Search Results for: labour

August 3, 2015

More evidence of people’s growing inability to simply go on holiday ⁰

by Mark Eltringham • Flexible working, News, Public Sector, Technology, Wellbeing

If you’re reading this on holiday this week, don’t. Life’s too short. Go jump in the pool or something…. For everybody else, a slew of surveys have been published over the last few weeks that confirm something that we may already know; we are finding it increasingly hard to forget about work, even during our supposed time off and many people are forgoing holidays altogether, although not necessarily because they’ve forgotten about the off switch on their smartphone. We reported recently on one of these, from the Institute for Leadership and Management, but three more have passed over our desks over recent days. With the usual caveat about vested interests, the studies, from the TUC, alldayPA and public sector members club CSMA all confirm not only how prevalent this form of presenteeism is, but also how harmful it can be to ourselves and employers.

July 8, 2015

Productivity starts with people, advises CIPD ahead of today’s Budget

by Sara Bean • Flexible working, News, Workplace

Investing in people’s development and offering flexible working practices can help organisations boost productivity. This is according to research by the CIPD published ahead of today’s budget, which the Chancellor has said will put the emphasis on improving UK productivity. The report: Productivity: Getting the Best out of People, explores the factors that help to explain why some businesses have higher productivity than others and finds that there are clear links between productivity and how people are managed at work. The report finds that performance tends to be higher in businesses where there is a focus on higher quality products or services rather than only on low cost and where workplace culture is clearly aligned with the future direction of the business. Investment in workforce training and an intelligent approach to the implementation of ‘smart’ or agile working practices also has a positive impact.

July 6, 2015

World’s first 3D printed office building to be created in Dubai

by Mark Eltringham • News, Property, Technology, Workplace design

Could this be the shape of things to come? A Chinese 3D printing firm has announced that it has plans to print a fully functioning office in Dubai (where else?). The company, WinSun, will use a 20 foot tall printer to create the components for the 2,000 sq. ft. building which will then be assembled by hand. The local developers behind the scheme claim that the technology, once perfected, will cut project delivery times by as much as 70 percent, waste by up to 60 percent and labour by between 50 and 80 percent, compared to traditional methods of office construction. WinSun has a track record of printing affordable housing in its native country, but this is the first time that it has applied its large scale 3D printing technology to an office building. It also plans to print interior architectural elements and office furniture for the building.

June 26, 2015

Value older workers or sleep-walk towards a skills shortage, employers warned

by Sara Bean • Flexible working, News, Workplace

A demographic time bomb means employers must act to avoid a cliff-edge loss of skills and talents by 2035, a new study by the CIPD has revealed. There are currently 9.4 million workers in the UK today who are over the age of 50 and while the employment rate of older workers has increased significantly in recent years, there is still a 64 percent drop in the employment rate between the ages of 53 and 67. New research from the CIPD and the International Longevity Centre-UK (ILC-UK), the independent think tank on longevity, ageing, and population change, warns the UK could face serious skills shortages over the next 20 years. Unless organisations start improving how they recruit, develop and retain older workers it is estimated that the UK economy will struggle to fill one million jobs by 2035, even taking into account the mitigating effect of migrant workers.

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.

June 24, 2015

Construction work completes on UK’s greenest commercial building

by Mark Eltringham • Architecture, Environment, News, Property

Morgan Sindall has completed construction of what is claimed to be the UK’s greenest commercial building, the Enterprise Centre at the University of East Anglia. The building boasts record-breaking sustainability credentials including both BREEAM Outstanding and Passivhaus accreditations. It has been designed to maximise the use of low embodied carbon materials over a projected 100-year life span. The building incorporates an innovation lab, a 300-seat lecture theatre, flexible workspaces, teaching and learning facilities, as well as business ‘hatcheries’ and incubator units for small businesses and start-ups in the low carbon sector. The developers believe that by placing like-minded academic and private sector occupiers side by side, the centre will foster innovation, stimulate smarter ways of working, promote industry standards and create new sustainable supply chains.

