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July 11, 2017

Taylor Review on Modern Working Practices and the gig economy is published ⁰

by Mark Eltringham • Flexible working, Legal news, News, Wellbeing, Workplace

The long awaited UK government commissioned report into modern working practices and the so-called gig economy has been published at last. The Taylor Review was commissioned by the Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy last year and there has been a great deal of speculation regarding its content ever since, especially last week after parts were apparently leaked to the media. You can follow the pile in now on Twitter and the festering pits of ignorance, prejudice and bile known as newspaper comment sections. Or you can read it here before you draw your own conclusions. We’ll be having our say tomorrow and sharing the thoughts of various organisations into its contents. The report was authored by Matthew Taylor, Chief Executive of the RSA and considers the implications of new forms of working, especially with regard to the gig economy and freelance work on worker rights and responsibilities, as well as on employer freedoms and obligations. It sets out seven key principles to address the challenges facing the UK labour market, set out below.

July 11, 2017

Serviced and coworking offices top London leasing market for the first time ⁰

by Mark Eltringham • Coworking, Flexible working, News, Property

Serviced and coworking office space providers have accounted for the largest share of space leased in Central London for the first time, according to new research from Cushman & Wakefield. During the first half of 2017, serviced office or co-working providers – such as WeWork and The Office Group – accounted for 884,235 sq ft of newly-leased office space in central London. The second quarter of the year in particular witnessed a dramatic escalation in activity by serviced office and co-working providers with 651,540 sq ft leased – around a quarter of central London’s take-up across April, May and June. This was more than London’s traditionally dominant occupational sub-sectors such as technology, media and financial services. The H1 2017 total is more than serviced office and coworking providers accounted for in the whole of 2016 (853,178 sq ft). and is just a deal or two shy of the sector’s average annual take-up between 2012 and 2016 (908,972). It seems certain therefore that serviced office and co-working providers will this year surpass their record annual volume of 1,267,926 sq ft set in 2014, according to the firm.

July 5, 2017

Minimum wage should be extended to the self employed and gig economy ⁰

by Mark Eltringham • Flexible working, News

The government should extend minimum wage legislation to protect some of the UK’s 4.8 million self employed workforce as part of its drive to tackle low pay and insecurity in the modern workforce, according to a new report published by the Resolution Foundation. The Minimum Required? – which forms part of the Resolution Foundation’s submission to the Taylor Review on modern employment practices – sets out a number of proposals to tackle endemic levels of low pay among the self-employed. Its new analysis claims that that while around in one in five employees are low-paid (earning less than two-thirds of typical weekly earnings), last year around half of the full-time self-employed workforce (49 percent) fell below this threshold, earning less than £310 a week.

July 4, 2017

Business Centre sector continuing to thrive amidst increased competition and Brexit uncertainty ⁰

by Mark Eltringham • Flexible working, News, Property

New research published by the Business Centre Association (BCA) in collaboration with CBRE claims that the business centre sector enjoyed a 13 percent increase in turnover and was home to around 11 percent more workers in 2015 and 2016, despite initial fears about the impact of Brexit on the sector, and increasing competition from new entrants into the market. The sector is worth around £3.3bn in terms of turnover, up from £2bn in 2013. The findings come from The UK Business Centre Market report which surveyed 580 business centres, representing 23 percent of the sector across the country, to assess the current state of the market. Overall, the report found the UK wide business sector is now home to 93,000 individual small businesses which employ over 480,000 people, supporting around £18bn of GDP.

July 4, 2017

Over half of employers believe strong workplace friendships increase productivity ⁰

by Sara Bean • News, Wellbeing, Workplace

Nearly three quarters (70 percent) of employers say it’s healthy for employees to have someone to confide in at work, according to new research, but it claims, 1 in 4 employees would consider leaving the company if their friend left. The totaljobs research which featured responses from over 4,000 employees and 103 employers on the latest trends in workplace relationships and office politics found that two thirds (65 percent) of UK workers are finding ‘work spouses’ in the office – that one person who they are very close. Although over half of employers (56 percent) say strong work friendships increase productivity and 60 percent of work spouses say their relationship means ‘they look forward to going into work’, which can help improve staff retention, 1 in 4 (23 percent) say if their friend left, they would consider leaving themselves. Nearly one in 10 (7 percent) go as far as to say that their work spouse leaving the company would be ‘like a bereavement’.

It is perhaps no surprise that work socials are encouraged by employers. Three-quarters of employers organise social events, with the most common including the Christmas party (92 percent); meals out (56 percent); celebrating company milestones (contract wins, hitting targets – 53 percent); and drinks (47 percent). A massive 89 percent of employers provide coffee and tea facilities, while 67 percent provide a kitchen with a sitting area and 47 percent provide breakout areas to encourage more conversation.

A significant 60 percent of employers encourage employees to socialise out of work, while in most social events are regularly organised by teams independently – 42 percent monthly and 40 percent quarterly.

A line was drawn in terms of seniority however, with only 24 percent of employers believing it is appropriate for management to be friends with people more junior than them.

John Salt, Director at totaljobs, said: “It is certainly revealing that so many employees relate to having a ‘work spouse’ and someone they feel they can confide in above others. Our research shows employers recognise the value of strong work relationships, with many already offering social events. The key is to accept work spouse relationships and encourage broader team cohesion. The two do not need to be mutually exclusive: get the balance right, and employers will reap the benefits of a happier, more productive, team.”

