Search Results for: employees

April 1, 2016

Firms think they can hire Millennials as an alternative to digital skills training ⁰

by Mark Eltringham • News, Technology, Workplace

A large number of businesses in the UK aren’t investing enough in bridging their own digital skills gap and instead assuming that they can fix things and improve their productivity simply by employing younger ‘digital natives’ who just know all that sort of stuff anyway. That is the key finding of a new report from Barc ays, which claims that companies are knowingly starving themselves of funding for key digital skills training despite understanding how that impacts their productivity. The report claims that firms on average invest just £109 per employee on digital skills training and are planning to increase that by just 19 percent over the next five years. They do this despite the fact that nearly half (47 percent) concede new tech skills would improve productivity. Instead 40 percent assume they can buy in the skills they need in the form of Millennials because they don’t trust older workers to pick up digital skills as quickly, if at all.

March 31, 2016

Treating workers like people really does improve engagement levels ⁰

by Sara Bean • News, Wellbeing, Workplace

Ever since the role of personnel management evolved to human resources, employers have struggled to ensure that the people they employ are treated as humans and not resources. Although it may be logical to assume that staff don’t like to be treated as numbers on a data sheet, it’s good to know that there’s evidence that companies that focus on creating a human-focused workplace do reap significant rewards in terms of wellbeing, engagement, and retention. This is according to a report released by Globoforce that found that when employers create a culture of employee recognition at work; levels of happiness and trust dramatically improve. According to the research receiving recognition at work makes people feel more appreciated (92 percent); prouder of their work (86 percent); more satisfied with their job (85 percent); happier (86 percent); more engaged (83 percent); and more committed to the company (81 percent).

March 30, 2016

Isn’t it time that UK businesses thought more like the Scandinavians? ⁰

by Richard Morris • Comment, Facilities management, Flexible working, Wellbeing, Workplace

The clocks went forward on 27^th March meaning darker mornings and lighter evenings – at least for a time. But the standard working day doesn’t reflect such changes, with commuters setting out in darkness to make a fixed 9am start. The changing of the clocks raises interesting questions about the UK work model. Why does UK business persist with the 9-5? We know that commuting in and out can be stressful and detrimental to productivity – not to mention expensive. So why do we continue to do it? Why is the UK’s workforce all boarding the same trains to arrive at the office at the same time? Today, the very notion of the 9am start to the working day should seem archaic. Sweden – often a forerunner of best practice when it comes to wellbeing – recently introduced a 6-hour working day in a bid to reduce sick leave and make staff happier. To date, there has been no hard analysis of results, but anecdotal evidence suggests a healthier, more engaged workforce.

March 30, 2016

Career satisfaction and work-life balance are top employee draws ⁰

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

Although a competitive salary, company perks and an exceptional office culture may seem enticing to the American workforce, a new study shows there are more important motivational factors. A survey conducted by Kelton Global for Cornerstone OnDemand reveals that career satisfaction and work-life balance are the top reasons American stay at their current jobs (38 percent combined), while nearly three in ten (29 percent) resign due to work overload and lack of healthy work-life balance. Employees said they’d make life-altering decisions and considerable sacrifices in order to find a sense of satisfaction, fulfillment and purpose in their careers. In fact, 89 percent of employees would consider making a lateral career move with no financial incentive for multiple reasons, including to start an entirely new career (41 percent) or take on a professional challenge (40 percent). Additionally, relocating to a different city, state or country is a desirable career move for 77 percent of employees. More →

March 29, 2016

Workers spend large parts of each day doing nothing or wasting their time ⁰

by Mark Eltringham • News, Technology, Wellbeing

If it ever seems that you spend a large chunk of your average working day either doing nothing or wasting it on pointless nonsense, then don’t worry about it because that is all perfectly normal. You may already know that just by looking around you, but two new surveys highlight just how much time people consider unproductive each day. The Global Attitudes to Work survey from Qualtrics polled 6,250 employees in 14 countries and found that UK workers believe that 36 percent of the time they spend at work is unproductive. This puts the UK towards the bottom of the international pile when it comes to perceptions of their productivity, a fact perhaps explained by another survey from Workfront which suggest that many Brits are unnecessarily disorganised and spend inordinate amounts of time dealing with non work related emails, looking for lost files and then simply replicating them after fruitless searches.

March 25, 2016

Career development most important driver for employee engagement ⁰

by Sara Bean • News, Workplace

With a lack of career development opportunities being the number one reason why employees leave organizations; employers are increasingly recognizing alternative rewards as an essential component of a competitive total employee rewards strategy. In fact, companies prioritise career development more than other alternative rewards, benefits and bonuses, according to new research by the Hay Group division of Korn Ferry (KFY). Nine in ten organizations (90 percent) surveyed employ four or more alternative methods of rewarding employees (including career development programmes, health and welfare benefits, additional paid time off and other benefits) as part of their HR strategy. More than 8 out of ten organizations surveyed said that alternative rewards are key to being an employer of choice (89 percent), remaining competitive (87 percent) and engaging employees (81 percent). Eighty-seven percent of respondents also agreed that alternative rewards are an important tool in retaining the organization’s existing talent.