June 16, 2015

Staff want flexible working but worry about growing fat, stale and lonely

by Mark Eltringham • Flexible working, News, Workplace

A new report from Regus, based on a study of 44,000 workers worldwide claims that while many people see flexible working as an important factor in their career choices, they also remain worried about what working from home will mean for their happiness, health, family lives and job prospects. The report claims that many workers are afraid that working from home will mean they grow lonely, overweight and stale. According to the report, home workers still long for a chance to mix with other professionals and so opt to pop out of the house regularly for a change of scenery and to reconnect with the real world. More →

June 8, 2015

Three reasons why National Work From Home Day has it all wrong

by Mark Eltringham • Comment, Flexible working, Public Sector, Technology

Last Friday was National Work From Home Day in the UK. Each year, the TUC and organisers Work Wise seem to take this as an opportunity to analyse data about the uptake of flexible working and arrive at the wrong conclusions. This year, its analysis of the ONS Labour Force Survey found that the number of people regularly working from home had increased by more than 800,000 since 2005, taking the total to over 4.2 million. These are solid enough data, but what are we to make of TUC General Secretary Frances O’Grady’s conclusion that: “these figures show millions of British workers have adopted homeworking and are enjoying a better work-life balance, while saving time and money on costly commuting that benefits no-one”? There are several reasons to suggest that he’s got that wrong to a large extent.

June 3, 2015

Over half of workers with back pain receive no help from employers

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

Over a quarter of Britons (27 per cent) suffering from debilitating lower back pain do not have a formal diagnosis for their symptoms, and 64 per cent are not receiving any kind of support from employers to help them with their problem, finds a new survey by Nuffield Health. Back pain is the UK’s leading cause of long term sickness, responsible for more than 15 million sick days in 2013. One in seven (14 per cent) questioned with lower back pain said they are on long term sickness benefit or cannot work due to their symptoms, while the same number (14 per cent) have taken at least a month off in the past 12 months. Over a quarter (27 per cent) of people say that the lack of diagnosis or knowledge is causing depression, while one in six (17 per cent) are anxious they are suffering from a more serious health condition.

May 29, 2015

Everything you wanted to know about open plan but were too distracted to ask

by Maciej Markowski • Comment, Facilities management, Work&Place, Workplace design

There is a lively and ongoing debate on whether open plan offices are a good or bad thing. Many articles would suggest that they routinely diminish productivity. Yes, the open plan office is not ideal for privacy and probably bad for conceptual focused work, but it’s a bit like saying a hammer is useless when you need to tighten a screw. The point is you don’t use it for that. Fans of open plan often underline how fantastic it is for building a sense of belonging, team spirit and ad hoc collaboration, often ignoring the challenges of working there. The point I’m making is that introducing open plan into your office is probably a good idea, but you really need to make sure that you provide your employees with a menu of settings which allow them to concentrate, have ad hoc meetings without disturbing their colleagues and provide some privacy for confidential conversations.

May 25, 2015

Clerkenwell Design Week explores the links between design and the individual

by Mark Eltringham • Comment, Events, Flooring, Furniture, Workplace design

For a show with such an international perspective there are many aspects of Clerkenwell Design Week that mark it out as a typically British event. There’s the weather, of course, which can vary from day to day between drizzle and bright sunshine, marking the difference between visitors dodging showers and huddling in showrooms or spilling out onto the pavements to drink beer and talk turkey. Then there’s the very idea of Clerkenwell itself, a district in East London historically associated with the arts and crafts movements, dodgy dealings, immigrant artisans and labourers and the sort of denuded former glories that those with the right mindset like to appropriate and reinvent. London may exist as a City State within the UK, but it also provides the beating heart for many nationwide industries. For the UK office interiors industry that heart can be found in Clerkenwell.

May 13, 2015

Millennials now account for largest percentage of American workforce

by Sara Bean • Flexible working, News, Workplace

The publication this week of a survey by EY revealed the uncomfortable fact for US employers that 38 percent of millennials would consider moving to another country for better parental leave benefits. Now, another piece of research illustrates why US employers may need to work harder to keep their millennials (adults ages 18 to 34) happy. They now make up more than one-in-three of workers, surpassing Generation X to become the largest group in the US workforce, according to new Pew Research Center analysis of US Census Bureau data. This milestone was reached in the first quarter of 2015, as the millennial workforce hit over 53 million. With its large proportion of immigrants, and at an age of transition from college to working world, the millennial workforce is likely to grow even further.