Search Results for: employee satisfaction

March 20, 2015

Happiness and wellbeing must be at the heart of the economy finds new report

by Sara Bean • Flexible working, News, Wellbeing, Workplace

To mark International Day of Happiness, a major new report has revealed that a country’s GDP fails to reflect levels of people’s happiness, which, it says, “are not easily reducible to monetary values”. Wellbeing and policy was commissioned by the Legatum Institute, which established the Commission on Wellbeing and Policy to advance the policy debate on social wellbeing and is chaired by the former head of the civil service Lord Gus O’Donnell. It finds there is growing recognition that the measures of a country’s progress need to include the wellbeing of its citizens. The report adds that with job satisfaction on a long-term downward trend in most advanced countries, and people ranking time spent with their manager as among their least happy moments in the day, there’s a lot more employers can be doing to address levels of wellbeing and happiness at work.

March 12, 2015

Firms not offering staff the technology they need, claims report

by Mark Eltringham • Flexible working, News, Technology

More than half (55 percent) of UK employees believe they do not have access to all the technology needed to do their jobs, according to research by Fujitsu. The study, Digital Inside Out, was based in a survey of just over 1,400 UK based employees and claims to reveal a significant disconnect between the needs of a digital-savvy working population and the digital services UK employers are currently providing. According to the report, 73 percent of UK employees believe that digital is vital to the future success of their organisation. However despite this, only 45 percent of employees feel they are provided with access to the technology services and applications they need to do their job sufficiently and 29 percent state that their ability to do their job is being hindered due to poor digital services. The report argues that the mismatch can be very costly for organisations.

March 4, 2015

Over half of workplace support staff are privy to confidential conversations

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

Facilities managers often remark that ensuring their staff gain the recognition they deserve for a job well done is much less common than fielding criticism when something in the workplace goes wrong. The fact is that when support staff are doing their work well, they fade into the background. For many office workers, the people who clean the workplace, deliver the mail, keep the building secure and make sure everything in the office is running smoothly; are all but invisible. But, as a new US survey by CareerBuilder suggests – support staff may know more a lot more about the occupants of the workplace than would make those people comfortable. Fifty-three percent of support staff workers have overheard confidential conversations at work, and 11 percent of support staff workers have stumbled upon information that could cause someone to be fired.

February 24, 2015

Disengaged staff plan to switch employer over the next three months

by Sara Bean • News, Workplace

Just under a third of employees are planning to switch employer soon, with Gen Y most likely to leave, finds a new report, “Finders Keepers? Exploring How to Source, Hire and Retain the Best Talent”. The research from recruitment firm Quarsh claims that 10 percent of employees are searching for a new opportunity at the moment, and a further 20 percent will be looking for a new role within the next three months. Because one third (35 percent) of those currently looking expect to still be working for their current employer in 12 months’ time, the report warns that management need to focus not just on hiring, but also employee engagement. The report claims that organisations seeking to engage and retain their current workforce need to focus on offering an ’employment experience’ that stretches beyond the ‘tangible’ elements of the job, such as salary.

January 21, 2015

Unhappy Gen Y talent will move on this year, if you fail to keep them engaged

by Julia Lindsay • Comment, Flexible working, Workplace

The January Blues can be a major headache for employers, as it tends to be a time when staff consider moving on. In fact, more than a third of UK workers are already planning to change jobs at some point in 2015.[1] Factors including low motivational levels and the feeling of a need to take action combine to provide favourable conditions for job movement among employees. Keeping Generation Y talent is a particular area of concern for management, with a recent study revealing over half of these employees will expect to have moved on from their current employer within two years.[2] The fact is that Gen Y employees are simply not prepared to stay in jobs that make them unhappy.

December 12, 2014

Can the workplace environment change an organisation’s culture?

by Adam Burtt-Jones • Comment, Workplace design

It is rare that organisations are totally satisfied with their current culture. They will often see what can be improved and at the same time recognise that these improvements will inevitably stem from a change in behaviour or the attitude of their employees. What is important to remember is that a change in the design of the physical environment will not, by itself, change the culture of an organisation. But workplace design can reflect the desired culture of the organisation, and help to promote certain behaviours and attitudes. It can also help to reinforce the unique attributes of your organisation in a powerful, subliminal way. Culture results from the values and behaviours of employees and is best understood by the relationships internally between individuals, teams and departments. Culture can also be seen through relationships externally with customers, suppliers and stakeholders

December 5, 2014

Office workers have five key ways to get some peace and quiet at work

by Mark Eltringham • Furniture, News, Workplace design

According to a new study carried out by market researchers IPSOS and the Workspace Futures Team of office furniture maker Steelcase, office workers are desperately seeking privacy within open plan settings, where they can function effectively and complete work without being driven to distraction. As a result people are increasingly in need of more choice and control over how they work and are using a number of ways to seize it. Less than half of those surveyed (41 percent) claim they have the opportunity to undertake important work privately. The report claims that this does not mean that workers are looking to turn back the clock to the days of cellular offices because they ‘enjoy the buzz of the open plan office’ but are seeking peaceful retreats within them, depending on their own definition of what privacy means.

