Search Results for: commut

April 17, 2016

How can commuting to your choice of office affect staff productivity? ⁰

by Darren Bilsborough • Comment, Facilities management, Flexible working, Property

To say that I am obsessive about the subject of productivity in the workplace is an understatement. It is integral to much of the subject matter I write about, including the core theme contained in my book Don’t Worry About The Rent. Whilst undertaking research, it was important for me to get to the bottom of the decision making processes that many businesses go through when choosing office space. I was well aware of the predisposition for the commercial real estate industry to ask questions around size, cost and location, but I was particularly interested in what other issues might rise to the surface and become “top of mind” for management to consider around office choice. Predictably, I found that tenant surveys, including those undertaken by Colliers International confirmed that the two major issues management would consider were size and cost. The next biggest issue however was a surprise and it related to concerns around commuting.

April 14, 2016

Londoners work less flexibly than elsewhere, despite longer commutes ⁰

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

Londoners are less likely to work flexibly than the rest of the UK, despite having much longer commuting times. This is according to the results of new research by the CIPD which found that many Londoners are travelling for the equivalent of at least one full working day in a ‘typical’ week. They spend an average of 47 minutes travelling to work each way compared to the national average of 31 minutes, and their average travel to work time increases to 56 minutes each way, if you consider a combination of both employees who live in London and those that commute into the capital from outside the M25. The data also reveals that flexible workers in London are more satisfied with their jobs, feel under less pressure and have better work-life balance than those who don’t work flexibly. In its policy programme, Opportunity through work: A manifesto for London, the CIPD is calling for a campaign to increase the uptake of flexible working in the Capital.

March 17, 2016

Study confirms that commuting by car has serious health consequences ⁰

by Mark Eltringham • Environment, News, Wellbeing

Adults who commute to work via cycling or walking have markedly lower body fat percentage and body mass index (BMI) measures in their mid-life compared to adults who commute via car, according to a new study in The Lancet Diabetes & Endocrinology journal. Even people who commute via public transport also showed reductions in BMI and percentage body fat compared with those who commuted only by car. This suggests that even the incidental physical activity involved in taking journeys by public transport may be significant. The study looked at data from over 150,000 individuals from the UK Biobank dataset, a large, observational study of 500,000 individuals aged between 40 and 69 in the UK. The study is the largest to date to analyse the health benefits of active transport. The strongest associations were seen for adults who commuted via bicycle, compared to those who commute via car.

January 5, 2016

UK commuters spend far more on rail fares than other European workers ⁰

by Sara Bean • Flexible working, News, Workplace

At 1.1 percent the New Year rail fare increases are the lowest since 2010, but UK rail commuters still spend up to six times as much of their salaries on rail fares as European passengers, new analysis has revealed. Action for Rail, a campaign by rail unions and the TUC, has compared average earnings with monthly season tickets on similar commuter routes across Europe. The analysis looked at a UK worker on an average salary who is now spending 13 percent of their monthly wages on a £357.90 monthly season ticket from Chelmsford to London. By contrast, the average amount of salary going on a monthly season ticket for a similar journey is just 2 percent in Italy, 3 percent in Spain and 4 percent in Germany. Even in France, which is the closest to the UK for cost, commuters still spend nearly a third (30 percent) less on season tickets than their counterparts in the UK.

August 18, 2015

Car sharing and longer commutes are the keys to workforce mobility ⁰

by Mark Eltringham • Cities, Flexible working, News

The Government should introduce new policies to incentivise people to car share and travel further afield to find work. Those are two of the key finding of a new report, On The Move, from the think tank Policy Exchange which sets out ways to improve the mobility of the British workforce. Making it easier for people to commute twenty minutes further afield would put them in touch with at least one additional major urban area and potentially 10,000 more job opportunities, according to the report. Additionally, it suggests that drivers who offer fellow commuters a lift should be given a tax break. The authors claim that in a third of local authorities that make up the eight city regions no major employment sites (defined as having 5,000 or more jobs) are within a twenty minute commute by public transport and 80 percent of these Local Authorities have an unemployment rate above the national average.