March 23, 2016

Is discrimination of women with children the root cause of gender pay gap? ⁰

by Sara Bean • Comment, Flexible working, Legal news, News, Workplace

Two reports published this week support the argument that it is when women have children and require more flexible hours, that they really start to feel the sharp end of the gender pay gap. A report by a cross party group of MPs on the Women and Equalities Select Committee, reveals that supporting men and women to share childcare and other forms of unpaid caring more equally would be one of the most effective policy levers in reducing the gender pay gap. Without this support, many women are trapped in low paid, part-time work below their skill level. This contributes to pay disparities and the under-utilisation of women’s skills that costs the UK economy up to 2 percent GDP, around £36 billion. It also found that not enough is being done to support women returning to work if they have had time out of the labour market. Meanwhile a report from the Equality and Human Rights Commission says that three in four working mothers experience maternity discrimination.

March 23, 2016

Younger generation of staff want workplaces to utilise ‘live’ technologies ⁰

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

The next generation of employees believe that if employers they want to attract and retain the best talent, they need to change their approach to new ‘live’ technologies which enable people to communicate in real time. According to new global research (albeit from a video comms company) despite 85 percent of employees using video as part of their everyday lives, only 28 percent say their employers are proactively encouraging them to use video at work to communicate. 72 percent feel that live video has the power to transform the way they communicate at work and 69 percent believe that increased use of video conversations would help employee retention at all levels within the organisation. The research, conducted among 4,000 employees across the UK, Germany, France and the US, also found that only one in seven (14 percent) employers is good at providing communications tools at work which mirror those employees use at home.

March 23, 2016

The choice of a clear or messy workplace is an expression of personality ⁰

by Michael Page • Comment, Flexible working, Workplace design

When it comes to each individual’s working space and workstation area, a question that is always worth asking (and often is) is whether it is best to back off and let people customise their immediate surroundings to fit with their own tastes and needs or whether a company-wide tidy desk policy and uniformity of approach be imposed to protect a specific look and standard. One factor that is relevant is that there seems to be a pendulum swing between aesthetics and wellbeing going on at the moment, with many companies going back and forth in pursuit of the best approach. A study, conducted a few years ago by psychological scientist Professor Kathleen Vohs, along with a number of other researchers from the University of Minnesota, considered the behaviour of people working on both messy and clean desks and found that the individuals working in messier spaces came up with more creative and interesting results in their work overall.

March 22, 2016

While politicians squabble, here’s what the Budget meant for the workplace ⁰

by Mark Eltringham • Comment, Facilities management, Legal news, Workplace, Workplace design

Strange as it may seem now, there was a Budget last week. We’d planned to produce a report on it once the dust had settled but given that whatever dust had originally been kicked up has now been swept away by a political storm, it’s only now we feel able to offer some perspective a few days out. As ever these days, the budget touched on a number of aspects of the workplace, sometimes hitting the mark and sometimes suggesting politicians don’t yet understand how people work. There was the usual stuff about rates and commercial property but also plenty to digest about the freelance economy, productivity, new technology, flexible working legislation and the current, often faltering attempts to develop wealth and infrastructure as well as the 21st Century creative and digital economy in places other than London. There’s plenty to digest here and plenty of people have already had their say, so a chance to grab a coffee and take all or some of it in.

March 22, 2016

Third of workers over 50 will retire later than planned, but not all reluctantly ⁰

by Sara Bean • News, Workplace

A third of people aged over 50 who are employed in the private sector are now planning to retire later than they previously thought according to Aviva’s latest Working Lives report. A lack of pension savings (46 percent) is the primary reason for people to postpone their retirement plans, and the amount that would be available through the state pension (32 percent) was also an issue. Not all the reasons given for working longer were negative though, with one in five (21 percent) of those expecting to work longer doing so because they feel they still have a lot to offer their employer. A similar proportion (20 percent) said that job satisfaction has encouraged them to put off retirement. Levels of job satisfaction were highest amongst those aged over 65, with a large majority (86 percent) of private sector workers in that age group saying they enjoy their work, compared with just 57 percent of those aged 18-64.

March 22, 2016

A growing need to create an office that attracts rather than repels staff ⁰

by Darren Bilsborough • Comment, Property, Workplace, Workplace design

So where do you start when identifying the attributes that make an office an ‘attractor’ for staff? There are numerous articles extolling the virtues of everything from pool tables, to hammocks, creative “playgrounds” and all manner of enticing and unique workplace design considerations. However, I believe that there are more intangible and subjective issues at stake such as building aesthetics, prestige and values alignment. Very few businesses benefit from working in low-key, nondescript locations. The only likely motivation for occupying such a space would be cost-driven. Likewise, nobody wants to work in a building that is run-down, outdated and clearly past its best-by date. It is preferable for most office workers to work in a building that is new, interesting, prestigious or an acknowledged landmark. It becomes something they can be proud of and would be happy to share with family, friends and colleagues.