Search Results for: relationships

April 24, 2014

Employers that fail to act on engagement findings ‘demotivate staff’

by Sara Bean • Knowledge, News, Workplace

When carrying out employee engagement surveys, employers are not asking the right questions that pinpoint exactly what actions need to be taken. This often results in a failure to act on their findings, which can then lead to higher levels of dissatisfaction amongst staff who have shared their thoughts without seeing any outcome. This is according to a review by software specialist Head Light, which has identified 12 factors which fundamentally impact on how people feel about their work and their employer. These are: wellbeing; motivation; reward and recognition; involvement; autonomy; teamwork and collaboration; purpose and meaning; relationships; trust; career/personal development; communication and performance management. It claims that engagement can be improved at each level of an organisation by asking employees about these 12 factors and then providing senior executives, line managers and individuals with a personalised list of manageable actions. More →

March 21, 2014

Why work should be a key focus in improving our happiness

by Jessica Pryce-Jones • Comment, Flexible working, Workplace

The iOpener Institute for People & Performance is an official partner of the UN International Day of Happiness, which took place this week. Here, iOpener’s Joint CEOs Jessica Pryce-Jones & Julia Lindsay explain why work should be a key focus of improving happiness. The UN International Day of Happiness is designed to recognize that ‘progress’ is about increasing human happiness and wellbeing as well as growing the economy. The UN’s focus this year is on ‘reclaiming happiness’. The origins of the day lie in the July 2011 UN General Assembly resolution which recognized happiness as a fundamental human goal. In April 2012 the first ever UN conference on Happiness took place. On the back of this, they designated 20th March as an annual worldwide focus on celebrating and growing happiness. More →

March 20, 2014

Happiness and wellbeing more important to people than economy

by Sara Bean • News, Workplace

Whatever their opinion on yesterday’s Budget, the vast majority of Britons think levels of happiness and wellbeing matter more than the size of the economy. In a YouGov poll commissioned to mark today’s United Nation’s International Day of Happiness, a majority (87%) of UK adults were found to prefer the “greatest overall happiness and wellbeing”, rather than the “greatest overall wealth” (8%), for the society they live in. And despite the Conservative Party’s much lampooned attempts to appeal to working class people who they presume enjoy bingo and beer, this majority was found to be broadly consistent across all regions, age groups and social classes. LSE economist and co-founder of Action for Happiness, Lord Richard Laya says the results show that more priority should be given to mental health and wellbeing. More →

February 20, 2014

Could personality profiling help create a more productive office environment?

by Suzanne McMinn • Facilities management, News, Workplace, Workplace design

Creating the most productive working space to help get the best from your people is an ongoing battle. What suits some doesn’t suit others. So if there was some way of assessing up front how people like to work and the environment that would make them their most productive, engaged and committed – before you rearrange the furniture, fittings and layout – would you leap at the chance of finding out? One approach could be personality profiling. If you could climb inside the minds of your current and future employees and assess how they best like to work, their personality and how this then drives them to be more productive in certain working environments than others – who wouldn’t want to have a delve around? Or are we in danger of pandering to personality stereotypes? More →

February 13, 2014

Why do we bother going to work? Good question.

by Mark Eltringham • Comment, Facilities management, Flexible working, Workplace

While the UK Government continues to explore new ways of getting people back to work more quickly following (or even during) illness, there are a number of counterpart questions that they continue to fastidiously ignore, one of which is ‘why bother?’. We might all ask ourselves that from time to time, whether petulantly or as a pressure-relieving alternative to ramming a co-worker’s head through a window or a laptop in a dumpster. But there are also reasons to raise the question coldly, rationally and with full awareness of all the facts, not least when it comes to assessing the increasing cost of going to work in the first place. Put simply, for many people it makes little or no financial sense to go to work.