June 25, 2015

Long distance commuting, agile working and dinosaur extinction in the UAE

by Douglas Langmead • Cities, Comment, Flexible working, Property

In Dubai, there are no suburban dinosaurs; those large-scale, single purpose office buildings that ignore the agile realities of modern working life. In the western world, these giants evolved on business parks, driven by the perceived benefits of having office workers agglomerated in order to achieve efficiency of communication and dissemination. The business practices and technologies that underpinned these buildings have evolved and improved and many are in the process of being re-purposed. Things happen on a grander scale in the Middle East where the mantra is “if the land-use doesn’t fit the land, make more land.” Here, the patterns of work and place have evolved differently from the west, and at a much faster pace with creeping tides of development spreading rapidly out from the small centres of traditional trade and commerce to vast tracts of new development.

May 12, 2015

Commuting costs the UK £148 billion annually, claims new report

by Mark Eltringham • Flexible working, News, Workplace

In spite of the growth of flexible working in the UK, commuting to an office each day costs British workers and the national economy some £148 billion annually. That is the key finding of a new report from recruitment firm Randstad. The study claims that an average commute for staff in the UK covers around 22 miles, taking around 43 minutes. The report claims that the time spent commuting continues to increase as people move further away from their main place of work, especially in the South East and North West of England. London workers – unsurprisingly – spend more than anybody else on commuting. There are also major differences across sectors with the workers in financial services, accountancy and IT industries subject to the most costly commutes.

May 8, 2015

The world’s enduring addiction to the joy and misery of commuting

by Mark Eltringham • Comment, Flexible working, Work&Place, Workplace

Commuting is one of the most complained about yet least explored facets of our working lives. This is in spite of the fact that it consumes so much of people’s time, energy and money, is presented as one of the main arguments for more flexible working practices and is so closely linked to our wellbeing. Yet the half a billion – and growing – commuters worldwide could be forgiven for assuming nobody is really that much interested in the effects of their daily grind into work, especially when you consider the attention given to other workplace issues. Douglas Langmead in his feature on page 32 of the new issue of Work&Place does his bit to redress this imbalance with a fascinating look at commuting in the rapidly developing and endlessly fascinating economies of the United Arab Emirates.

August 26, 2014

Mode of transport when commuting determines health and happiness

by Mark Eltringham • News, Public Sector, Workplace

New research published in the British Medical Journal last week has confirmed the perhaps obvious fact that people who drive to work are generally less healthy and more overweight than those who get to work in other ways. More surprisingly, the report also found that using public transport to commute may be just as beneficial to healthy as cycling. The report suggests that with nearly 24 million people regularly commuting to work each day in England and Wales, its results based long term research with a sample of 16,000 people should have significant implications for Government infrastructure policy, urban design and individual workplace policies. “Policies designed to effect a population-level modal shift to more active modes of work commuting therefore present major opportunities for public health improvement”, it concludes.

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 25, 2013

Video: Forget Yahoo – why telecommuting is good for your business

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

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Think you’ve seen every possible angle on the recent Yahoo-ha about flexible working? Maybe not because here’s a unique take on the subject courtesy of the guys at MinuteMBA. We’d like to invite somebody to animate the other side of the argument but while we can be certain that nearly everybody thinks they are a writer these days, the skill of animation is not so easily taken for granted.

July 25, 2024

People and firms are shifting away from remote work, survey suggests

by Neil Franklin • Flexible working, News

There has been a recent significant shift in working habits and preferences among employees in the post-pandemic landscape, according to the fourth Commuter Census from Mobilityways. One of the most prominent findings from the report is the pronounced decline in both the practice of and preference for remote work. The survey of 10,325 participants suggests that 40 percent of people no longer engage in any form of remote work, despite a mere 15 percent of employees expressing a preference for this arrangement. Only 26 percent of respondents would consider working from home as an alternative to their current commuting routine, marking a significant 42 percent drop from the previous year. More →