Search Results for: inclusive

What will the UK General Election mean for the workplace? Some experts respond

What will the UK General Election mean for the workplace? Some experts respond 0

by • Architecture, Comment, Flexible working, Property, Workplace, Workplace design

Any residual feelings of certainty that anybody in the UK may have had about the country’s future following last year’s Brexit vote, will have had them pretty much eradicated by last Thursday’s General Election result. However, we must try to make sense of things for society and the wider economy as well as specific facets of it, such as the world of work. The whole thing looks like the pig’s ear that it is, of course. Fortunately, as some experts have already argued, there are some reasons to see some positive outcomes, including a soft (or softer) Brexit and the chance of a more positive approach to workplace rights, now that the Government needs to maintain a broader consensus. The fear or hope that the UK would lighten its already soft touch approach to workplace legislation would seem at least to be less well founded.

 

 

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Scotland needs to develop new skills as era of automation threatens half of jobs

Scotland needs to develop new skills as era of automation threatens half of jobs 0

by • News, Technology, Workplace

Urgent reform is needed to deal with the rise of automation, which threatens half of Scottish jobs, a leading think-tank has warned. The stark warning comes in a new report from IPPR Scotland, supported by the JPMorgan Chase Foundation. Scotland’s Skills 2030 outlines the need to reskill Scotland’s workforce for the world of work in 2030. The study claims that 46 percent of jobs in Scotland – or 1.2 million – are at high risk of automation up to 2030 and beyond. It suggests that Scotland’s skills system needs to “retrofit” the workforce with the skills to be ready for technological change – 2.5 million adults in Scotland today (or 78 percent) will still be of working in 2030, report adds.

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Remote access to the workplace may be doing staff more harm than good

Remote access to the workplace may be doing staff more harm than good 0

by • Facilities management, Flexible working, News, Technology, Wellbeing, Workplace

Remote access to the workplace may be doing more harm than good

Employees are divided on whether remote access to the workplace is really a positive or negative development, with almost a third of UK workers (32 percent) feeling that having remote access to the workplace means they can’t switch off in their personal time. According to the latest CIPD/Halogen Employee Outlook report, two-fifths of UK workers (40 percent) admit to actively checking their work mobile or emails at least five times a day outside of working hours. Nearly a fifth (18 percent) feel as though they are under surveillance with remote access to work, and 17 percent say it makes them feel anxious or even impacts their quality of sleep. However, almost a third (30 percent) of employees say they feel empowered by having remote access to the workplace, showing a divide in opinion. Indeed, more than half of employees (53 percent) say it helps them to work flexibly and more than a third (37 percent) say it makes them more productive.

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Proactive approach needed to improve accessibility within the built environment

Proactive approach needed to improve accessibility within the built environment 0

by • Facilities management, Legal news, News, Property, Public Sector, Workplace design

Proactive approach needed to improve accessibility within the built environment

Inaccessible workplaces are too common problem that disabled people face in accessing buildings and public spaces, and the Government must lead a charge in improving access and inclusion in the built environment, according to a report by an influential cross party committee published today. The Women and Equalities Committee’s Disability and the Built Environment inquiry has been examining the extent to which those with accessibility issues are considered and accommodated in our built environment, and whether more could be done to increase the accessibility and inclusivity of both new and existing properties and spaces. The report recommends public procurement, fiscal initiatives and transparently modelling best practice, while bringing the full range of work on improving access and inclusion in the built environment into a coherent and transparent strategy, with the Department for Communities and Local Government held responsible for making this happen. The report found that many workplaces are inaccessible, there is very little choice of where to live and the public spaces through which people need to move can be prohibitively excluding; all of which constitute an unacceptable diminution of quality of life and equality.

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WeWork extends property as a service offering as IBM takes on entire coworking building

WeWork extends property as a service offering as IBM takes on entire coworking building 0

by • Facilities management, News, Property, Workplace design

In a deal of enormous significance for the commercial property and workplace sectors, IBM has agreed a deal with coworking giant WeWork to take on all the space at its 88 University Place office in New York. Although originally targeted at startups and freelancers, especially those working in the creative and technology sectors, a growing number of corporate clients are seeing the appeal of coworking space in a fast changing world and now make up over a fifth of WeWork’s membership worldwide. Meanwhile, in moves that are sure to have major implications for the corporate real estate and facilities management market, WeWork has also announced plans to become a major real estate investor and introduce a wider range of FM services. The firm already operates in 135 locations spread across 44 cities in 14 countries.

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Governments need to address perfect storm of low wages, productivity and automation

Governments need to address perfect storm of low wages, productivity and automation 0

by • News, Technology

Governments need to act now to address issues such as productivity, automation and stagnating or falling wages, according to two new reports from the International Monetary Fund (IMF). In both its Spring global policy agenda and world economic outlook, the IMF claims that workers are subject to a perfect storm of factors that will destabilise their jobs and lives unless governments implement robust policies to help them work more flexibly, acquire new skills and work alongside the new generation of automated technologies instead of in competition with them. Addressing the issues in a speech last week, IMF managing director Christine Lagarde said that governments need to create a new economic and social architecture that allows everybody to take advantage of the opportunities offered by technology and the current growth in the world economy.

