May 16, 2013

Working on daily commute is on the increase survey finds

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

As argued on this site today, many people prefer to work while commuting and research published today supports this view. A survey of over 2,000 British workers by recruiter Randstad reveals the number of employees who work while they commute rose from 4.8 per cent in 2008 to 7.5 per cent in 2013. There’s also been a big rise in the number of “extreme commuters” – those travelling more than 90 minutes each way – which has increased by 50 per cent, from just over one in twenty (6 per cent), to almost one in ten (9 per cent). However, while 18 per cent of British workers feel that the development of smartphones and tablets has made it easier for them to work while they travel, – one in ten (9.2 per cent) say that new technology has increased the pressure on them to get work done on their journey to and from work. More →

March 22, 2013

Employers’ lack of media savvy is stifling innovation

by Sara Bean • Knowledge, News, Technology, Workplace

A resistance to change and a lack of social media savvy amongst senior leaders is holding organisations back from fostering cultures of openness, collaboration and innovation in their organisations. Social media is driving us headlong into an age of mass collaboration and mass transparency, and if employers don’t embrace this with open arms they will find themselves on the back foot argues the CIPD. Jonny Gifford, research adviser at the Chartered HR and development professional body, comments: “For organisations to thrive, employees must be given the opportunity to discuss how their organisations can innovate and feed their views upwards, as well as having the freedom to blow the whistle about genuine issues at work.

February 28, 2013

Yahoo case doesn’t tell the whole story of teleworking

by Clark Sept • Comment, Facilities management, Technology, Workplace, Workplace design

Yahoo! made headlines across the US and the rest of the world this week by announcing they are terminating the company’s telework program. Does this signal, broadly, the pending demise of telework? Here’s my take: this story is actually deeper than just about telework. Yahoo! has been wandering around aimlessly for a number of years, and it would appear that this particular measure is intended as some overdue shock therapy to jump-start a much needed culture shift and focus on what the company needs to survive in a world of rapid innovation and “big bang disruption” (see March 2013 HBR article by Larry Downes and Paul F. Nunes).

February 20, 2013

Survey reveals UK’s total obsession with technology

by Mark Eltringham • Knowledge, News, Technology

Gen Y may still be grabbing all the headlines but the full scale of the potential technological immersion of Gen Z is evident in the findings of a new report from Halifax Insurance. The Digital Home Index claims that the average child born in the UK today will spend around a quarter of their lives watching non-work related technology before the age of 80. The report also claims that three quarters of British people already claim they would struggle to get through a day without their technology. The full pervasiveness of smartphone, tablet, laptop and MP3 technology in modern British lives is apparent in some of the more jaw-dropping findings from the survey of 2,500 people.