Search Results for: Gen Z

March 23, 2015

How artificial light affects our health in more ways than we think

by Mark Eltringham • Knowledge, Technology, Wellbeing, Workplace design

Life on Earth has developed over the course of billions of years to attune its cycles and rhythms to the fixed routines of light and dark. Yet the modern world counters this hardwired biology in humans and radically increases our likelihood of developing a range of physiological and mental illnesses and conditions. That is the main conclusion of a new paper from Richard G. Stevens and Yong Zhu published by the Royal Society last week. The article outlines how inadequate light during the day, especially inside buildings, coupled with overexposure to artificial light in the evening not only disrupts our sleep patterns but alters our physiognomy at a metabolic, hormonal and even genetic level. The report also highlights how this can account for ‘a portion of the modern pandemics of breast and prostate cancers, obesity, diabetes and depression’.

March 23, 2015

Property investors favour sustainable buildings, claims report

by Mark Eltringham • Environment, Facilities management, News, Property

Property owners could make a greater return on their investments if they improved the sustainable credentials of their buildings, according to a new report published by CBRE. According to the study of 280 investors published in the Investor Intentions Survey 2015, a growing number are taking into account environmental considerations which they consider have a direct influence on the returns and value of their assets. Nearly three-quarters (70 percent) believe sustainability is either a critical or desirable criterion when making investment decisions with only 15 percent claiming that “sustainability is not a significant consideration in selecting assets to buy”. The report’s authors claim that while the property industry has been seeking evidence of the financial benefits of sustainable buildings for some time, this has been difficult to define given the complex factors that influence transaction prices.

March 20, 2015

Happiness and wellbeing must be at the heart of the economy finds new report

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

To mark International Day of Happiness, a major new report has revealed that a country’s GDP fails to reflect levels of people’s happiness, which, it says, “are not easily reducible to monetary values”. Wellbeing and policy was commissioned by the Legatum Institute, which established the Commission on Wellbeing and Policy to advance the policy debate on social wellbeing and is chaired by the former head of the civil service Lord Gus O’Donnell. It finds there is growing recognition that the measures of a country’s progress need to include the wellbeing of its citizens. The report adds that with job satisfaction on a long-term downward trend in most advanced countries, and people ranking time spent with their manager as among their least happy moments in the day, there’s a lot more employers can be doing to address levels of wellbeing and happiness at work.

March 20, 2015

Internet of Things will connect ten billion devices over next five years

by Mark Eltringham • Cities, Facilities management, News, Technology

A new study from technology market research firm Gartner predicts a near tenfold increase over the next five years in the number of devices connected through the Internet of Things. The study, Smart Cities Will Include 10 Billion Things by 2020 — Start Now to Plan, Engage and Position Offerings, claims that there are currently just over a billion connected devices worldwide but that by 202, the number will rise to 9.7 billion. The key driver for the uptake of these devices will be the new generation of smart cities which rely on sensors embedded in infrastructure to allow authorities to monitor activities such as traffic levels, availability of car parking, the use of energy in street lighting and so on. The idea is that the sensors deliver real time data to allow planners and administrators to make better decisions about resources and infrastructure.

March 19, 2015

Six key workplace and property announcements from this week’s budget

by Mark Eltringham • Cities, News, Property, Public Sector, Technology

In yesterday’s budget announcement, the Chancellor maintained the Government’s focus on regional devolution and investment in both physical and digital infrastructure. In truth, there was little surprising in the announcements, many of which had been signalled in advance and were rooted in existing policies. Some of them arrived fully formed, such as the devolution of powers related to business rates. Others, including the much talked about and overdue investment in regional infrastructure such as the cross country fast rail link, were fleshed out. Given that this is a budget with both eyes on the forthcoming general election, it’s a shame that some announcements lacked detail. Here are six of the key announcements that will affect the workplace, technology and property sectors.

March 19, 2015

Office workers report difficulties with remote communications technology

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

Just as the adoption of digital communications technology is making the one-person per desk workstation model look outmoded, the design and layout of the typical conference room is no longer suitable for remote communications. That is one of the findings of a new survey by Steelcase which found that despite, or rather because of advances in technology, office workers are having difficulties when trying to communicate with work colleagues based elsewhere. The problem, which Steelcase has coined presence disparity can lead to an overall collaboration experience which is best described as unpleasant and taxing, with participants feeling strained physically, cognitively and emotionally. This isn’t helped by the fact that conference rooms, the most used spaces for videoconferencing, usually feature long rectangular tables designed for face to face meetings, not those to camera.

