August 18, 2015
Car sharing and longer commutes are the keys to workforce mobility 0
The Government should introduce new policies to incentivise people to car share and travel further afield to find work. Those are two of the key finding of a new report, On The Move, from the think tank Policy Exchange which sets out ways to improve the mobility of the British workforce. Making it easier for people to commute twenty minutes further afield would put them in touch with at least one additional major urban area and potentially 10,000 more job opportunities, according to the report. Additionally, it suggests that drivers who offer fellow commuters a lift should be given a tax break. The authors claim that in a third of local authorities that make up the eight city regions no major employment sites (defined as having 5,000 or more jobs) are within a twenty minute commute by public transport and 80 percent of these Local Authorities have an unemployment rate above the national average.
August 18, 2015
That story about sexist air conditioning systems…roundly debunked 0
by Mark Eltringham • Comment, Facilities management, Wellbeing, Workplace
The main story of the silly season so far has been that one about the inherent sexism of air conditioning systems from a week or two back. Based on a study published in the esoteric journal Nature Climate Change, it appeared that standards for heating and ventilation in building systems were founded on the metabolic rate of an average man which suggested women were toiling away in unconducive, if not exactly unbearable, conditions. This was a compelling tale picked up worldwide by major media outlets including The New Yorker and The Daily Telegraph. There were only two problems with it all. Firstly, the original study was extremely flimsy, based on a tiny sample and ignorant of some basic facts. Secondly the science behind it has now been roundly rejected by ASHRAE, the main US body responsible for informing debate on such matters.
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