Search Results for: sustainable

February 10, 2017

Connectivity, innovation and uncertainty are driving workplace change, claims report ⁰

by Neil Franklin • Facilities management, News, Technology, Wellbeing

Sodexo has published its 2017 Global Workplace Trends report, which claims to define the most critical factors affecting the world’s workers and employers. According to the report, the trends portray a workplace that blends work life with outside life, catering to employee needs through improvements in wellness, space design and learning programs. “With this piece, we’ve distilled key findings from different sectors, generations and countries to produce a report that provides a holistic view of the global workplace,” said Sylvia Metayer, CEO, Worldwide Corporate Services segment, Sodexo. “It’s critical for business leaders to recognise the underlying trends driving change, to evaluate their significance and stay ahead of—rather than follow—them.”

January 24, 2017

Many business leaders lack the skills to manage and develop people ⁰

by Sara Bean • News, Workplace

Two new reports published today reveal a dearth of people management skills among both current and future leaders. Over half of the HR professionals polled for the latest CIPD HR Outlook survey believe too many leaders lack the people management behaviours and skills needed to get the best from their workforce. One of the reasons behind this is suggested in the results of a survey from Robert Half which claims that half (50 percent) of management candidates lack leadership skills, with nearly one in five (18 percent) candidates falling short on planning skills, and 14 percent lacking communication skills. In the CIPD poll, people management was voted the top leadership skill needed by organisations over the next three years. However, out of those who chose performance management, more than half (53 percent) said leaders’ current skills in this area were ineffective. Similarly, 44 percent of HR professionals felt senior leaders’ skills were ineffective.

January 12, 2017

UK Green Building Council announces launch of first Innovation Lab ⁰

by Neil Franklin • Environment, News

The UK Green Building Council (UK-GBC) has announced the launch of its first Innovation Lab, which it claims offers ‘a radical new approach to innovation in the built environment’. The Lead Partners for the programme are: Canary Wharf Group, Land Securities and Marks & Spencer. The Innovation Lab aims to identify and address what it calls the systemic challenges facing businesses within the sector, and co-create innovative and highly sustainable solutions.

Head of Leadership and Innovation at UK-GBC, Cat Hirst, said: “Research and Development levels across our industry are painfully low; the UK currently only spends £43m on construction R&D. The risks to a single company of investing in developing a solution for such a high-cost industry is often seen as prohibitive. But we desperately need to find ways of working together to achieve radical change if we are to challenge business as usual and transition to a sustainable way of working.

“At UK-GBC we’re seeking to catalyse this change by using our unique position to convene our member organisations to work together to address the issues our industry faces. We want to ensure there is the time, space, and structure for open innovation to occur for the built environment.

“The Innovation Lab is not just about finding one solution to one problem, it’s about fostering a more open and collaborative approach to problem solving as an industry. We need to build the capacity of our industry to innovate and find the right approach to being creative and collaborative within a commercial setting.”

The Innovation Lab began last month with a workshop to identify the ‘breakthrough challenge’ which will form the focus of a 9-month programme of work. In order to arrive at the challenge, the UK Green Building Council is working with the Lead Partners and thought leaders from the wider UK-GBC membership to explore future trends for the built environment as well as key environmental and social challenges, and pain points for business. The initial workshop highlighted key industry challenges around climate change resilience, resource use, shifting demographics, technological advancement and health and wellbeing.

Over the coming weeks, the breakthrough challenge will be refined in consultation with the Lead Partners. The next workshop will be on 1 February, where Innovation Lab participants will begin to respond to this challenge by mapping existing innovations and, where a gap is identified, generating new innovative solutions to solve the challenge.

January 11, 2017

Detoxify the workplace to improve employee wellbeing and productivity ⁰

by Sara Bean • Case studies, News, Wellbeing, Workplace design

While most organisations recognise the importance of keeping their employees safe, not enough focus is being given to wellness, and those organisations that do not prioritise employee wellness and design their workplaces accordingly will lose talent and potentially face bottom line repercussions. This is according to AECOM, which is urging organisations to “detoxify” their work environments to improve employee wellbeing. With 9.9 million working days lost due to work-related stress, depression or anxiety in Great Britain in 2014/151, employees’ health and happiness can have a direct impact on business performance. Making improvements to the physical environment can help organisations create spaces and working cultures that encourage creativity, support wellbeing and increase job satisfaction. More →

January 10, 2017

A unity of opposites at Sky Central ⁰

by Neil Usher • Case studies, Facilities management, Features, Work&Place, Workplace design

It’s drummed into us from an early age that we can’t have it all, as a result we consider choices as being a binary either/or situation. The workplace design brief (where it’s actually undertaken, an entirely separate discussion) positions choices similarly – open or closed, focussed or collaborative, modern or traditional – the decision point existing along a sliding scale from one natural extreme to the other. Yet there is a way to consider workplace design as an attempt to achieve the “unity of opposites”, an idea proposed by the pre-Socratic aphoristic philosopher, Heraclitus, the original thinker on change. This holds that the existence of an idea is entirely dependent on the existence of its opposite, that one cannot exist without the other. The framework is considered here in its application to the recently completed Sky Central in Osterley (West London), a newly constructed 38,000m2 NIA activity-based workplace over three floors that is home to 3,500 of the total 7,500 people on the Campus. It may be considered as tool for aiding workplace brief development, or for understanding how a workplace has been conceived and functions.

