Search Results for: sustain

January 10, 2017

A unity of opposites at Sky Central ⁰

by Neil Usher • Case studies, Facilities management, Features, Work&Place, Workplace design

It’s drummed into us from an early age that we can’t have it all, as a result we consider choices as being a binary either/or situation. The workplace design brief (where it’s actually undertaken, an entirely separate discussion) positions choices similarly – open or closed, focussed or collaborative, modern or traditional – the decision point existing along a sliding scale from one natural extreme to the other. Yet there is a way to consider workplace design as an attempt to achieve the “unity of opposites”, an idea proposed by the pre-Socratic aphoristic philosopher, Heraclitus, the original thinker on change. This holds that the existence of an idea is entirely dependent on the existence of its opposite, that one cannot exist without the other. The framework is considered here in its application to the recently completed Sky Central in Osterley (West London), a newly constructed 38,000m2 NIA activity-based workplace over three floors that is home to 3,500 of the total 7,500 people on the Campus. It may be considered as tool for aiding workplace brief development, or for understanding how a workplace has been conceived and functions.

January 10, 2017

Government plans include improvements to mental health support at work ⁰

by Sara Bean • Legal news, News, Wellbeing, Workplace

Prime Minister Theresa May has announced a package of measures to address mental health support in schools, workplaces and communities. The plans, which aim to help ensure that no one affected by mental ill-health goes unattended also includes a new partnership with employers to improve mental health support in the workplace. The Prime Minister has appointed Lord Dennis Stevenson, the long-time campaigner for greater understanding and treatment of mental illness, and Paul Farmer CBE, CEO of Mind and Chair of the NHS Mental Health Taskforce, to drive work with business and the public sector to support mental health in the workplace. These experts will lead a review on how best to ensure employees with mental health problems are enabled to thrive in the workplace and perform at their best. This will involve practical help including promoting best practice and learning from trailblazer employers, as well as offering tools to organisations, whatever size they are, to assist with employee well-being and mental health. It will review recommendations around discrimination in the workplace on the grounds of mental health

January 6, 2017

Thirteen ways the physical environment shapes knowledge management

by Agustin Chevez and Laurie Aznavoorian • Facilities management, Premium Content, Work&Place, Workplace design

Knowledge management (including its creation, transference and storage) within an organisation is now widely considered to be one of the primary drivers of a business’s sustainability. Driven by changing demographics, businesses are recognising the ways in which valuable knowledge is lost when employees leave the organisation, including when they retire or are made redundant in response to changing economic conditions. Geyer, an Australian design practice, is just one organisation that has undertaken important research to understand the role of the physical environment in knowledge management.The aim of the research was to explore the kinds of environments and their attributes (if any) that could support the management of knowledge in an organisation. The research also aimed to expand the focus of existing knowledge management literature; from information technology to workplace design.

January 6, 2017

Learning to love staff means letting them disconnect from work, and other stories ⁰

by Mark Eltringham • Flexible working, News, Technology

Topical workplace issues featured prominently at this week’s British Psychological Society’s Division of Occupational Psychology annual conference held in Liverpool. Four of the key takeaways from the event deal with issues such as the right to disconnect when working from home – a right recently enshrined in law in France, the way different personality types deal with emails, the toxic relationship between employers and employees and even how managers can learn to show their staff more love. The focus at teh event underlines a growing awareness of the complexities of our new relationship with work and workplaces.

December 22, 2016

Green buildings help you to think and sleep better ⁰

by Mark Eltringham • Environment, News

A new study from researchers at Harvard claims to establish a link between those standards for green buildings with an indoor environmental quality (IEQ) component and the wellbeing and productivity of employees. The study, The impact of working in a green certified building on cognitive function and health, has been published in the journal Building and Environment. Based on a study of 109 subjects in ten ‘high performing’ buildings compared to staff from the same firm in uncertified buildings, it found that respondents enjoyed a 26.4 percent uplift in cognitive performance, a 6.4 percent increase in sleep quality and 30 percent fewer symptoms. The accreditations used in the study were LEED New Construction 2009, Green Star Office v3, BREEAM New Construction 2012, BCA Green mark for new non-residential buildings v4.1 2013, and DGNB New Office v2012

December 13, 2016

US study projects massive shift to agile working model over the next decade ⁰

by Mark Eltringham • Flexible working, News

By the year 2025, most workers (70 percent) and employers (68 percent) agree a majority of the workforce will be employed in an agile working capacity as contractors, consultants, temporary or freelance staff, according to a study released by Randstad US. The Workplace 2025 report of more than 3,100 workers and 1,500 HR and c-suite executives across the US found that as early as 2019, as much as 50 percent of the workforce will be comprised of agile workers, as nearly 4 in 10 (39 percent) workers say they are likely to consider shifting to an agile arrangement over the next two-to-three years. The study claims that this movement is fuelling an equally aggressive adoption of new workforce models that tap into both permanent and agile employees to combat staffing shortages, leverage globalisation and fuel greater innovation for organisations.

