Search Results for: employees

Only a third of staff trust their senior management, finds CIPD

Only a third of staff trust their senior management, finds CIPDThere is little evidence of improvement in the quality of management in the UK over the last decade – and it is one of the reasons behind the UK’s long-standing productivity weakness compared to the likes of the US and Germany. According to the CIPD report ‘Are UK organisations getting better at managing their people?’ while 65 percent of employees are generally satisfied with their line manager and largely trust them and value their honesty, only 33 percent say they trust their senior management. It found that management processes are not always applied consistently or fairly and this is one reason why there is a lack of trust in senior leadership. These are deep-rooted problems and the solutions are largely down to organisations, says the CIPD, which is urging the Government to consider ways in which it can raise awareness of the challenges and potential approaches to tackling them, not least in its capacity as an employer.

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Flexible working is best built on the foundations of a great office

flexible working loungeIt’s getting on for two years since Yahoo’s much talked about decision in 2013 to ban its staff from homeworking but, in many ways, the fallout has continued ever since. Certainly a lot of commentary on the subject refers back to CEO Marissa Mayer’s trend bucking decision. This can only be because it was a defining event in what is an enduring debate about where we work and what that means for a range of factors including our productivity, wellbeing, sense of belonging, access to information, the way we structure our time and our ability to communicate with and develop relationships with our fellow human beings. If those things were the same regardless of how and where we worked, there would be no discussion in the first place. But they do make a difference and there is a discussion.

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Quarter of UK workers stressed by way bosses handle change management

Quarter of UK workers mistrust management regarding workplace changeOne in four UK employees feel disengaged, with an “excessive amount of change” cited as one of the top causes of work-related stress. According to the 2014 Towers Watson Global Workforce Study under half of employees (48%) feel that leaders are inspiring them to give their best at work and as a consequence, they are not as productive as possible. The research suggests that senior managers are not successfully managing and communicating change, with less than a third (30%) of employees saying that changes are well-implemented at their organisation. Effective leadership is also vital to a company’s ability to retain its top talent as a lack of trust in leadership was named by workers as one of the top reason to consider leaving a job. And worryingly, only half (49%) of employees actually believe the information they receive from the senior leadership team.

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Wearable tech will change the workplace in unexpected ways

diceThe idea that we are all about to be supplanted by a new generation of artificially intelligent robot overlords has been in the news a great deal recently, partly as a result of Stephen Hawking’s recent pessimistic intervention on the subject. Whatever the truth of this apocalyptic musing, a more imminent generation of tech products means we are already testing the law of unintended consequences with regard to the stuff we create to help us. As technology firms clamber over each other in their attempts to be the first to open up the lucrative frontiers of wearable tech, a range of understandable concerns have been raised about some of the more obvious potential problems of security and privacy. But if we have learned one thing about our relationship with technology over many years, it is that whatever we expect from it will usually be wrong, sometimes spectacularly so.

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Can the workplace environment change an organisation’s culture?

Woolverine02 workplace It is rare that organisations are totally satisfied with their current culture. They will often see what can be improved and at the same time recognise that these improvements will inevitably stem from a change in behaviour or the attitude of their employees. What is important to remember is that a change in the design of the physical environment will not, by itself, change the culture of an organisation. But workplace design can reflect the desired culture of the organisation, and help to promote certain behaviours and attitudes. It can also help to reinforce the unique attributes of your organisation in a powerful, subliminal way. Culture results from the values and behaviours of employees and is best understood by the relationships internally between individuals, teams and departments. Culture can also be seen through relationships externally with customers, suppliers and stakeholders

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Corporate real estate executives planning for growth finds CoreNet survey

Corporate real estate executives planning for growth finds global surveyGlobal corporate real estate executives report that economic conditions improved again in the third quarter and they remain optimistic about economic growth. This is according to the most recent findings of the CoreNet Global Economic Index; a statistical measure that reveals trends and confidence levels within the corporate real estate (CRE) world. The survey, which takes advantage of the unique perspective that CRE executives have of the overall economy was conducted among a targeted group of 220 senior level managers of corporate real estate at Fortune 1000 companies globally. The survey measures the overall optimism that these executives have with respect to their own companies, as well as the economy at large. There were positive responses on their own company’s prospects for growth and expansion: many were likely to increase their real estate portfolio as a result of more employees and there was optimism regarding the global economic outlook over the next quarter.

