February 20, 2023

Unlocking the digital frontier: hiring the next generation of tech talent

by Freddie Steele • Company news, Workplace

Any business that is looking to grow its consumer base or expand into new markets is likely to be relying on digital technology to a greater extent than ever before both in their operations and management. This also means that the world of employment, both for workers and enterprises, is necessarily evolving too. An inevitable consequence of this evolution has been that those for whom technology has been an essential part of their life and education — so-called digital natives — are in growing demand. More →

February 10, 2023

Working parents are resilient, and a resilient team is good for business

by Erin Eatough • Comment, Wellbeing

Last week, Parent Mental Health Day renewed our focus on working parents and their resilience, the ability to adapt to change, deal with stress, and foster optimism despite difficulty. From a business perspective, resilience is the way that employees recognise and respond to challenges as opportunities to develop rather than as a threat or setback. Resilience is an important skill for us all as we manoeuvre through life’s daily trials and it is particularly important for working parents as we often juggle more responsibilities outside of the workplace. More →

November 15, 2022

The four day week and a case of less is more

by Sara Bean • Features, Flexible working, Premium Content

When a pilot programme for a four day week was announced in the UK early in the New Year, #4dayweek trended for days on twitter, with jokey comments on how employees taking part in the trial should do everything not to ‘f*** it up for the rest of us.’ But behind the humour there’s a real issue with productivity in the UK. Recent Office for National Statistics reveals that while productivity grew across all G7 countries during the pandemic, the UK experienced the largest falls in GDP growth and an increase in the number of hours worked. More →

October 17, 2022

Flexible working may help to entice large numbers of older people back into work

by Neil Franklin • Flexible working, News, Workplace

There are 712,000 additional people aged over 50 who are economically inactive compared with the same period three years ago (pre-covid pandemic), according to new analysis from Rest Less, a digital community and advocate group for people in their 50s, 60s and beyond. The organisation is now calling on firms to ensure their flexible working practices and in-house training schemes are suitable for all age groups and not just targeted at younger people. More →

September 1, 2022

Skills gap is the most prominent hiring challenge facing HR leaders

by Jayne Smith • News, Workplace

New research from ECI Partners, a private equity firm, suggests that HR leaders believe the most prominent hiring challenge they currently face is a lack of technical skills and knowledge. Nearly a fifth (18.3 percent) of managers said this was their single biggest obstacle, highlighting the growing concern over the UK’s skills gap. The current labour shortages prompted by a range of factors including Brexit and Covid-19, appear to have further widened the skills gap for recruiters. More →

July 14, 2022

Rising office fit-out costs begin to hit occupiers

by Jayne Smith • News, Property

An analysis by Savills of Q2 2022 Prime Office Costs (SPOC) in global markets around the world suggests that inflation and supply chain issues are now feeding into office fit-out costs and keeping occupiers’ net effective costs high in many cities around the world. Over the past year office fit-out costs have risen an average of 6 percent across the SPOC cities that have so far reported rises says Savills, although proportionally they remain a small part of overall costs compared to rents. More →

June 23, 2022

We need to stop misusing the term ergonomic

by Guy Osmond • Comment, Flexible working, Wellbeing, Workplace design, Works Magazine

You don’t have to search for long to find the word ergonomic; it pops up everywhere, in connection with every sort of product and device for the workplace (and elsewhere). You can – so the marketeers will tell you – buy an ‘ergonomic’ chair, desk, keyboard or mouse. What’s wrong with that? An awful lot actually. The word ergonomic has a particular meaning. Ergonomics (note the crucial addition of an ‘s’ at the end), from the Greek ‘Ergos’ for work or labour and ‘Nomos’, meaning natural law, is the discipline of designing and arranging an environment to optimise the comfort and performance of the individual. More →

June 10, 2022

Young people should optimise the time they spend in the office

by Gemma Dale • Features, Flexible working

During the pandemic, around 100 million people in Europe switched to working from home – nearly half of them for the first time. This shift was rapid, with employees quickly noticing the benefits of remote work. These can include freedom from commuting, more time for personal wellbeing and increased productivity. As we move on from pandemic restrictions, we’ve seen a strong, global demand for more flexible forms of working, particularly to retain an element of remote work. While some employees want to work from home permanently, most want what’s coming to be regarded as the best of both worlds: hybrid working. Only a minority of workers now want to return to the office full time. More →

May 31, 2022

Over-50s urged to return to work to deal with staff shortages

by Jayne Smith • News, Workplace

The British Chambers of Commerce has said employers and the Government need to work together to bring older people back into the workforce. According to ONS data, around 500,000 older people have left the workforce in recent years, many of them prompted to do so by the pandemic. The number of over-50s who aren’t working or currently looking for work rose by 493,000 between October 2019 and December 2021. According to the Office for National Statistics, one in five did so due to stress or other mental health concerns. More →

April 27, 2022

A third of workers think their jobs are at risk from automation

by Jayne Smith • News, Technology

A new poll claims that one in three (37 percent) employees consider their current job to be at risk from automation and digital transformation. HR software provider CIPHR has compiled a list of the occupations that are the most and least likely to be replaced by technology or machines, based on the results of a survey of more than 1,000 UK workers: www.ciphr.com/jobs-at-risk-from-automation. Survey respondents were asked to rate the likelihood that their own occupation could become automated in the future, due to advances in smart technologies, artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning, and robotics. More →

April 14, 2022

Office costs creep up, but not because of higher rents

by Jayne Smith • News, Property

Higher fit-out costs and service charge growth, not rent rises are set to increase office occupier costs in 2022, claims a new report. Savills analysis of Q1 22 Prime Office Costs (SPOC) in global markets around the world has shown that higher fit-out costs, reflecting material and labour cost inflation, are beginning to creep through in some office markets. While overall there has been no movement in the position of cities in the rankings since the end of 2021, says Savills, some markets are experiencing rising costs in fitting out space and increased service charges. According to Savills this trend is most evident in Chinese cities, Kuala Lumpur, and in North American cities at the moment, but other markets across the globe are set to follow suit in the coming quarters.

Jeremy Bates, head of EMEA occupational markets at Savills, comments: “From higher prices for raw materials to increasing labour costs to keep up with rising inflation, it’s likely that most office occupiers will have to pay more to rent and fit-out their space in global cities this year.

“Whilst rent is the usual indicator of increasing cost, service charge rises and higher capital expenditure will represent the largest contributions towards increased occupier costs in the coming quarters. Even in markets where landlords tend to pay for fit-outs, these costs will eventually be passed on to occupiers later in the form of higher rents. Nonetheless, for many office occupiers the expense is unlikely to deter them from selecting top quality spaces in prime central business districts to attract and retain talent, although they are carrying out extensive data gathering exercises on how employees are using space before making decisions on exactly how much to take.”

Savills says that overall headline rents have, on average, remained flat in local currencies and the increasing additional costs have yet to appear across many markets, according to the international real estate advisor, with fluctuating exchange rates due to increased uncertainty producing the appearance of declining costs for many markets in Dollar terms during the first quarter of 2022, while in local currencies they have broadly remained consistent with Q4 2021.

March 17, 2022

Flexible working now part of work culture for over a third of people

by Jayne Smith • Flexible working, News, Technology

UK workers and their bosses are reaping the benefits of flexible working, according to new research released by Microsoft. According to Microsoft’s latest Work Trend Index, the number of people working in a hybrid way across the world is up seven percentage points on last year at (38 percent), while 53 percent of people are likely to consider transitioning to hybrid working in the year ahead. More →