Search Results for: business

January 2, 2015

CIPD claims 2015 should be a ‘rollover year’ for workplace productivity

The UK labour market will continue to expand at a strong rate in 2015 but there are unresolved issues relating to levels of pay and how best to increase workplace productivity to drive further growth, according to Mark Beatson, chief economist for the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) in a new report. While the report argues that the ongoing economic recovery and improvements in the labour market are good news for jobseekers and good news for businesses, it also considers it unlikely that we’ll see any real increase in wage growth until 2016. The author also warns that the UK’s steady growth remains vulnerable to developments in Europe and that the UK’s ‘workplace productivity puzzle’ is an urgent issue for policy makers and businesses to address in order to sustain growth.

December 29, 2014

Digital infrastructure boost will lead to urban brain drain, claims report

by Mark Eltringham • Cities, Flexible working, News, Technology

The tap roots of the digital economy will not spread beneath the concrete of Tech City and other urban enclaves, but in the fertile soil of the UK countryside. That is the finding of a new briefing document from the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra), which claims that rural areas are set to overtake towns and cities as the main driver of Britain’s digital economy. As a result of improvements in the country’s digital infrastructure and transport links as well as a changing relationship between firms, employees and contractors, there are now more people moving to the countryside from towns and cities than those moving in the opposite direction. The briefing suggests that by 2025, the rural economy will be worth an additional £35 billion and the productivity of rural areas could outstrip urban areas for the first time since the industrial revolution.

December 29, 2014

Employers far more positive about flexible working, claims Government report

by Mark Eltringham • Flexible working, News

Positive attitudes towards flexible working are increasing amongst UK employers, according to a new survey from the Government. The latest edition of the Work–Life Balance Employer Survey, published by the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, claims that over half (56 percent) of employers consider flexible working good for their business. The survey reports other major attitudinal shifts since the last edition was published in 2007, including the fact that the proportion of employers who agree with the statement ‘employees should not be able to change patterns if it disrupts the business’ has dropped from 73 percent to just 49 percent. The survey of just over 2,000 employers also found that the adoption of one particular form of flexible working – job sharing – had decreased in the intervening period while most others had increased markedly.

December 23, 2014

Government report highlights radical potential of Internet of Things

by Mark Eltringham • Facilities management, Knowledge, News, Technology

According to a report published this week by the Government’s Chief Scientific Advisor, by taking the lead in developing the internet of things, the UK could transform the way the country lives and deliver huge benefits to the economy. The internet of things – in which digital networks are connecting everyday objects so data can be shared – creates enormous opportunities for both the private sector and government. It also has the potential to be applied in many areas of everyday life, transforming the way we use energy, how we travel and maintain a healthy lifestyle. The number of connected devices could potentially reach up to 100 billion globally by 2020 and industry estimates also suggest that these technologies could have a global value of nearly £10 trillion by then.

December 18, 2014

Revised plans approved for development of iconic BBC Television Centre

by Sara Bean • Facilities management, News, Property

New office space aimed at occupiers in the creative sector is included in Stanhope and Mitsui Fudosan’s planned redevelopment of the former BBC Television Centre in west London. The London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham have granted planning permission for the revised plans for the mixed use development of the iconic building; to include the demolition of the existing Stage 4 and 5 office buildings and their replacement with a more sustainable and efficient new ten storey office building with improved facades, designed by architects AHMM. A change in use from residential to commercial has also been approved for a new nine storey office building fronting Hammersmith Park on the site of the old BBC restaurant block, with an overall increase in office accommodation across the site from 350,000 sq ft to 519,000 sq ft.

December 18, 2014

Many firms lack the trust, equipment and policies to offer flexible working

by Mark Eltringham • Flexible working, News

Even though many staff would forgo a wage increase if offered flexible working, a large number of employers still do not trust their employees to work flexibly, according to new research from Samsung. The survey of 2,000 employees and 200 business owners found that 28 percent of firms remain sceptical that employees are sufficiently trustworthy to work away from their main place of work and outside normal office hours. On a more positive note, over half (52 percent) of employers associate flexible working with greater productivity and more than a quarter of employees (27 percent) would prefer the chance to work flexibly than accept a pay rise. The report also raises serious questions about the preparedness of firms to offer flexible working, even if they believe in the idea, with many lacking the infrastructure and policies to allow them to do so.

