Search Results for: people management

The lessons learned under the pandemic that will apply after it all ends

The lessons learned under the pandemic that will apply after it all ends

the workplace after the pandemicRecently lighting control firm Prolojik assembled an expert panel to talk about learning and working during the time of the Covid-19 pandemic. The roundtable (online of course) involved participants from various fields related to the built environment including those involved in developing, designing and tech reflected on their own experiences over the last several months. While industry issues raised during the session included what productivity really means and how to measure it, what infrastructure needs to be in place to enable people to return to their place of work or education and why a joined-up approach to wellness is an indisputably necessary strand of building management. More →

The future of work is hybrid with a firm focus on employees

The future of work is hybrid with a firm focus on employees

employeesCompanies are searching for ways to reinvent the office and give employees reasons to return to their workplace and a new report by JLL says the focus must be on the workforce. The report, Reimagine: the new future of work to shape a better world predicts that the future of work will involve companies prioritising the health, wellness and mental well-being of employees. More →

Hybrid working gives managers the chance to excel

Hybrid working gives managers the chance to excel

hybrid workingThe past year will go down in history as one of dramatic change. One of the most notable upheavals was the almost overnight transition to full-time remote working for millions of ‘non-essential’ employees. With England now in its third national lockdown, many of us will likely not be going back to our offices until April 2021, over a year since we left them. Even when people are able to return to our old workplaces, just 12 percent of employees want to do so full-time, according to Future Forum. This leaves no doubt that, when we are finally able to leave the pandemic behind us, hybrid working (partially from home and partially in the office) will remain. More →

Staff in small companies need less employer support than those in larger firms

Staff in small companies need less employer support than those in larger firms

supportAccording to a recent Kaspersky survey, people who work in companies with fewer than 50 employees, on average, need less employer support when working remotely, compared to staff in larger businesses. Emotional or psychological support is an exception. More →

Office design will respond to the events of the past year as it always has – by getting better

Office design will respond to the events of the past year as it always has – by getting better

office designYou may have heard that history repeats itself, but that’s not really true. It doesn’t repeat. It rhymes. And nowhere is this more true than when it comes to office design. It’s worth bearing this in mind when we consider the effects of the events of 2020. Not only the pandemic and lockdown, but also the longer term economic, social and individual consequences. The details of this may be unprecedented, as many people have suggested, but the dynamics of it are not. We have not been here before, but we’ve been somewhere very like it. More →

Supporting change during the pandemic with Simplicity Smart Lockers

Supporting change during the pandemic with Simplicity Smart Lockers

The way in which we work has changed in a way no one would have ever predicted as a result of last year’s pandemic. Consequently, many businesses have chosen to adopt to an agile working practise. This coupled with the rapid evolution of the hybrid workplace has allowed more employees than ever the flexibility to work from home, many people however still crave that interaction with colleagues, and the ‘corridor conversations’ that cannot be replicated via Zoom and can only happen with workplace collaboration. More →

The weakness of purpose and the shift to problem-solving

The weakness of purpose and the shift to problem-solving

A man with purpose and a direct approach to problemsBlackRock is one of the largest asset management companies on the planet. Each year, at the start of January, the CEO Larry Fink writes a letter addressed to the other CEOs of the world. In his New Year’s letter for 2020, Fink appealed in particular to his fellow CEOs’ sense of social responsibility. In particular, he focused in on the risks faced by the climate. “Climate risk is an investment risk,” and he called on all companies, both public and private, to create greater societal added value. “Society is looking increasingly to companies to solve social and economic problems,” he concludes, so asset managers should be encouraged to invest in companies with a ‘purpose’. More →

The FM industry is held back by short-term thinking, research claims

The FM industry is held back by short-term thinking, research claims

FMResearch published by VINCI Facilities claims that there is a lack of long-term strategic thinking amongst FM service providers and their customers that is limiting an opportunity to yield substantial business and social benefits. More →

Listening in on an enormous conversation about the workplace

Listening in on an enormous conversation about the workplace

One of the best tricks Clive James ever pulled was finding acceptance as a public intellectual in the UK. It’s not easy in a country in which it is possible to be too clever by half or even too clever for your own good. Stephen Fry continues to pull it off as does Mary Beard, but it’s a hell of a thing to achieve. In the UK it seems to rely on straddling at least two worlds. More →

Office taxonomy and an increasingly diverse workplace ecosystem

Office taxonomy and an increasingly diverse workplace ecosystem

From the archive. First published in October workplace ecosystem2015. It is perhaps the most common misconception of evolutionary theory that all animals are somehow evolving towards some end point – meaning us. This notion is perhaps best summed up when a sceptic asks: “If we have evolved from monkeys, why are there still monkeys?” The lesser of the two problems with this is its solipsistic assumption that humans are the pinnacles of life and that, if evolution were true, all species would eventually evolve into people. More →

Employers should explain their monitoring policies to workers

Employers should explain their monitoring policies to workers

The number of companies monitoring their employees is growing. According to a Gartner survey, more than 22 percent of employees use employee movement data, while 17 percent of them are monitoring computer usage. With companies choosing to monitor employees, privacy laws are also catching up, and thus there is a need for explaining employee monitoring to prospective hires. Employee monitoring is defined as the use of monitoring devices and methods by companies to learn about their employees’ workplace behaviours and performance. More →

Freelancers stimulate entrepreneurship levels, claims research

Freelancers stimulate entrepreneurship levels, claims research

entrepreneurshipFreelancers actively promote entrepreneurship, claims research from Trinity Business School, suggesting that a 10 percent increase in freelancers within the workforce leads to a 1 percent increase in entrepreneurial activity in the economy. More →