Search Results for: remote working

March 30, 2016

Isn’t it time that UK businesses thought more like the Scandinavians? ⁰

by Richard Morris • Comment, Facilities management, Flexible working, Wellbeing, Workplace

The clocks went forward on 27^th March meaning darker mornings and lighter evenings – at least for a time. But the standard working day doesn’t reflect such changes, with commuters setting out in darkness to make a fixed 9am start. The changing of the clocks raises interesting questions about the UK work model. Why does UK business persist with the 9-5? We know that commuting in and out can be stressful and detrimental to productivity – not to mention expensive. So why do we continue to do it? Why is the UK’s workforce all boarding the same trains to arrive at the office at the same time? Today, the very notion of the 9am start to the working day should seem archaic. Sweden – often a forerunner of best practice when it comes to wellbeing – recently introduced a 6-hour working day in a bid to reduce sick leave and make staff happier. To date, there has been no hard analysis of results, but anecdotal evidence suggests a healthier, more engaged workforce.

February 17, 2016

The workplace is not just about the play, but the stage too ⁰

by Darren Bilsborough • Comment, Flexible working, Technology, Workplace design

Why is it that just about every article I read talking about the value of workplace design, almost always ignores the broader context of the building and precinct in which the workplace is located? Similarly, almost all conversations extolling the virtues of remote working, love to predict the extinction of the office and diminish its relevance as an important contributor to the operations of a successful business. Personally, I have yet to find an acceptable substitution for face to face communication. It is just not possible for clear, consistent and unmistakeable communication to occur over email, text, phone or skype. The ability to be able to read someone’s body language, grab a pen and paper to draw a diagram, point to an example, empathise sincerely with a colleague, customer or collaborator’s struggles with complex concepts, is just not possible to do quickly, effectively and efficiently without face to face communication.

July 14, 2015

Homeworkers left to fund their own technology by stingy bosses

by Sara Bean • Comment, Facilities management, Flexible working, News

Last week we learnt that for some employers, homeworking is only to be encouraged when it’s out of hours. Now new research from Regus suggests that only around a third of people encouraged by their employers to work from home (35 percent) receive any contributions from their firm to fund the fit-out. The survey of over 4,000 senior business people found that the majority (82 percent) of employers refuse to cover all the costs incurred for creating and maintaining a work space for homeworkers. This proves costly for staff, as a quarter (25 percent) of respondents said that it would take a whole monthly salary for them to fit-out their home, while the average cost of running a home office in the UK is almost £2,000 a year. Nearly half (43 percent) of workers think that most companies encouraging their employees to work from home are simply trying to transfer the workspace cost onto the employee.

June 25, 2015

Employers lagging behind the workplace revolution say CIPD and BIFM

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

There is strong and mounting evidence on how organisational culture and the workplace environment influence the quality of our work and working lives. This is according to a major new joint report by the CIPD and BIFM, In Search of Better Workplaces, which forms part of a wider initiative, The Workplace Conversation, an ongoing collaboration between the FM and HR bodies, which explores the evolution of the working environment and what the future of the workplace looks like. The report says that to make the purpose of workplaces clear a completely different approach is required, individual to an organisation, and which reflects what it is trying to achieve and how it wants to achieve it. It adds that good workplace design should be available for everyone and not the sole preserve of cash-rich private sector organisations. There is a range of starting points and organisations should take steps that are the right size for them.

June 19, 2015

Well designed offices should create spaces suitable for everybody

by Dan Callegari • Comment, Flexible working, Workplace, Workplace design

The basis of the commonly held belief that offices are designed for extroverts seems to be that, because the primary goal of offices is to bring people together to work and because the de facto office design standard is open plan, then this makes them an ideal home for extroverts. They are parties to which everybody is invited, but at which the wallflowers are told to dance. There is something in this but it doesn’t tell the whole story. This is just as well because personalities are not so straightforwardly easy to categorise and the needs of everybody to collaborate or work alone – however extroverted they might be – vary throughout the day. The office remains endlessly complex and sophisticated and any simplistic notions about it and the things it does should be challenged with a cold, hard look at the facts and what is happening in the real world.

June 2, 2015

The bonds that link work with place are loosening day by day

by Paull Robathan • Comment, Flexible working, Technology, Work&Place

Over the decades designing productive spaces for work has focused on redefining the corporate office and its surroundings. While there are examples of quality design in buildings around the world, there is a growing movement that challenges the presumption that work should always be done “at work”. If we aim to allow people to be at their best, develop and nurture creativity and maximise quality output then we must ensure the place where the work is done is outstanding. Sarah Kathleen Peck of ‘It starts with’ summed it up when she wrote “There are people, places and things that make me feel like I’m building my energy stores, that rejuvenate me, and help me to do my best work. Likewise, there are also people and places that zap my energy; that leave me exhausted; that make me feel as though I’ve waste my time and my energy – and my day – without getting anything useful done.”

