Search Results for: Gen Z

May 13, 2013

Green Office Week kicks off with a focus on individual behaviour

by Mark Eltringham • Comment, Environment

This week is Green Office Week. Obviously it’s corporate sponsored, self-designated and arbitrarily timed with all the ways that leaves it open to criticism. It also offers pretty standard advice for the most part and many people and organisations will be well aware of it. What is interesting is that so much of the advice is about individual behaviour, across the daily themed topics. In some ways this is a welcome reminder that the solution to environmental issues is as much about personal behaviour and management as it is technology. The answer to needlessly burning lights should be somebody remembering to turn them off, rather than a movement sensor. Or it should be both. In practice, people don’t meet their own stated commitments to the environment and there are some pretty good reasons for this.

May 10, 2013

Recruitment rates rise, but employers should be careful who they hire

by Sara Bean • Knowledge, News, Workplace

There is mixed news on the recruitment front, with the latest Recruitment and Employment Confederation (REC) and KPMG report on jobs hinting a positive turn, with permanent placements accelerating, the rate of demand for permanent staff remaining solid and average starting salaries continuing to rise. However, according to a new global report, employers are urged to be cautious about who they hire, because more than half of employers in each of the ten largest world economies say that a bad hire has negatively impacted their business, pointing to a significant loss in revenue or productivity or challenges with employee morale and client relations.

May 10, 2013

The biggest challenge is building flexibility into an office design

by Mark Eltringham • Comment, Facilities management, Workplace design

The design of offices and the furniture that fills them matters because of what they tell us about how we work, how organisations function and even what is happening in the economy. If you want to know what’s going on, take a look at the places we work and the things with which we surround ourselves and how they change over time. Because the way we work changes so quickly, buildings need to have flexibility built into them so that they meet our needs today but anticipate what we will need tomorrow.In his book How Buildings Learn, Stewart Brand outlines the process whereby buildings evolve over time to meet the changing needs of their occupants.

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 4, 2013

Seven thoughts on the UK facilities management association merger

by Simon Heath • Comment, Facilities management

With breathless excitement a press release announces the proposed merger of all of the UK’s major facilities management and support services trade associations, or rather notes that they: “have agreed to the concept of forming one single and united body to represent facilities management and support services.” With a sense of crushing inevitability the first step has been to form a steering group to address how these and other organisations could come together into this single body to meet the needs of the industry and the professionals that work within it. With this in mind, I proffer a few pieces of advice in the form of seven thoughts for those involved in these discussions.

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.

May 1, 2013

Global coalition to create universal standard of property measurement

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

The world’s leading property institutions meet today to create a universal method of measuring property assets. At present, the way property assets – such as an office development is measured, varies widely from country to country. With so many different methods of measurement available, it makes it difficult for those looking to invest in these developments to compare like with like. This confusion can affect property values, lead to errors in financial reporting and, consequentially, undermine market confidence. Headed by RICS, this initial meeting of the International Property Measurement Standards Coalition (IPMSC) is the first step to delivering this consistency.

April 30, 2013

Balfour Beatty profits warning cites challenging construction sector

by Sara Bean • Company news, Property

Building and infrastructure firm Balfour Beatty has issued its second profits warning in six months, with the announcement that its UK construction business is expected to deliver significantly lower profits than expected this year. The company said the UK construction market has been a challenging environment in which to win and execute work, adding: “Market conditions which deteriorated significantly in the second half of 2012 continue to be difficult. Change in procurement trends, which we have previously highlighted have persisted, allowing customers to impose increasingly stringent conditions onto contractors.”

April 30, 2013

Report urges EU and members states to use design for public good

by Sara Bean • Knowledge, News, Public Sector, Workplace design

Design is no longer just an add-on, but has evolved into a fully joined-up innovation methodology and with countries around the world adopting this thinking the European Union cannot afford to be left behind. This is the message of Design Council and other members of SEE (Sharing Experience Europe) in a report published today, Design for Public Good, which encourages the European Union and its member states to adopt design-led innovation to create the next generation of public services and policy that can meet the pressing demands of the future.

April 29, 2013

Lack of skills hampering business growth say UK CEOs

by Sara Bean • News, Property, Workplace

Nearly two thirds (65 per cent) of UK employers say a lack of key skills is hampering their growth prospects – with construction, mining, engineering and energy companies reporting the most chronic shortage of skilled employees. Yet, according to a PwC global survey, while three out of four UK CEOs said creating a skilled workforce should be the Government’s highest priority only a third intended to do anything about it for the coming year. Instead, they see it as a longer-term goal; with 70 per cent of respondents saying they plan to increase investment in their workforce over the next three years. More →

April 29, 2013

What Søren Kierkegaard can teach us about workplace design and management

by Mark Eltringham • Comment, Facilities management, Workplace design

Søren Kierkegaard was a Nineteenth Century Danish philosopher and proto-existentialist. Not for him the hazy, romantic ideals of many of his contemporaries. He was one of the thinkers who gave birth to the Twentieth Century with its focus on the individual, reality and life in a sometimes uncaring world, although he was no atheist like many of the true existentialists. If he’s generally well known for anything these days it is for a single quotation that reads like a greeting card aphorism but is no less true for that. He said: ‘Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.’ Looking back can give you a real handle on the present. I moved offices recently and as these things happen, a number of books that I routinely ignore fell open while I was looking for some displacement activity.