Search Results for: employees

May 23, 2013

UK employee engagement and productivity lags behind most of world

by Sara Bean • Knowledge, News, Workplace

You might regard the concept of employee engagement as just a new way to describe industrial relations, but there is a growing body of research that UK employers need to do more to keep their employees on side. According to the latest missive, low employee engagement and lagging productivity is the greatest employment challenge facing UK business in 2013. Global research by Right Management found that this was the key concern for one in three (31 per cent ) employers compared to a global average of just one in five (21 per cent ) HR professionals, suggesting that after years of economic uncertainty and doing ‘more with less’, the UK workforce has reached a productivity impasse. More →

May 22, 2013

Flexible working going into reverse in parts of UK public sector

by Mark Eltringham • Knowledge, Public Sector, Technology, Workplace

A briefing from the Society of IT Management claims that while nearly all UK public sector organisations have adopted some form of flexible working, the practice remains far from universal and is going into reverse in some departments. The report found that around 97 percent of UK public sector organisations have now adopted the practice in the form of home working, desk sharing and mobile working in four of the public sector functions surveyed. While while there have been large increases in adoption the adoption of flexible working in the revenues and benefits functions and some in education, four other services show a significant decline with others appearing to be static.

May 21, 2013

Flexible working boosts employee satisfaction and lowers business costs

by Tim Clapham • Comment, Knowledge, Technology, Workplace

May 2013 played host to Work Wise Week, an initiative from Work Wise UK that aimed to promote and encourage smarter working practices to the benefit of businesses and employees. Cultural, economic and social changes are affecting attitudes to how we balance work and personal lives, and increasingly, mobility and technology is shifting away the need for the traditional 9-5 work patterns, replacing it with more flexible working practices. There are many benefits of flexible working and, as such, we are seeing more businesses starting to understand that forcing employees to work in an office does not guarantee productivity. More →

May 17, 2013

Survey into UK culture of overwork highlights need for better worklife balance

by Sara Bean • Knowledge, News, Workplace

A new study is published today which reveals how the UK’s long hour-culture is damaging family life, causing high stress levels, cutting time spent with loved ones and creating an inability to switch off from work. A survey of more than 1,000 working parents throughout the UK, commissioned by health cash plan provider Medicash, found that 83 per cent of working parents feel guilty about the amount of time they spend working, with 50 per cent saying it has a negative impact on relationships with their children, and almost half (45.9%), saying it caused problems in their relationship with their partner and caused them to neglect friends (25%).

May 17, 2013

Colliers uses Bucharest HQ to showcase office design for Generation Y

by Sara Bean • Architecture, Company news, Workplace design

The Bucharest office of property consultancy Colliers International has been revamped to showcase an office design model that the company claims will meet the needs of the next generation of employees. Colliers has worked with architecture studio Prographic and drawn on its own studies of Generation Y and their needs to create the space. According to the firm, the prototype office will incorporate the newest technology, the latest thinking on workplace design and space planning and set new standards in sustainability. As well as Prographic, Colliers International worked with suppliers including ASUS, Techo, Bene, Bittnet Systems and Saint-Gobain to create its vision.

May 16, 2013

Working on daily commute is on the increase survey finds

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

As argued on this site today, many people prefer to work while commuting and research published today supports this view. A survey of over 2,000 British workers by recruiter Randstad reveals the number of employees who work while they commute rose from 4.8 per cent in 2008 to 7.5 per cent in 2013. There’s also been a big rise in the number of “extreme commuters” – those travelling more than 90 minutes each way – which has increased by 50 per cent, from just over one in twenty (6 per cent), to almost one in ten (9 per cent). However, while 18 per cent of British workers feel that the development of smartphones and tablets has made it easier for them to work while they travel, – one in ten (9.2 per cent) say that new technology has increased the pressure on them to get work done on their journey to and from work. More →

May 14, 2013

Majority of workers prefer sick colleagues to stay home

by Sara Bean • Knowledge, News, Workplace

As we reported last week, the UK workforce is suffering from a bad case of presenteeism, but unfortunately for those valiant employees who drag themselves into the office despite being genuinely sick, it seems the majority of their workmates would prefer they didn’t bother. According to the latest research on the issue, this time from Capita Employee Benefits, over three in four (78 per cent) recognise that colleagues who are genuinely sick should stay at home until they get better for the benefit of both themselves and those around them.

May 14, 2013

How ingrained assumptions about the workplace are eroding

by Ros Pomeroy • Comment, Facilities management, Workplace design

Ad agency RKCR © Jefferson Smith

The first day at a new job used to mean getting the answer to that all important question: “so which is my office?” In today’s mostly open plan environments, the same psychological attachment has been transferred to the desk – ‘my’ desk. However the current trend for flexible approaches to where people work means that even the concept of having one’s own desk is now under attack. So how much does having your own desk matter to the UK office workforce these days? We have been asking employees how they feel about having their own desk. The results seem to be that more than half, on average 56% (of a total of 2,653 employees surveyed at 5 recent client projects), think that it is ‘very important’ and a further 25% think it is ‘quite important’.

May 11, 2013

JSA launches latest league table of European office furniture companies

by Mark Eltringham • Company news, Furniture

As the world gets smaller and the communications revolution continues apace, one relatively unnoticed casualty is the design individuality of offices. Time was when you could walk into an office and the furniture would tell you whether you were in Paris, Frankfurt, New York, Milan, Moscow or London. The colours, shapes, materials, construction and image of the furniture were all very local, almost parochial. Who could fail to be struck by the muddy oranges and greens of a French office? Or the inevitable mahogany or teak real wood veneers used in the UK? The panels, worksurfaces and storage units which made up US cubicles were rarely seen outside North America and the massive, dark wood desks and cabinets in Central European deliberately overawed visitors and staff alike.

May 7, 2013

Over 90 percent of UK staff afflicted with bad case of presenteeism

by Mark Eltringham • Knowledge, News, Workplace

We’ve always known that many of us have a tendency to come into work when ill even though we would be better off staying at home, but the problem of people turfing up in the office when they should be in bed or a GP’s queue is worsening according to a new report from insurance company Canada Life. Knocking into a cocked hat all the various surveys which detail the UK’s ‘working days lost’ due to stress?snow/The World Cup/hangovers and idleness, the survey claims that as many as 93 per cent of UK employees have hauled their diseased carcass into the workplace when they really shouldn’t, threatening their own health and the wellbeing of those around them.

May 3, 2013

What workers really want from their offices? The basics.

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

So what do people really want from their offices? It’s a question that has tasked the minds of researchers for many years. According to a recent survey from Overbury, the ideal office design seemed to be a Starbucks, but a new report from the British Council for Offices suggests that what people want isn’t actually that much. Top of the list of priorities for the 1,200 or so people surveyed were fast Wi-Fi, comfortable surroundings, a convenient location and a decent, if unspectacular, fit-out, although responses varied to a certain degree across age groups and sectors. Is that really too much to ask? And are the pool table and the slide absolutely necessary?

May 2, 2013

Companies increasingly insist that staff use their own devices

by Mark Eltringham • Knowledge, News, Technology, Workplace

How the world turns. It doesn’t seem that long ago that companies were developing policies to minimise the amount of time people spent on their own mobile devices at work. Now, according to a new study from Gartner, they are starting to insist on it. According to the report, half of all US employers will require staff to supply their own devices for work use by 2017. The shift in approach seems to be a direct consequence of mass market acceptance of Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) with the number of employees using mobile applications at work set to double by 2015. The US, along with countries such as India, China and Brazil, continues to lead the way with twice as many firms adopting the practice as in Europe.