June 1, 2015

New report lays out its 2040 vision of the workplace of the future

by Mark Eltringham • Briefing, Facilities management, News, Workplace design

By 2040 knowledge workers will decide where and how they want to work, according to a new report on the workplace of the future by Johnson Controls’ Global Workplace Solutions business. The Smart Workplace 2040 report claims that 25 years from now, work will be seen as something workers do, rather than a place to which they commute. According to the study, work patterns will be radically different as a new generation of what it terms ‘workspace consumers’ choose their time and place of work. Most workers will frequently work from home, and will choose when to visit work hubs to meet and network with others. There will be no set hours and the emphasis will be on getting work done, while workers’ wellness will take priority. Technology will bring together networks of individuals who operate in an entrepreneurial way, with collaboration the major driver of business performance.

May 18, 2015

European workers optimistic about the impact of workplace technology

by Mark Eltringham • Flexible working, News, Technology

The European workforce is optimistic about the impact of new and emerging workplace technology although many employers face challenges in pursuing digital business models, according to new research by Accenture. The report claims that more than four times as many workers think technology will improve their working lives than those who think it will have a negative impact. The study of over 2500 workers and 500 business leaders in the EU found that 57 percent of workers think technologies such as robots, apps, data analytics and artificial intelligence will improve their working experience versus eight percent who think it will worsen it. Fifty percent of EU workers believe that digital technology will improve their job prospects compared to 12 percent who think it will limit them.

May 8, 2015

The death of the office has been overstated but it is changing, study confirms

by Mark Eltringham • News, Property, Workplace design

The implications for the property industry of more efficient space planning models and the uptake of flexible working are laid bare in a new report from planning and design consultancy Nathaniel, Lichfield and Partners (NLP). The headline figure from the report, Workspace Futures: The changing dynamics of office locations is that the office stock in England and Wales rose by 17 percent in the twelve years to 2012 while the numbers of office based staff increased by around 21 percent. The report includes details on how these trends affect 11 key locations including Manchester, Cambridge, Bristol, Newcastle and Reading and concludes that while ‘the death of the office has been largely overstated’, the market is undergoing structural changes that need to be addressed by developers and government.

February 27, 2015

Employers embrace mobile workforces but retain traditional workspaces

by Sara Bean • Facilities management, Flexible working, News, Technology, Workplace design

Nearly three quarters of employers that offer staff the opportunity to work flexibly are failing to reorganise their workplaces to reflect the new ways of working. Research commissioned by US based AV company Barco, found that while 86 percent of organisations indicated a remote working approach was being used within their business; rather than using this policy to reduce desk space, 73 percent of organisations admitted they still had allocated desks. This is despite the fact that the top three drivers for unifying communications are to increase productivity (51%), reduce costs (44%), and increase collaboration (27%). And though the BYOD trend is continuing, with half (50%) saying personal laptops and personal tablets (45.2 %) are being used in the workplace; 82 percent of those surveyed said that laptops are still company issued.

July 22, 2014

BCO study finds office remains the best place to do business

by Sara Bean • Facilities management, Flexible working, News, Workplace design

The challenge for the typical office is that it is meant to satisfy a broad range of individuals and a variety of working practices; which means what some may describe as a distracting open-plan layout, others would view as a busy collaborative workspace. These conflicts are highlighted in a new study by the British Council for Offices (BCO), Morgan Lovell and Hatch, which surveyed 2,000 UK office workers’ working conditions, attitudes and expectations. For example while over two thirds were critical of the distractions of the open-plan office, nine out of ten employees believe that support from colleagues enhances their wellbeing. Putting aside the open-plan debate, the study espouses the continued importance of the office as the best place to do business and comes up with three key starting points to help employers create a culture of wellbeing: care; control and collaboration. More →

April 10, 2014

A rail network carrying people on blurred lines into the future of work

by Mark Eltringham • Comment, Flexible working, Technology, Workplace design

The UK rail industry has a somewhat ambiguous relationship with the idea of remote working. While the business case for the controversial HS2 rail line was until recently predicated on the remarkable assumption that people don’t work on trains (now replaced by another set of assumptions to get to the numbers it needs for politicians to go along with it all), the number of journeys people make on trains has been increasing steadily for some time, regardless of the potential for technology to make many of those journeys unnecessary. So while we’re already into uncharted territory in our ability to forecast the impact of new technology and working practices on the need for physical presence, the train and the rail network does offer us a touchstone for thinking about it. And what we find in that respect is a blurring of the lines between several worlds, as we do in pretty much every aspect of our lives.