March 18, 2015

What the colonisation of new domains tells us about how we work

by Charles Marks • Architecture, Cities, Comment, Flexible working

Headlines about the world’s accelerating taste for skyscrapers tend to be dominated by the big numbers. This is a world in which size is important, but get behind the focus on height and you find some very interesting data about the rapid and significant changes in what these tall buildings are actually for and how this chimes with broader changes in the way we create and use workplace and shared spaces. According to the most recent annual report on the world’s skyscrapers from the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat, last year was a record breaker with 97 new skyscrapers completed globally. The devil here is in the detail. While the world’s tallest new building was One World Trade centre in New York, the overwhelming majority of new skyscrapers are to be found in Asia generally and China in particular.

March 17, 2015

How facilities management brings organisational values to life. Or not

by Alan Williams • Comment, Environment, Facilities management, Workplace

We have used stories to pass on information for thousands of years and they remain the most powerful way we know to communicate. Indeed, the power of story is magnified in today’s super-connected, transparent world – the truth gets out fast and can be widely communicated – to millions of people all over the world – in such a short space of time. Here is a story which illustrates how employees’ “felt experience” every day strongly shapes their perception of an organisation and how the impact compares to official “corporate messaging”. This, in turn, highlights the critical (often under appreciated) role played by facilities management in reinforcing organisation brand and values. What are the implications for the role of FM and the wider HR agenda?

March 14, 2015

The latest Insight newsletter is now available to view online

by Sara Bean • Facilities management, Flexible working, News, Newsletter, Workplace, Workplace design

In this week’s issue; Maciej Markowski says it’s worth asking exactly where open plan office layouts will work and where they won’t and Justin Miller explores the influence of Scandinavian furniture design on the UK. Mark Eltringham wonders what will become of the generation of Tech Palaces, as exemplified by Google’s California campus; asks why more firms haven’t been drawn to look at leasing to fund office fit-out and argues politicians tend to get behind a big, stupid idea than a number of small, effective ones. Two new reports published this week highlight the potential benefits of flexible working, especially to women; and news of the latest workplace malaise, Invisible Employee Syndrome, when employees disappear from the performance radar. Sign up to the newsletter via the subscription form in the right hand sidebar and follow us on Twitter and join our LinkedIn Group to discuss these and other stories.

March 13, 2015

It’s worth exploring alternative forms of finance for office fit out

by Mark Eltringham • Comment, Facilities management, Workplace design

You can’t help but notice that there has been a shift in recent years for us to become the consumers of things we were once obliged or wanted to own. We watch films on Netflix, listen to music on Spotify and share cars with strangers through BlaBlaCar. As both individuals and businesses we rent software rather than own it and in the growth of serviced offices and co-working spaces we see the same forces at work. The attractions of this approach are obvious, not least in keeping down the costs of things we may not want to keep in the long term and leaving ourselves free to make different choices in the light of rapidly changing circumstances. So it’s no surprise that economic uncertainty is just one factor that has driven an increase in asset financing at the same time that we have seen a permanent change in spending patterns.

March 11, 2015

Two new reports highlight potential benefits of flexible working for women

by Mark Eltringham • Flexible working, News, Workplace

Two new reports published this week highlight the potential benefits of flexible working for both employers and staff, especially women. According to a Workingmums.co.uk Best Practice Report, only 36 percent of employers have a flexible working policy despite over half thinking it improves retention, particularly of women, and over a third saying it makes people more efficient. Meanwhile, a study from the TUC claims that around half of the net growth in female employment in 2014 came from women moving in to lower-paid part-time jobs. The analysis claims that while full-time employment accounted for all of the net growth in male employment last year, for women full-time employment accounted for just 47 per cent of net female jobs growth. The TUC also claims that women who moved into part-time jobs during 2014 were typically employed on much lower rates of pay than those in full-time work.

March 11, 2015

How a big, stupid idea can be more attractive than a small, effective one

by Mark Eltringham • Architecture, Comment, Property

We’re going to be hearing a lot of big ideas over the next few weeks. Politicians will be sharing their ‘visions’ with us and letting us know exactly how ‘passionate’ they are about them and anything else Twitter tells them we care about. It’s going to be boring and infuriating, but we only have ourselves to blame. We fret when politicians don’t give us a handy label on which we can rest our hopes or lay the blame, depending on whether we agree with whatever the big idea is or not. Of course, David Cameron’s vision of choice when he became Prime Minister in 2010 was The Big Society. I won’t get into the rights and wrongs of that but I think we can all agree that The Big Society has been kicked unceremoniously into The Long Grass and we won’t be hearing much about it in the build up to this year’s General Election. Nor will we be hearing much about another of David Cameron’s pet projects even though that has actually gone on to be something of a success.