Search Results for: wellness

November 4, 2013

Leading US organisations pledge to promote healthy buildings and communities

by Sara Bean • Environment, Facilities management, News, Property

Adobe, one of the first companies to adopt the US Green Building Council’s Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) standard, is to conduct a study of its LEED certified workplaces to determine if they measurably contribute to more collaborative, creative, innovative and healthy employees. The move is part of a new Building Health Initiative launched last week by the California chapter of the USGBC. Google, Arup and Interface are amongst the founding partners, along with approximately 20 other organisations from a range of sectors. The movement aims to elevate green building as a benefit to public health as well as encourage the development of transparency standards in building materials. More →

October 22, 2013

What happens in a designer’s mind and Mac can be very different to reality

by Simon Heath • Architecture, Comment, Facilities management, Furniture, Workplace design

Social media is inarguably closing the gap between organisations and consumers of their services. Advances in the way we interrogate the opinions of building users are lifting the veil on some sharp practices in management and the negative impacts of poorly thought out design or badly executed installation of designs into the built environment. The positive impacts of this new, more open world are evident in changing attitudes to mental health and other wellness issues that affect us in the workplace. And it is becoming ever more evident in the response to a clear disconnect between what happens inside the designer or architect’s MacBook and its effect on the physical spaces with, and within which, we interact.

September 19, 2013

National work-life week 2013 aims to promote better work-life balance

by Sara Bean • Flexible working, News, Workplace

Encouraging a healthy work-life balance is one of the keystones of employee wellness programmes. Yet, while most employers would claim they continually address issues such as stress and overwork, the fact that 40 per cent of workplace absences in this country are stress-related tells a different story. According to a new survey by Adecco, a third (34%) of employers are even prepared to cancel someone’s holiday if there is too much work to do in the office. Such practices are being challenged by a week of events dedicated to the promotion of work-life balance. National Work-Life Week 2013 is organised by the charity Working Families and will include a conference ‘Smart Work, Agile Work, Flexible Work’ on Tuesday 24 September. More →

August 16, 2013

Healthier people theme for this year’s World Green Building Week

by Sara Bean • Environment, Knowledge, News

The UK Green Building Council has published a calendar of events for this year’s World Green Building Week (WGBW) which takes place from 16-20 September 2013. The theme is ‘Greener Buildings, Better Places, Healthier People’, emphasising the value of green buildings to people – whether higher productivity for office workers, improved learning outcomes for students, healthier workplaces for nurses and teachers, or better homes for people. The key messages are that green buildings make better places to live, work and play; that improving indoor and outdoor environmental quality help us to create healthier places to live and work, and that green buildings can improve well-being and quality of life for everyone in the community. More →

July 22, 2013

Active Building Design initiatives announced by New York Mayor

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

The Mayor of New York Michael Bloomburg has announced a series of initiatives to promote physical activity through the design of buildings and public spaces to encourage architects, planners and urban designers help combat obesity in the City. The Center for Active Design, a non-profit organization that promotes changes to the built environment to improve wellness is being created, and the Mayor has issued an Executive Order requiring City agencies use active design strategies when performing new construction and major renovation projects. Two pieces of legislation will promote stairway access in all buildings, with measures such as making stairways more visible to encourage use. More →

July 15, 2013

Fall in sickness absence rates, but mental ill health still major cause

by Sara Bean • News, Public Sector, Workplace

Mental health conditions are the single most widespread cause of long-term absence, with more than half (54 per cent) of employers citing non-work related stress, anxiety and depression as a cause of long-term absence. On a more positive note, according to the latest CBI/Pfizer Absence and Workplace Health Survey out today, overall absence from work in the UK has dropped to a new record low. The thirty-year survey found the average absence rate was 5.3 days in 2012, down from 6.5 days in 2010 – saving business £3 billion. However, the report, Fit for Purpose, found overall absences still cost the economy £14 billion a year, according to the ONS. Almost £1.8 billion was lost from an estimated one-in-eight sick days taken for non-genuine reasons, with one in five employers believing employees take “sickies” as an occasional perk. While absence rates in both the public and private sector were down to 6.9 (from 8.1) and 4.9 (from 5.9) days respectively, the report argues more than £1.2 billion a year could be saved if public sector absence levels were brought in line with the private sector average – on top of the £700 million saved from the fall since 2010.