December 17, 2014

Only a third of staff trust their senior management, finds CIPD

by Sara Bean • News, Workplace

There is little evidence of improvement in the quality of management in the UK over the last decade – and it is one of the reasons behind the UK’s long-standing productivity weakness compared to the likes of the US and Germany. According to the CIPD report ‘Are UK organisations getting better at managing their people?’ while 65 percent of employees are generally satisfied with their line manager and largely trust them and value their honesty, only 33 percent say they trust their senior management. It found that management processes are not always applied consistently or fairly and this is one reason why there is a lack of trust in senior leadership. These are deep-rooted problems and the solutions are largely down to organisations, says the CIPD, which is urging the Government to consider ways in which it can raise awareness of the challenges and potential approaches to tackling them, not least in its capacity as an employer.

December 17, 2014

Flexible working is best built on the foundations of a great office

by Charles Marks • Comment, Flexible working, Workplace design

It’s getting on for two years since Yahoo’s much talked about decision in 2013 to ban its staff from homeworking but, in many ways, the fallout has continued ever since. Certainly a lot of commentary on the subject refers back to CEO Marissa Mayer’s trend bucking decision. This can only be because it was a defining event in what is an enduring debate about where we work and what that means for a range of factors including our productivity, wellbeing, sense of belonging, access to information, the way we structure our time and our ability to communicate with and develop relationships with our fellow human beings. If those things were the same regardless of how and where we worked, there would be no discussion in the first place. But they do make a difference and there is a discussion.

December 15, 2014

Quarter of UK workers stressed by way bosses handle change management

by Sara Bean • News, Wellbeing, Workplace

One in four UK employees feel disengaged, with an “excessive amount of change” cited as one of the top causes of work-related stress. According to the 2014 Towers Watson Global Workforce Study under half of employees (48%) feel that leaders are inspiring them to give their best at work and as a consequence, they are not as productive as possible. The research suggests that senior managers are not successfully managing and communicating change, with less than a third (30%) of employees saying that changes are well-implemented at their organisation. Effective leadership is also vital to a company’s ability to retain its top talent as a lack of trust in leadership was named by workers as one of the top reason to consider leaving a job. And worryingly, only half (49%) of employees actually believe the information they receive from the senior leadership team.

December 15, 2014

Wearable tech will change the workplace in unexpected ways

by Mark Eltringham • Comment

The idea that we are all about to be supplanted by a new generation of artificially intelligent robot overlords has been in the news a great deal recently, partly as a result of Stephen Hawking’s recent pessimistic intervention on the subject. Whatever the truth of this apocalyptic musing, a more imminent generation of tech products means we are already testing the law of unintended consequences with regard to the stuff we create to help us. As technology firms clamber over each other in their attempts to be the first to open up the lucrative frontiers of wearable tech, a range of understandable concerns have been raised about some of the more obvious potential problems of security and privacy. But if we have learned one thing about our relationship with technology over many years, it is that whatever we expect from it will usually be wrong, sometimes spectacularly so.

December 12, 2014

Third of European workplaces to introduce wearable technology in 2015

by Sara Bean • Facilities management, News, Technology

One third of European businesses plan to introduce wearable technology to the workplace next year, but the majority of organisations have yet to introduce a policy to deal with the change. A European online survey by Ipswitch to determine the readiness of businesses for wearable technology in 2015 has discovered that despite the widespread adoption of the latest BYOD devices over the next 12 months, very little thought has been given to the impact wearable technology could have on network performance and security. In fact, over three quarters of businesses in the UK, France and Germany (77 percent) admit they have no policy for managing the impact of wearables joining the corporate network and only 13 percent of organisations report that they have a policy in place to cover managing the impact of wearable technology. More →

December 11, 2014

Corporate real estate executives planning for growth finds CoreNet survey

by Sara Bean • Facilities management, News, Property

Global corporate real estate executives report that economic conditions improved again in the third quarter and they remain optimistic about economic growth. This is according to the most recent findings of the CoreNet Global Economic Index; a statistical measure that reveals trends and confidence levels within the corporate real estate (CRE) world. The survey, which takes advantage of the unique perspective that CRE executives have of the overall economy was conducted among a targeted group of 220 senior level managers of corporate real estate at Fortune 1000 companies globally. The survey measures the overall optimism that these executives have with respect to their own companies, as well as the economy at large. There were positive responses on their own company’s prospects for growth and expansion: many were likely to increase their real estate portfolio as a result of more employees and there was optimism regarding the global economic outlook over the next quarter.