December 3, 2014

Focus on the wellbeing of the occupants of the office, not that of the building

by Maciej Markowski • Comment, Facilities management, Wellbeing, Workplace

If you ask a typical corporation about their real estate strategy you will most probably hear a lot about rationalisation, minimising cost and synergy. Real estate strategy should include all these but a cost-cutting approach can be very short-sighted. Staff costs usually account to about 90 per cent of the business operating cost, while any improvement in staff’s productivity will have a stronger and more positive outcome than any cost saving on a building. The recently released World Green Building Council (WGBC) report Health, Wellbeing & Productivity in Offices developed with the support of JLL, Lend Lease and Skanska, clearly shows that the design of an office has a strong impact on the health, wellbeing and productivity of its occupants. It describes the impact of acoustics, interior layout, look & feel, amenities, air quality, thermal comfort, location, daylight and user control on occupants. But it doesn’t stop there.

November 13, 2014

Workplace Week focuses on the office and individual productivity in all its forms

by Cathy Hayward • Events, Facilities management, Flexible working, Workplace, Workplace design

The holy grail of improving people’s productivity was the focus of this year’s Workplace Week, which took place last week from 3-7th November and raised more than £12,500 for Children in Need. The annual event organised by AWA and designed as a celebration of workplace innovation, included visits to 11 workplaces showcasing the latest techniques to get people performing at their very best, a day-long convention and a series of Fringe events. Andrew Mawson, who heads up AWA, opened the convention by setting the discussion in context. “We have maximised asset productivity by getting more people into buildings, and therefore working a building harder. But we need to focus on human productivity. If each organisation could make each person just 5 per cent more productive, that would have a major impact both on that organisation and the wider economy. In the knowledge economy we need to get the very best performance out of each and every brain on the payroll and to create the conditions that consciously support that.

October 15, 2014

Employers unready to meet demand for flexible working in UAE, claims report

by Mark Eltringham • Flexible working, News, Workplace

According to a new survey from YouGov and Citrix, office workers in the United Arab Emirates are almost universally aware of the benefits of flexible working and increasingly demand it from their employers. Yet under a quarter of organisations ‘encourage and enable’ employees to work away from their main place of work routinely. The report claims that 94 percent of the 800 UAE office workers who took part in the study say they would feel less stressed, be more productive and achieve better balance between work and family responsibilities if they were given the freedom to work flexibly outside of the office. As a result, demand for flexible working has increased by 20 per cent since an equivalent report in 2013, with many UAE workers also indicating that the ability to work from anywhere would significantly increase their job satisfaction. In contrast, only 23 percent of the businesses surveyed fully ‘encourage and enable’ employees to work from anywhere, using any device. More →

October 8, 2014

Two thirds of the world’s workers would move to another country to find a better job

by Mark Eltringham • Knowledge, News, Workplace

Almost two thirds of job seekers worldwide say they would be willing to move abroad for work, a ‘startlingly high proportion’ that says a lot about the evolving marketplace for talent, according to a new study by The Boston Consulting Group (BCG) and The Network, a global alliance of more than 50 recruitment websites. The report claims that the proportion of people willing to seek a better job abroad is particularly (and unsurprisingly) high in developing and politically unstable countries. But there is also a very high willingness to work abroad for workers in countries that don’t face such challenges. For example, more than 75 percent of survey respondents in Switzerland, more than 80 percent of respondents in Australia, and more than 90 percent of respondents in the Netherlands say they would consider moving to another country for work, according to the report, Decoding Global Talent: 200,000 Survey Responses on Global Mobility and Employment Preferences, and their preferred destinations are London, New York and Paris.

October 6, 2014

We’ve long had ‘overwhelming evidence’ for the link between office design and productivity

by Mark Eltringham • Comment, Facilities management, Workplace, Workplace design

Perhaps the most widely reported news from the world of workplace over the last couple of weeks has been the analysis from the World Green Building Council that links office design with productivity and wellness. And the two words from the report that have featured most commonly in the associated stories’ headlines have been ‘overwhelming evidence’. While this has been repeated as if it’s some kind of revelation, the truth is that we have had compelling and overwhelming evidence for many years, and barely a year goes past without some study or other making the same point in no uncertain terms. Each report merely serves to raise a more interesting question; given the sheer body of work linking the workplace with productivity (and happiness and motivation and so on), why does the argument still need to be made?