January 13, 2014

Retaining valuable employees is top global priority for CEOS this year

by Sara Bean • News, Workplace

The number one priority of business leaders worldwide this year is how best to develop, engage, manage, and retain existing talent. This worker-centric approach means that employee engagement and better management will take centre stage as the way to improve competitiveness, win new customers and raise productivity. According to new research from The Conference Board and UK partner CMI (Chartered Management Institute), CEOs will concentrate on creating a strong internal talent pipeline rather than seeking to recruit externally, with nine out of the top 10 global Human Capital strategies focused on current employees, including providing training and development, raising employee engagement and increasing efforts to retain critical talent. Other closely linked priorities identified in the CEO Challenge 2014 are customer relationships, innovation, operational excellence, and corporate brand and reputation. More →

December 4, 2013

Benefits of social media for employers are not being realised says CIPD

by Sara Bean • News, Technology, Workplace

Research launched today at the CIPD’s Social Media in HR conference reveals social media is still a long way off from infiltrating the workplace to the extent it is used in our social lives. Three in four (76%) use social media in their personal lives, but just one in four (26%) use it for work purposes. Given the news this week that the attorney general is to publish guidance on Twitter to help prevent social media users from committing contempt of court, employers could be forgiven in being wary of the risks of social media. This is a mistake, as according to the research, ‘Social technology, social business?’ almost half (47%) of employees who use social media for work on a daily basis already see real benefits for their organisations. More →

November 28, 2013

RICS ‘Think Strategic’ campaign opens with advice to FMs on cutting costs

by Sara Bean • Facilities management, News, Property

The Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) has published the first in a series of monthly articles offering practical advice from leading industry professionals for FM practitioners. It marks the beginning of RICS new ‘Think Strategic’ campaign designed to encourage FM professionals to think and act more strategically by providing the tools to develop an FM plan that will directly feed into their wider corporate objectives. The idea is to help FM leaders demonstrate the value of the profession to business and gain a competitive advantage. Click the link Why cutting FM costs can have a business-wide impact to access the first of the articles, which are all available to download for free from the RICS website. More →

November 13, 2013

Workplace Week highlights the changing shape of the office

by Richard Byatt • Comment, Events, Facilities management, Workplace design

‘High Street’ at Network Rail’s Milton Keynes base

This year’s Workplace Week which took place last week was a great success, with more people participating and more money raised for charity. Across the week, over 500 people took part, visiting innovative workplaces, attending the Workplace Week Convention or going along to one of the many Fringe events. Workplace Week is organised by Advanced Workplace Associates and supported by CoreNet Global, BCS, RICS, FMA and BIFM. All proceeds go to the Children in Need charity. Around 60 people joined the speakers at the headquarters of PWC on London’s Southbank for the Workplace Week Convention to discuss ‘Driving productivity through the connected organisation.’ The informal atmosphere and roundtable format encouraged participation, with a focus on developments in organisational design, change management and technology.

October 29, 2013

What the endless debate about HS2 can teach us about how we work

by Mark Eltringham • Comment, Flexible working, Technology

A man working on a train

One of the most fascinating aspects of the debate about whether the UK should spend £50 billion (or whatever you think it might be) on the new HS2 rail network, is the way in which it has formed a touchstone for a discussion about how we work. But people on both sides of this debate can have things either spectacularly or misguidedly wrong. On one side, the people behind the scheme, including the Government, used the jaw-dropping assumption that nobody worked on trains as the foundation of a business case. That was the familiar sight of large organisations working their relentless way towards a number they wanted, regardless of inconvenient facts. This idea has now been so widely discredited and mocked that it has been dropped completely from the latest business case, tellingly the sixth in just three years. And yet on the other side, we have people arguing that we should travel less and use videoconferencing as an alternative to face to face meetings, which can be almost as problematic.

September 18, 2013

Service providers taking desperate measures to combat “loaded dice” procurement

by Sara Bean • Facilities management, Legal news, News

Building rapport with a potential client is an important part of the procurement process, but how far do you go? According to new research, some service providers have resorted to desperate measures to bag new business, including hiring the client’s daughter; bringing in actors and equipment to make their organisation seem larger than it is and even helping the prospect write the Request for Proposal to ensure that it matched the services they could deliver. The reason, according to findings unveiled today by blur Group is that despite the majority of decision makers believing there are better service providers available than their existing network, the vast majority (89%) were still likely to approach their existing service providers when a new project arose. More →

September 10, 2013

We deserve better than a polarised debate about cellular v open plan offices

by Andrew Mawson • Comment, Facilities management, Workplace design

Jacques Tati’s Playtime

Stimulated by a number of rather unsubtle commercial interests, the ‘in’ workplace discussion seems to have swung from ‘collaboration’ i.e. organisations need more new spaces for formal and informal collaborative interactions, to ‘distraction’ i.e. open plan workplaces are creating a loss of productivity because people whose work requires concentration are impeded by constant interruption. The implication of the latter is that people should keep their ‘cubes’ and open-plan should be avoided at all costs. You can see pretty quickly where the commercial axes are being ground can’t you.