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Tech firms’ grip on best place to work lists may be starting to slip

Google best place to workTechnology firms now routinely dominate lists of the best place to work, but there are signs at least that their dominance may be waning slightly. According to a new survey of the best places to work in the US and UK compiled by jobs website Glassdoor, Google tops a list of the 50 best places to work in the US. The survey is restricted to firms with 1,000 or more employees who have received at least 50 reviews based on a 1 to 5 scale over the last 12 months. This methodology inevitably presents a skewed picture. Nevertheless, there may be something to conclude from Apple only making 22nd place, Facebook’s fall from 5th to 13th, LinkedIn’s slip from 3rd to 23rd and Twitter’s fall from 2nd to nowhere. Meanwhile in the UK, John Lewis’s longstanding focus on employees saw it grab one of the top five spots alongside the likes of Microsoft and Google.

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‘Empty desks’ costing UK business 18bn a year, as job vacancies go unfilled

job vacanciesThe economic impact of unfilled job vacancies on the UK economy may be leading to a staggering annual cost of over £18bn. Research by job site Indeed, claims that falling unemployment and robust job creation is resulting in many businesses finding it a challenge to locate and secure the right employees. This inability to find and recruit the right hire for a role is impacting on both the business itself and the wider economy in two major ways. For the employer, failing to effectively resource a business slows both production and profits, while in the wider economy unearned wages reduce consumer spending power and contribution to economic growth. ‘Empty desks’ in the real estate sector are having the greatest impact on the UK economy, due to high levels of contributed economic value (the goods and services that could be produced if the position were filled).

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UK employers lag behind on the importance they place on workplace health

UK employers lag behind on the importance they place on workplace health Two in five (40%) of UK employees say their employer offers no health or wellbeing benefits, a new study on workplace health has revealed. Although the research, conducted by Bupa, found that two thirds (64%) of UK employers agreed that a healthy workforce is a more productive one, two in five (40%) employees said their employer offers no health or wellbeing benefits. Three in ten (28%) employees went as far as saying that when it comes to wellbeing, their company is all talk but no action. UK employers lag behind many other countries on the importance they place on workplace health. Just 57 per cent of UK employers agreed that good health makes good business sense compared to 85 per cent in Australia and 82 per cent in Poland. Meanwhile just over half (58%) of UK employers think that an unhealthy workforce is a risk to business performance compared to 81 per cent in New Zealand and 80 per cent in Spain.

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Flexible working could boost economy by £90 billion, claims report

Laptop on Kitchen Table with Cup of CoffeeThe widespread adoption of flexible working in the UK could boost the economy by as much as £90 billion each year according to a new report from mobile tech firm Citrix and the Centre for Economics and Business Research (Cebr). The study of 1,272 British knowledge workers claims that their ‘best case scenario’  calculation is based on saving UK workers £7.1 billion in commuting costs and over half a billion hours spent travelling. This would add around £11.5 biliion annually to the economy. The report also suggests that an even greater boost to GDP could come from the introduction of a large number of currently unemployed and underemployed individuals such as the retired, disabled and  stay-at-home parents. By tapping this pool of talent the report claims that the economy would benefit by up to £78.5 billion annually, equivalent to nearly 5 percent of GDP.

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Office workers have five key ways to get some peace and quiet at work

Office workers have five key ways to get some peace and quiet at work

ShelterAccording to a new study carried out by market researchers IPSOS and the Workspace Futures Team of office furniture maker Steelcase, office workers are desperately seeking privacy within open plan settings, where they can function effectively and complete work without being driven to distraction. As a result people are increasingly in need of more choice and control over how they work and are using a number of ways to seize it. Less than half of those surveyed (41 percent) claim they have the opportunity to undertake important work privately. The report claims that this does not mean that workers are looking to turn back the clock to the days of cellular offices because they ‘enjoy the buzz of the open plan office’ but are seeking peaceful retreats within them, depending on their own definition of what privacy means.

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Most people will continue to work in traditional offices for foreseeable future

Most people will continue to work in traditional offices for foreseeable future

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The office remains the favoured location for work worldwide but there remains an ongoing mismatch between perceptions of the productivity and performance of flexible working employees and the reality, says a major new report from Dell and Intel. According to the Global Evolving Workplace Report based on a survey of nearly 5,000 employees worldwide, the idea that remote workers are less productive is particularly apparent in developed countries. In the UK, people are two times more likely to believe that colleagues who work from home are less rather than more productive. In Germany, 75 percent of respondents saw the ability to work from home as a special privilege. Meanwhile, of those employees surveyed in developing countries, over one-third (34 percent) see home workers as more productive, compared to 32 percent who believe they get less done.

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