June 25, 2013

“Time-bomb” of British workers unhealthy and old before their time

by Sara Bean • Knowledge, News, Workplace

Bad lifestyle choices are shaving over four years off British employee’s lives, leaving them unhealthy and old before their time and creating a “time-bomb” for UK employers. According to the wellness survey of 10,000 employees in the UK, 86 per cent of British workers have an average Vitality (health) Age of 4.1 years older than their real age due to unhealthy lifestyles. Vitality Age gives an estimate of years of life lost or gained by taking into consideration the presence or absence of certain risk factors. Nearly a third (31.2 per cent) of employees have three or more risk factors, putting them at serious risk of ill health, and the biggest contributing factors for a higher Vitality Age are lack of physical activity and being overweight.

June 21, 2013

Managing a work-life balance isn’t solely a women’s issue

by Sara Bean • Comment, Flexible working, Legal news, News, Workplace

Two reports published this week show that a cultural change is needed to stop employers assuming only female workers have families or other personal concerns that could impact on their workplace performance. A report into workplace equality by the Business, Innovation and Skills Committee (BIS) has called on the UK Government to do more to tackle female underrepresentation in sectors of the economy and to dispel the myth that any type of flexible working is a ‘women’s issue,’ problematic and cannot work. In the US a study by employee assistance providers Bensinger, DuPont and Associates (BDA) into stress has found that men are more than twice as likely to receive formal disciplinary action when the stress of a personal problem impacts on their work performance. More →

June 17, 2013

Sickness absence rates stall, despite employer and government efforts

by Sara Bean • Knowledge, Legal news, News, Workplace

Progress in reducing sickness absence has stalled in the UK, despite a growing number of companies initiating return to work interviews, line manager training, setting stretching absence targets and providing employees with occupational health and wellness initiatives. The 2013 EEF/Westfield Health Sickness Absence survey, found that longer-term sickness absence is increasing (40 per cent) rather than decreasing (24 per cent) and that employers have lost faith the government’s flagship ‘fit note’ programme is getting people back to work. The three most popular health and well-being employee benefits are health screening/health checks (56 per cent), access to counselling or employee assistance programmes (EAPs) (54 per cent) and subsidised private medical insurance (40 per cent). More →

June 10, 2013

Daylight exposure has ‘remarkable’ effect on office workers’ health

by Sara Bean • Architecture, Facilities management, Lighting, News, Workplace, Workplace design

The architectural design of office environments should take into consideration how natural daylight exposure contributes to employee wellness say the authors of a new study which observes a strong relationship between workplace daylight exposure and office workers’ health. Compared to workers in offices without windows, those with windows in the workplace received 173 per cent more white light exposure during work hours and slept an average of 46 minutes more per night. Workers without windows reported poorer scores than their counterparts on quality of life measures related to physical problems and vitality, as well as poorer outcomes on measures of overall sleep quality, sleep efficiency, sleep disturbances and daytime dysfunction. More →

April 15, 2013

Better reporting required on employee engagement and wellbeing

by Sara Bean • Knowledge, News, Workplace

There is a need for more open reporting on employee engagement and wellbeing by FTSE 100 organisations according to an inaugural report into wellness by Business in the Community. The first Workwell FTSE 100 benchmark, which analysed how FTSE 100 organisations manage their 6.3 million employees gave an average score of just 21 per cent, which said BITC was “not unexpected” at this first stage of development. The highest scoring Workwell indicators were Diversity and Inclusion (at 50 per cent of total marks) and Health and Safety (at 44 per cent), showing how compliance drives measurement and reporting.