Search Results for: workplace

October 8, 2013

More than half of twenty-something UK men would like all male offices, claims survey

At Insight we report surveys from firms on an almost daily basis. We generally do so without too much comment, trusting that readers are smart or jaded enough to apply their own filters based on whichever company is responsible and the number of people surveyed before dusting them all with a liberal pinch of salt and coming to their own conclusions. Even so, here’s one that may need more seasoning than most. According to a new survey from business supplies company Expert Market, slightly more than half of the UK’s male workers under the age of 30 would like to work in an all male environment, mostly based on the idea that this would mean less flirting, fewer arguments and more work.

October 8, 2013

Nearly two thirds of SMEs now trust employees to work flexibly

by Sara Bean • Flexible working, News, Workplace

One of the main arguments against flexible working amongst blue chip organisations – which was well documented following the Yahoo furore earlier this year, is that it is detrimental to fostering a collaborative working culture. Amongst small and medium sized companies, the reasons against are more straightforward, in that it demands a level of trust small business managers can ill afford to bestow unwisely. Now a new survey, carried out among over 200 UK-based SME decision-makers, highlights a growing acceptance of flexible working within these businesses. Well over half (63%) of senior executives say they trust their employees to remain productive when working away from the office, the Citrix-commissioned YouGov survey has shown. More →

October 8, 2013

UK Green Building Council partners with Ecobuild to agree event programme

by Sara Bean • Environment, Events, Facilities management, News

The UK Green Building Council has entered into a new long-term partnership with Ecobuild, the annual event for sustainable design, construction and the built environment. The agreement means the two organisations will work closely on the programme of events for Ecobuild to promote the business case for a greener and more sustainable built environment. UK-GBC Chief Executive Paul King, who already sits on the Ecobuild Advisory Board, said: “This partnership marks the start of a new and exciting chapter in our close relationship with Ecobuild, an event which has firmly placed sustainable construction on the UK and international agenda over the past ten years.” More →

October 7, 2013

More women on UK boards welcomed, but business leaders urged to do more

by Sara Bean • Legal news, News, Workplace

Female representation on the UK’s top companies’ boards continues to increase according to new figures published today by the Professional Boards Forum (PBF). The statistics show that 19 per cent of directors are now female (up from 17.4% in May) and 24 per cent of board appointments since 1 March 2013 have been women. To meet the target of 25 per cent of board positions being held by women by 2015, as set out in the original report by Lord Davies published in February 2011, FTSE100 companies need to appoint 66 more female directors in the next two years. The news has been welcomed by business leaders and politicians who have resisted efforts by the EU to impose mandatory female quotas. More →

October 7, 2013

Third of Europe’s large firms have already lost data through BYOD

by Mark Eltringham • Facilities management, Flexible working, News, Technology

Bring Your Own Device remains the Gordian Knot of workplace technology. While firms have tried to label and co-opt the unstoppable propensity of employees to use their own devices for work as a way of cutting the business’s technology costs, they are paying in other ways. As we reported last week many remain unaware of the extent of the practice and of its potential to clash with company policy. Now, the full extent of the inevitable security breach inherent in either sanctioned or unsanctioned use of personal technology is becoming evident. According to a new report from Samsung, around a third of Europe’s largest companies have lost company and confidential data through the practice.

October 4, 2013

Record breaking quarter for Central London commercial property markets

by Mark Eltringham • News, Property

According to a new report from property consultancy Colliers International, the West End of London has enjoyed a record £2.8bn of investment in the third quarter of 2013. Office occupancy increased by over 1m sq ft. in a market driven by activity in the tech and media sectors which accounted for 40 percent of the market. Also prominent are several major deals including the purchase of Paddington Central by British Land. Occupation of grade A office space reached more than 1.1m sq ft across central London. The figures mark the highest level of activity since the start of the downturn and 2013 activity is now only 1 percent lower than that for the whole of 2012.

October 4, 2013

CIBSE publishes guide on energy reduction from refurbishment projects

by Mark Eltringham • Environment, Facilities management, Property, Workplace design

The Chartered Institution of Building Services Engineers (CIBSE) has published a guide on how to make the most of the energy reduction opportunities that arise during refurbishment projects. The document, called Refurbishment of non-domestic buildings, is available in print (£60) and online (£55). CIBSE president George Adams claims: “Making the current building stock consume significantly less energy contributes to our cities in the future to reduce their heat islands, lower carbon foot prints and lessen the demand on already stretched energy infrastructures. Cities are key to the world’s energy problems and therefore the buildings within should strive through continuous improvement to be as energy efficient as possible and this new guide will assist in this huge challenge.”

October 3, 2013

Where’s the desk? UK offices weighed down by paper clutter

by Sara Bean • Facilities management, News

We’ve been hearing about the paperless office for more than two decades, BYOD (or CYOD) is supposed to replace ‘dead trees’; but we’re still drowning in paper. Today, the average UK desk is weighed down by almost a stone of clutter – with over a fifth of office workers losing important documents at least once a week, according to office equipment manufacturer Brother. Recent research by the EDM Group echoed these findings, estimating that employees wasted one and a half hours a week looking for misplaced documents and information. One of the causes is the sheer amount of information and data employees now receive, with over half (56%) in the EDM poll claiming that they receive more information at work than they did three years ago. More →

October 3, 2013

Firms increasingly likely to eschew BYOD in favour of CYOD, claims new report

by Mark Eltringham • Technology

Companies have an inconsistent approach to the implementation of Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) policies in the workplace and often misjudge the ways in which people use their own technology for work regardless of official policies, claims a snapshot survey of IT managers at 224 UK businesses commissioned by Azzurri Communications. It found that while a greater number of firms are switching to Choose Your Own Device (CYOD) as an alternative in which the business keeps control of the account and SIM card for equipment, staff continue to use their own devices anyway to a far greater extent than their employers assume.

October 2, 2013

Open source talent could rewrite the meaning of the term workforce

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

The digital revolution has changed the definition of the “workplace”, from a physical building where employees go to perform the tasks for which they get paid – to a more flexible model that allows staff to perform and deliver work from a variety of locations. But the employers’ role, i.e. managing the talent wherever they are based, has remained the same. Not for much longer – suggest analysts from Deloitte in a new paper, The Open Talent Economy, which describes the evolving workforce as a mixture of full-time employees, contractors and freelancers and – increasingly – people with no formal ties to a business at all. What’s more, in the future this “open source talent” will ultimately rewrite what the term “workforce” actually means. More →

October 1, 2013

Over half of UK and US workers still go into work when they are sick

by Sara Bean • Flexible working, News, Workplace

Over half of UK and US workers still go into work when they’re sick, according to separate surveys from either side of the Atlantic. The US study by Kimberly-Clark Professional found that 59 per cent of people go to work even when they feel ill; with three in 10 saying it was because they were too important to the business operation. In the UK, new YouGov research on behalf of Westfield Health found that exactly the same percentage (59%) of workers turned up despite being unwell because of work commitments; 82 per cent of employees had worked over their contractual hours in the last 12 months and 64 per cent admitted to feeling stressed at work. More →