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Research shows how the gender pay gap can be directly related to motherhood

Research shows how the gender pay gap can be directly related to motherhood 0

by • Comment, Flexible working, News, Workplace

Research shows how the gender pay gap can be directly related to motherhoodA new piece of academic research provides more evidence that the underlying reason for the gender pay gap is the discrepancy between the way women with children are treated compared to men, and other women without children. According to new research from Université Paris-Saclay, mothers are paid 3 percent less for every child they have compared to their female colleagues who do not have children, while fathers suffer no such penalty at all. The figures were compiled from a 16-year study of data from organisations in the French private sector between 1995 and 2011 by Lionel Wilner, Director of Graduate Studies at engineering and statistics school ENSAE, a founding member of Université Paris-Saclay. He separated the effect of childbirth from other firm-specific wage determinants, and accounted for full-time and part-time work, to find that the difference between mothers and non-mothers is approximated a 3 percent lower hourly wage. The effect was found to be more pronounced after the birth of the first child. More →

Majority of employers still not ready for mandatory gender pay gap reporting

Majority of employers still not ready for mandatory gender pay gap reporting 0

by • Legal news, News, Workplace

UK employers are unprepared for gender pay gap reporting legislation, with more than a third (32 percent) failing to review salaries across genders to safeguard against pay discrimination. This is despite the fact that the Equality Act 2010 (Gender Pay Gap Information) Regulations 2017 come into force later this week (6th April) which will require UK companies with more than 250 staff to keep records of gender pay and bonuses. Totaljobs’ survey of 4,700 employees and 145 employers found that 82 percent of companies are not reviewing their gender equality/equal pay policy and 58 percent don’t have salary information available across roles and genders. Little more than half (53.1 percent) of employers feel “very confident” that salaries are equal across the genders. While employers will be required to keep salary records, the research showed men are currently more likely to receive a bonus than women and typically receive more. In the past year, 43 percent of men received a bonus of £2,059, on average, versus 38 percent of women, who, on average, received £1,128.

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Fall in number of senior business roles held by women in the UK

Fall in number of senior business roles held by women in the UK 0

by • Legal news, News, Workplace

A new report to mark International Women’s Day claims that the proportion of senior business roles held by women in the UK has fallen from 21 percent in 2016 to 19 percent in 2017. The report, based on Grant Thornton’s annual survey of 5,500 businesses in 36 economies, also found that the percentage of businesses in the UK with no women in senior management has also risen from 36 percent in 2016 to 41 percent in 2017. This is still an improvement on other EU countries with a lower proportion of senior roles held by women: Germany (18 percent), UK (19 percent), Greece (20 percent) and Netherlands (20 percent)Globally, the proportion of senior business roles held by women has hit a high of 25 percent. However, the findings suggest that progress is slow, with an increase of only 1 percent compared to 2016. Globally, the proportion of senior business roles held by women increased 1 percent from 2016, but that’s only up 6 percent since start of research 13 years ago, in 2004 (18 percent), showing how little progress has been made over the past decade. The research claims that the countries with the highest proportion of senior roles held by women are Russia (47 percent), Indonesia (46 percent) and Estonia (40 percent). The UK had the fifth lowest proportion of women in senior business roles, with Japan recording the lowest (7 percent) and Argentina second lowest (15 percent). More →

White paper: a new world of learning environments

White paper: a new world of learning environments 0

by • Briefing, Insight Briefings, Premium Content, Workplace design

The traditional structures of work and education were forged in the fires of the Industrial Revolution. They shared many characteristics. They were rigid, hierarchical and based on a patriarchal approach to achieving their aims. In education, this manifested itself in the traditional didactic form that was, until recently, seen as the ideal model, based on teachers, tutors and lecturers imparting knowledge and learning to their pupils and students as part of an agreed curriculum and to an approved timetable. How well this process turned out was checked with periodic testing. For some time now, people have been questioning this structure and, with it, the design of learning environments. Over the past few decades, we have not only developed the technologies to allow us to learn in new ways, we have also developed a far better understanding of the processes involved.

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Connectivity, innovation and uncertainty are driving workplace change, claims report

Connectivity, innovation and uncertainty are driving workplace change, claims report 0

by • Facilities management, News, Technology, Wellbeing

Sodexo has published its 2017 Global Workplace Trends report, which claims to define the most critical factors affecting the world’s workers and employers. According to the report, the trends portray a workplace that blends work life with outside life, catering to employee needs through improvements in wellness, space design and learning programs. “With this piece, we’ve distilled key findings from different sectors, generations and countries to produce a report that provides a holistic view of the global workplace,” said Sylvia Metayer, CEO, Worldwide Corporate Services segment, Sodexo. “It’s critical for business leaders to recognise the underlying trends driving change, to evaluate their significance and stay ahead of—rather than follow—them.”

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Millennials more tuned-in to discrimination at work than other generations

Millennials more tuned-in to discrimination at work than other generations 0

by • Legal news, News, Wellbeing, Workplace

Millennials have widely divergent experiences and attitudes toward diversity and inclusion within the workplace than older generations, claims a new US-based report. In the research from the Institute for Public Relations (IPR) and Weber Shandwick into the importance that people place on diversity and inclusion (D&I) when considering a new job found that 47 percent of Millennials consider it an important criterion in their job search compared to 33 percent of Gen Xers and 37 percent of Boomers. Nearly six in 10 of all employed Americans (58 percent) report that they see or hear about some form of discrimination and/or bias at their workplace, most frequently racial or ethnic in nature (22 percent). Millennials are significantly more likely than older generations to be attuned to such behaviour at work, and also much more comfortable discussing these issues at work than their older colleagues. The survey also asked respondents why they believe employers emphasise diversity and inclusion in the workplace. All three generations cited “To make it a better place to work” among their top three reasons. Millennials also recognize increased opportunities while reputational benefits and outside pressures are noticed by Gen Xers and Boomers.

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