December 8, 2016

Gig economy represents a race to the bottom for many because of client behaviour ⁰

by Mark Eltringham • Flexible working, News

For many people, the gig economy represents a race to the bottom, with a large number of freelancers asked to work for free by entitled clients on the vague promise of future work, breeding anxiety and disillusionment. That is the key finding of a new study by Approve.io which found that half of freelancers and self-employed creatives had been asked by clients said that work had caused them anxiety this year with three quarters citing client behaviour as the primary cause. More →

December 6, 2016

The Work Foundation launches Commission on Good Work ⁰

by Neil Franklin • Company news, Workplace, Workplace design

The Work Foundation, part of Lancaster University, has launched a new Commission on Good Work. The commission will seek answers to key questions such as ‘why is a focus on good work so important now?’, ‘what does good work mean in a modern economy?’ and ‘how do we achieve good work?’ The initiative was launched by Work Foundation Director Lesley Giles who invited stakeholders from businesses, trade unions, professional bodies, and the public and voluntary sectors to be part of a ‘Good Work Taskforce.’ Supporting the launch were Sir Charlie Mayfield (John Lewis Partnership), Dame Fiona Kendrick (Nestle),Douglas McCormick (Sweett Group), Mark Keese (OECD), Gail Cartmail (Unite), Peter Cheese CIPD, Scott Johnson (a small business owner) and Professor Paul Sparrow (Lancaster University Management School).

November 30, 2016

Germany slides down rankings as one of world’s top employment talent hotspots ⁰

by Sara Bean • Knowledge, News, Workplace

Germany has slipped down the rankings as one of the world’s top employment talent hotspots, with other established economic powers such as the UK and France playing only minor roles in sustaining Europe’s pre-eminence. According to the World Talent Report by IMD Switzerland, Denmark, Belgium, Sweden and the Netherlands occupy the top five places in the rankings – the first two retaining their standings from last year. Finland, Norway, Austria, Luxembourg and Hong Kong complete the top 10, with Germany 11th, Iceland 16th, Ireland 18th, the UK 20th and France down in 28th. The objective of the World Talent Report is to assess how countries sustain the talent pool necessary for businesses to maximize their performances. Austria was one of the biggest movers over the past 12 months, climbing 11 places to break into the top 10, while Belgium rose by six positions to take third spot. By contrast, Germany slipped out of the elite, dropping from 7th to 11th, after being impacted especially heavily by the economic crisis affecting much of Europe.

November 25, 2016

Reducing paper-weight is the key to maintaining a healthy business in the digital age ⁰

by Chas Moloney • Comment, Technology

The idea of creating a paperless office has been circulating for at least 40 years. Business Week famously forecast its arrival in 1975, predicting that paper would be on its way out by 1980 and dead by 1990. However, it’s almost 2017 and even with new and innovative digital technologies that enable us to operate in a highly connected world, the paper-light office is still far from our reality. Yet institutions from a variety of different sectors are leading the way when it comes to driving initiatives forward to going paperless and paper-light. For example, to address the need of approximately 12 million people in the UK that annually fill in a self-assessment tax form, plans have been put in place by the government to give individual digital accounts, aiming to allow more than 50 million individuals and small businesses to manage their tax affairs online. As a result, costs will be significantly cut by erasing expensive and laborious bureaucratic processes in the long-term, whilst fundamentally streamlining and simplifying intricate business services and applications.

November 23, 2016

UK government announces plans to invest in next generation technology ⁰

by Mark Eltringham • Cities, News, Technology

The UK Government is at last to invest properly in the next generation of technological infrastructure to ensure the company keeps pace with developments in broadband, the Internet of Things and 5G. It is to invite the country’s major cities to bid for a chance to pilot 5G from next year. The technology is a key enabler of the Internet of Things (IoT) because it is up to a hundred times faster and more reliable than existing 4G connections. In turn, the IoT will boost the application of game changing technology such as driverless cars and smart building systems. Although the Government has recently focussed on headline physical projects such as HS2, it has come under sustained criticism for the country’s often creaking technological infrastructure.

November 12, 2016

Ten countries including Australia, Canada, Germany, India and US announce plans to recognise zero carbon emissions buildings ⁰

by Mark Eltringham • Environment, Facilities management, News

The World Green Building Council’s goal to ensure that every building produces zero carbon emissions by 2050 took a major step forward this week as Green Building Councils in 10 countries (Australia, Brazil, Canada, France, Germany, India, the Netherlands, South Africa, Sweden, and the US) made progress on their plans to introduce net zero certification or designation schemes within their own countries, at COP22. Specifically, the Green Building Council of Australia, Canada Green Building Council, the German Sustainable Building Council (DGNB), India Green Building Council and the US Green Building Council all announced their intention to introduce schemes that recognise and reward net zero carbon buildings, with some announcing target dates by which they will introduce them. These schemes could be either stand alone net zero certification schemes, or a net zero designation within existing certification schemes.