February 20, 2022

How to convey company culture instantly while hiring

Thirty-eight million American workers left their jobs last year. While better pay and more flexible working conditions typically top the list of reasons for leaving an employer, workers need a bit more than that to seal the deal. To be sure, in a recent Cappfinity /YouGov survey, 80 percent of job seekers said it’s important to understand a company culture before accepting an offer. Company culture, in fact, has played a key role in the pushing and pulling of workers from and to jobs. Some job seekers are motivated by the escape from a toxic work environment. Others are looking for companies that have figured out how to support more social interaction across teams. If you can’t authentically convey your own company’s culture to job candidates, they won’t be able to determine whether the job is right for them. More →

February 14, 2022

New RICS framework aims to “put people at heart of commercial property”

by Neil Franklin • Flexible working, News, Property

A new framework from the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors has been designed to improve building use, support flexible working and put people at the heart of decision making about commercial property. RICS says the International Building Operation Standard will provide organisations an interactive easy-to-use framework, supported by an assessment tool, to measure and benchmark building performance, by collecting consistent data to satisfy the latest needs of occupiers, investors, advisors and end users. More →

February 14, 2022

Record pay rises on the cards to address tough recruitment conditions

by Neil Franklin • News, Workplace

Employers anticipate offering record pay rises of 3 percent in 2022 as they look to combat increasing recruitment and retention difficulties. This is the headline finding from the CIPD’s latest quarterly Labour Market Outlook, which highlights the scale of the growing challenge facing organisations in finding and keeping staff, and how they are responding. This quarter’s pay award figure is the highest since the survey was conducted using its current methods in the winter 2012/13 report. The Labour Market Outlook surveyed more than 1,000 employers in January 2022 about their hiring, pay and redundancy intentions for the first quarter of the year. More →

February 8, 2022

The office sector needs to develop better arguments for its products

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

The distillation of every received and laundered idea of the past two years leads us here. A claim from Gallup that in future just over a third of the desks in offices will be empty. Whatever Gallup thinks, this is great news for the office sector. One of the truths the office sector hasn’t always liked to talk about too much over the last few decades is that in a typical office over that period, around half of the desks have already been empty. More →

February 3, 2022

Workplace culture needs a rethink in line with employees’ changing priorities

by Jayne Smith • Flexible working, News, Workplace

Considerable job insecurity and uncertainty has pushed companies to rethink their workplace culture to meet employees’ new needs, priorities, and expectations, according to the annual Fjord Trends report from Accenture. According to the report, nearly two years of social, economic and employment disruption has resulted in a collective shift in people’s relationships with work and employees are re-assessing what they want and expect from a company culture and employee value proposition. This means enhancing workplace flexibility, benefits packages, and greater employee care and compassion will continue to be notable trends in 2022, creating both challenges and opportunities for businesses looking to retain and recruit talent. More →

January 31, 2022

The great workplace conversation (still) needs to be held with a great deal more humility

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

“Nobody knows anything”. William Goldman’s infamous summing up of the essential unknowability of the movie business also has a less quoted second part. “Not one person in the entire motion picture field knows for a certainty what’s going to work. Every time out it’s a guess and, if you’re lucky, an educated one.” It is a call for humility. That no matter how much we know about what we do and how good we are at it, we can’t always predict its outcomes. And that is clearly the case with the ongoing Great Workplace Conversation. More →

January 18, 2022

Firms need to do more to engage, attract and retain staff

by Neil Franklin • Flexible working, News, Workplace

Over 40 percent of employers are finding it more difficult to retain and recruit staff, according to Aon’s Benefits and Trends Survey 2022 (registration). The report claims that many employers have adjusted their benefits strategies to address an intense labour market, in which employee work motivations have shifted in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. Forty-one percent of employers said they have found it more difficult to retain staff in the last year, while 44 percent have found it more difficult to recruit new staff. Many employers anecdotally expressed in the survey that they need to pay higher salaries or sign-on bonuses to entice new recruits. More →

January 17, 2022

Is your office worth the journey it takes to get to it?

by Despina Katsikakis • Comment, Flexible working, Property

A couple of years ago, in the wake of a surge in self-care start-ups and viral diet fads, Forbes declared 2019 as the year of the “wellness revolution”. Three years and a global pandemic later, the revolution appears to have swept our offices. Why? Quite simply, we have woken up to the fact that we could be productive remotely, while also realising the risks of not accommodating employee wellbeing in the office. More →

January 11, 2022

Great Resignation offers firms a chance to create the Great Retention

by Erin Eatough • Comment, Flexible working, Wellbeing, Working culture

The last 18 months have seen unprecedented change. Covid-19 has forced people to re-evaluate every aspect of their lives, including their career. As a result, we’ve seen a surge in workers taking charge of their careers and leaving their jobs as part of the so-called Great Resignation. Recent data from the ONS shows that there were nearly 1.2 million job vacancies in the UK this quarter, with 15 of 18 sectors reporting record numbers. More →

January 7, 2022

Majority of employees are rethinking their career paths

by Jayne Smith • Flexible working, News, Working lives

LumApps is releasing new workplace data claiming how employees and employers are dealing with the fallout of the Great Resignation. The survey was conducted in collaboration with CMSWire during the Fall of 2021. More →

December 17, 2021

One in six employees are retrained and ready for new careers

by Jayne Smith • News, Working lives

A new survey has revealed that nearly one in six (15 percent) employees working in the UK have already retrained for a new role or profession. Their current employers just don’t know it yet. More →

December 16, 2021

Pandemic highlights the need for smarter, more adaptable offices and cities

by Cedrik Neike • Features, Technology

The coronavirus pandemic is a new experience for every one of us. It has changed life as we know it – at work, at home and for public interactions. As some countries start to ease restrictions on public life, how can we go back to ‘normal’ while still maintaining social distancing and feeling safe? How do we manage crowded public spaces like shopping malls, cinemas and restaurants? How do we optimize safety in our offices and factories? More importantly, how do we avoid shutting down entire cities and countries when the next pandemic hits? More →