Search Results for: communication

Looking back on a year in which the office sought a clearer sense of identity

by • Comment, Facilities management, Flexible working, Workplace design

JanusIt’s not often that workplace management becomes national business news but that happened at the end of February when  the world became very interested for a while in the way we design and manage offices. The reason for this was the decision by Yahoo to ban homeworking for staff at its headquarters.  The resultant period of shirt-rending at this challenge to received wisdom told us more about the changing view of the workplace than the actual decision by Yahoo. As the dust settled, we discovered that the Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer had based her decision to change working practices on data from the company’s network that showed people working from home didn’t log on to the company Virtual Private Network as much as those in the office.

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Interview: Greg Lindsay on engineering serendipity and harnessing chaos

by • Flexible working, Workplace, Workplace design

Render of Plaza at Zappos offices in LA

Render of Plaza at Zappos offices in LA

Greg Lindsay is a journalist and urbanist. He is a contributing writer for Fast Company and co-author of the international bestseller Aerotropolis: The Way We’ll Live Next as well as a visiting scholar at New York University’s Rudin Center for Transportation Policy & Management, a senior fellow of the World Policy Institute, and a research affiliate of the New England Complex Systems Institute. He is also one of the main speakers at this year’s Worktech conference in London on 19 and 20 November. In this frank and enlightening interview he offers his thoughts on how firms can engineer serendipity into their workplaces and cultures and how the way we design offices is already taking clues from the way we plan urban environments.

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Technology fix. What employers can do when social media becomes an addiction

by • Comment, Legal news, Technology, Workplace

Technology fix. What to do when social media become an addiction

Recent research shows that technology has helped us to become nearly five times more productive than we were in the 1970s. As well as enabling social interaction and personal expression, social media such as LinkedIn and Twitter can be valuable business aids for innovation and collaboration. However, with over half of people under 25 admitting they have to check Facebook at least once a day, it’s clear that for many, social media has become more than a form of virtual engagement. This can create something of an issue in the workplace, leaving employers with the dilemma of balancing the positive aspects of online communications while discouraging time wasting. More →

EU must develop ambitious plans for retrofitting buildings to hit energy targets

by • Environment, News, Property

EU must develop ambitious plans for retrofitting buildings to hit energy targetsWith just six months remaining until they are required to deliver long-term strategies on renovation, EU Member States are being urged to develop ambitious plans for retrofitting their buildings. Under the Energy Efficiency Directive, EU Member States must establish “a long-term strategy for mobilising investment in the renovation of the national stock of residential and commercial buildings, both public and private” from 30 April 2014. The World Green Building Council’s Europe Regional Network (of which the UK Green Building Council is a member) and the Renovate Europe Campaign are calling on EU nations to seize the opportunity by publishing strategies that will help ensure investment in jobs and growth, and help deliver lower energy bills for struggling European citizens. More →

There is very little about flexible working that is actually flexible

by • Comment, Events, Flexible working

upside_down_officeIt’s pretty clear why some of the world’s greatest writers have been drawn to the human propensity for moral and linguistic inversions and subversions. Books like 1984, Catch 22 and A Clockwork Orange are predicated on the idea. And it’s not one limited to literature. If we look, we can see it going on all around us. In the field of workplace design and management we can see it in the use of the word ‘flexible’ as used in the phrase flexible working. This is a word that in this particular context is coming to mean something like its opposite.  According to a survey from YouGov, the 9 to 5 is a thing of the past, supplanted by a style of work labelled flexible but which involves a third of us working for over ten hours a day, many at home right up until the point we go to bed with a smartphone that sits by our side, to wake us with a beep and a wodge of new notifications the next morning.

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9 to 5 consigned to history as flexible working patterns take over

by • Flexible working, Legal news, News

9 to 5 consigned to history as flexible working patterns take overFlexible working practices don’t necessarily equate to working fewer hours. In fact, people are working increasingly longer hours as flexible working patterns consign the traditional 9-5 to history. A third of Britons are now working more than 10 hours a day, with a short or no break and are bringing work life into the home by responding to work emails, texts and calls in the evening. Research conducted by YouGov for business communications systems firm, RingCentral found that more than half (55%) surveyed now work more than 40 hours a week. As working patterns change, companies are seeing the importance of managing a geographically dispersed workforce (68%), and also believe that providing employees with the ability to work flexibly (78%) or from home (60%) are important for employee productivity levels. More →

What the endless debate about HS2 can teach us about how we work

by • Comment, Flexible working, Technology

A man working on a train

A man working on a train

One of the most fascinating aspects of the debate about whether the UK should spend £50 billion (or whatever you think it might be) on the new HS2 rail network, is the way in which it has formed a touchstone for a discussion about how we work. But people on both sides of this debate can have things either spectacularly or misguidedly wrong. On one side, the people behind the scheme, including the Government, used the jaw-dropping assumption that nobody worked on trains as the foundation of a business case. That was the familiar sight of large organisations working their relentless way towards a number they wanted, regardless of inconvenient facts. This idea has now been so widely discredited and mocked that it has been dropped completely from the latest business case, tellingly the sixth in just three years. And yet on the other side, we have people arguing that we should travel less and use videoconferencing as an alternative to face to face meetings, which can be almost as problematic.

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‘Them and us’ mentality rife, as third of staff report low levels of trust in senior managers

by • News, Workplace

Level of trust in senior managers not as high as they believeA counterproductive “them and us” mentality is being bred in too many of the UK’s workplaces, as more than one in three employees report that their level of trust in senior managers is weak (34%), According to the latest research by the CIPD, while an overwhelming majority report that they trust in their colleagues and line managers to some or a great extent (92% and 80% respectively), trust ratings increase with an employee’s seniority, with senior managers much more likely to report strong trust between employees and senior management than non-managerial workers. Creating a better level of trust isn’t difficult however, with the majority of employees pointing to simple and effective practices such as ‘approachable’, ‘competent’  and ‘consistent leaders’ who ‘act with honesty and integrity’ and ‘lead by example’. More →

Just one in eight employees worldwide are engaged at work

by • Knowledge, Workplace

Just one out of eight employees worldwide are engaged at workThere are so many references these days to employee engagement it can be tempting to see it as management speak. However, according to Gallup’s 142-country study on the State of the Global Workplace, the 24 per cent of “actively disengaged,” employees worldwide who are not psychologically committed to their jobs are unhappy and unproductive at work and liable to spread negativity to co-workers. It found only 13 per cent of employees worldwide are engaged at work, with the majority of employees (63%) “not engaged,” meaning they lack motivation and are less likely to invest discretionary effort in organizational goals or outcomes. In rough numbers, this translates into 900 million not engaged and 340 million actively disengaged workers around the globe. More →

Demand in UK regional office markets beginning to outstrip supply

by • News, Property

GlasgowThe latest report from property consultancy Savill’s looking at trends in the UK’s commercial property market paints a now very familiar picture of an increasingly healthy market driven by a number of sectors in general and the tech and media industries in particular, but also of growing confidence outside of London. It also highlights a marked shift away from public sector to private sector employment. Although the upsurge in demand is putting pressure on the supply of appropriate office space in certain parts of the country, a new report published today by KPMG also highlights the growing order books of UK construction firms and an increase in confidence amongst builders.

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

by • Facilities management, Flexible working, News, Technology

gordian_knotBring 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.

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

by • Technology

Tablet readerCompanies 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.

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