfort and business performance, the managerially popular flexible, controlled, lean office, is consistently inferior to a space enriched by the design decisions of people who work there.

June 25, 2013

What Jeremy Clarkson can’t teach us about workforce productivity

by Mark Eltringham • Comment, Workplace

In 2011, one of Top Gear’s regular bits of lazy casual racism caused a bit more fuss than the rolling of eyes it typically deserves. The presenters had mocked a Mexican sports car with Richard Hammond – who has never said anything interesting or funny in his life – claiming that ‘cars reflect national characteristics. A Mexican car’s just going to be a lazy, feckless, flatulent oaf with a moustache, leaning against a fence asleep, looking at a cactus with a blanket with a hole in the middle on as a coat.’ There was a bit more of this kind of stuff with Jeremy Clarkson suggesting that the Mexican ambassador to Britain would be too lazy to make any kind of complaint. He was wrong about that (he did) and they were all wrong about Mexicans anyway because according to a new report into global productivity, Mexico has the world’s most productive workforce.