January 6, 2017

Thirteen ways the physical environment shapes knowledge management

by Agustin Chevez and Laurie Aznavoorian • Facilities management, Premium Content, Work&Place, Workplace design

Knowledge management (including its creation, transference and storage) within an organisation is now widely considered to be one of the primary drivers of a business’s sustainability. Driven by changing demographics, businesses are recognising the ways in which valuable knowledge is lost when employees leave the organisation, including when they retire or are made redundant in response to changing economic conditions. Geyer, an Australian design practice, is just one organisation that has undertaken important research to understand the role of the physical environment in knowledge management.The aim of the research was to explore the kinds of environments and their attributes (if any) that could support the management of knowledge in an organisation. The research also aimed to expand the focus of existing knowledge management literature; from information technology to workplace design.

January 6, 2017

Learning to love staff means letting them disconnect from work, and other stories ⁰

by Mark Eltringham • Flexible working, News, Technology

Topical workplace issues featured prominently at this week’s British Psychological Society’s Division of Occupational Psychology annual conference held in Liverpool. Four of the key takeaways from the event deal with issues such as the right to disconnect when working from home – a right recently enshrined in law in France, the way different personality types deal with emails, the toxic relationship between employers and employees and even how managers can learn to show their staff more love. The focus at teh event underlines a growing awareness of the complexities of our new relationship with work and workplaces.

December 22, 2016

Green buildings help you to think and sleep better ⁰

by Mark Eltringham • Environment, News

A new study from researchers at Harvard claims to establish a link between those standards for green buildings with an indoor environmental quality (IEQ) component and the wellbeing and productivity of employees. The study, The impact of working in a green certified building on cognitive function and health, has been published in the journal Building and Environment. Based on a study of 109 subjects in ten ‘high performing’ buildings compared to staff from the same firm in uncertified buildings, it found that respondents enjoyed a 26.4 percent uplift in cognitive performance, a 6.4 percent increase in sleep quality and 30 percent fewer symptoms. The accreditations used in the study were LEED New Construction 2009, Green Star Office v3, BREEAM New Construction 2012, BCA Green mark for new non-residential buildings v4.1 2013, and DGNB New Office v2012

December 13, 2016

US study projects massive shift to agile working model over the next decade ⁰

by Mark Eltringham • Flexible working, News

By the year 2025, most workers (70 percent) and employers (68 percent) agree a majority of the workforce will be employed in an agile working capacity as contractors, consultants, temporary or freelance staff, according to a study released by Randstad US. The Workplace 2025 report of more than 3,100 workers and 1,500 HR and c-suite executives across the US found that as early as 2019, as much as 50 percent of the workforce will be comprised of agile workers, as nearly 4 in 10 (39 percent) workers say they are likely to consider shifting to an agile arrangement over the next two-to-three years. The study claims that this movement is fuelling an equally aggressive adoption of new workforce models that tap into both permanent and agile employees to combat staffing shortages, leverage globalisation and fuel greater innovation for organisations.

December 8, 2016

Gig economy represents a race to the bottom for many because of client behaviour ⁰

by Mark Eltringham • Flexible working, News

For many people, the gig economy represents a race to the bottom, with a large number of freelancers asked to work for free by entitled clients on the vague promise of future work, breeding anxiety and disillusionment. That is the key finding of a new study by Approve.io which found that half of freelancers and self-employed creatives had been asked by clients said that work had caused them anxiety this year with three quarters citing client behaviour as the primary cause. More →

December 6, 2016

The Work Foundation launches Commission on Good Work ⁰

by Neil Franklin • Company news, Workplace, Workplace design

The Work Foundation, part of Lancaster University, has launched a new Commission on Good Work. The commission will seek answers to key questions such as ‘why is a focus on good work so important now?’, ‘what does good work mean in a modern economy?’ and ‘how do we achieve good work?’ The initiative was launched by Work Foundation Director Lesley Giles who invited stakeholders from businesses, trade unions, professional bodies, and the public and voluntary sectors to be part of a ‘Good Work Taskforce.’ Supporting the launch were Sir Charlie Mayfield (John Lewis Partnership), Dame Fiona Kendrick (Nestle),Douglas McCormick (Sweett Group), Mark Keese (OECD), Gail Cartmail (Unite), Peter Cheese CIPD, Scott Johnson (a small business owner) and Professor Paul Sparrow (Lancaster University Management School).

November 12, 2016

Ten countries including Australia, Canada, Germany, India and US announce plans to recognise zero carbon emissions buildings ⁰

by Mark Eltringham • Environment, Facilities management, News

The World Green Building Council’s goal to ensure that every building produces zero carbon emissions by 2050 took a major step forward this week as Green Building Councils in 10 countries (Australia, Brazil, Canada, France, Germany, India, the Netherlands, South Africa, Sweden, and the US) made progress on their plans to introduce net zero certification or designation schemes within their own countries, at COP22. Specifically, the Green Building Council of Australia, Canada Green Building Council, the German Sustainable Building Council (DGNB), India Green Building Council and the US Green Building Council all announced their intention to introduce schemes that recognise and reward net zero carbon buildings, with some announcing target dates by which they will introduce them. These schemes could be either stand alone net zero certification schemes, or a net zero designation within existing certification schemes.