The research also showed that work relationships are often formed out of facing adversity in the workplace. Half of those (50 percent) with a work spouse admit to being frustrated in their job, compared to only a third (33 percent) who say they are satisfied, suggesting a spouse may be viewed as some with whom frustrations can be shared.

Social Media Etiquette

Social media has led to a blurring of the lines in terms of people’s personal and professional lives. 42 percent admitted they communicate with their work spouse via social media outside the office. Facebook is by far the leading social network, with 83 percent saying they add colleagues who are at their level on Facebook, compared to 32 percent who would add them on LinkedIn, 24 percent who would follow them on Instagram, and 19 percent who would message their work spouse out of office hours.

Workplace communication expert Judi James has worked with totaljobs to identify the different types of workplace friendships. She comments, “The notion of having a ‘work spouse’ in the office is clearly a growing phenomenon. British people are notoriously hard workers, often working long hours in stressful environments so it is no surprise to see that they find a colleague with whom they can share their frustrations and celebrate their successes.

“Whilst this is perfectly healthy, it can be helpful for workers to understand how these relationships can come to be viewed and how to prepare for the inevitability of their work marriage being broken up when one party heads for pastures new. That’s why I have worked with totaljobs to create this guide to enable people to understand what type of relationship they have.”

June 30, 2017

Why using recyclable materials is no longer enough to protect the environment ⁰

by Michael Tyerman • Comment, Environment, Workplace design

A few years ago, the most commonly recognised symbol of humankind’s impact on the environment was the image of a solitary polar bear, adrift on a rapidly shrinking ice floe. Google a term like ‘melting ice caps’ even now, and you’ll still derive a host of variations of the same meme. More recently a new and even more unpleasant series of symbols has emerged for a similarly environmentally catastrophic phenomenon, carried worldwide on the tide of social media. This time, they are not about the way we pollute the atmosphere but also the land and seas, particularly with plastic. Social media feeds are packed with images of the corpses of seabirds, their flesh rotted away to expose the amount of plastic they have consumed. This is the new face of environmental disaster. This is not just an issue that affects birds, however. Barely a day passes when we cannot see a new image of turtles malformed after getting caught up in plastic netting or six pack rings, whales beached after choking on dozens of discarded plastic bags they’ve mistaken for food, clogged waterways and oceans, piles of rubbish and beaches that consist in large part of plastic eroded to the size of sand grains. Most recently Sky ran a heartbreaking documentary about a whale that had died with a stomach full of plastic rubbish.

June 29, 2017

Self-employed would value receiving sick pay above other benefits ⁰

by Neil Franklin • Flexible working, News

UK micro-business owners and freelancers would be more interested in receiving sick pay than any other statutory benefit, according to new research carried out in collaboration between cloud accounting software firm FreeAgent and The Freelancer & Contractor Services Associatio n (FCSA). A poll of nearly 900 UK micro-business owners conducted by FreeAgent and FCSA claims that sick pay provision is the benefit that self-employed workers would most welcome, coming way ahead of other benefits such as maternity pay, job seekers allowance and pension auto-enrolment. The survey claims that 76 percent of respondents currently do not have any method of providing sick pay, maternity/paternity leave, holiday or redundancy pay in their business. Projected across the country’s 5.2 million-strong micro-business sector, this potentially equates to millions of people working without the same kind of basic entitlements that employed workers have. Notably, people’s appetites for additional benefits varied depending on the structure of their business with sole traders more likely to value benefits (rating sickness provision 8.7 out of 10) compared to those working through their own limited companies who gave a score of 6.4 out of 10 for sickness provision.

June 29, 2017

Majority of new managers are unprepared and unable to manage their teams ⁰

by Sara Bean • News, Workplace

Businesses across the UK could be experiencing significant losses in productivity because managers are unprepared and unable to manage their teams new research suggests. The research which was carried out by chartered fellow of the CIPD Susan Binnersley MD of development consultancy H2H, found that a majority (77.42 percent) of managers didn’t feel prepared to take on their first management role. Only 21.5 percent of people felt they had the full support of their manager when taking over a team and 69 percent admit they spent the majority of their time not managing their team in their first management role. This gets worse over time with 74 percent saying they now spend majority of their time not managing their team today; 81 percent say this is because they spend a large part of their time doing tasks their team should be responsible for. The majority (72 percent) claim this is because they want to lead by example but more than half (51 percent) admit they feel the task if done quicker if they do it. Managers also admit struggling with delegation, with 35 percent saying the struggled to let go of control, 35 percent saying they didn’t feel they had the resources and 29 percent saying it didn’t feel fair to ask someone to do the task.

June 29, 2017

Employees unaware extent of digital monitoring their employers are legally allowed ⁰

by Sara Bean • Facilities management, Legal news, News, Technology, Workplace

Most employees incorrectly believe the monitoring by their bosses of their personal social media and work email is illegal, but they’d be wrong, new data from Broadband Genie has revealed. The research found public ignorance over monitoring in the workplace, with the majority (79 percent) believing that workplaces weren’t legally allowed to monitor personal social media accounts. Similarly, the opening of work mail or email (58 percent), recording of work phone calls (53 percent) and checking logs of websites (36 percent) were all believed to be illegal. However, sources such as Citizens Advice explain workplaces in the UK can monitor employees use of phone, internet and email if, “it relates to business, the equipment being monitored is provided partly or wholly for work, [and] the employer has made all reasonable efforts to inform the employee that communications will be monitored”.

June 26, 2017

The changing world of people analytics and digital ethics in the workplace ⁰

by Ian Ellison • Flexible working, Podcasts, Premium Content, Technology

This year’s Think FM conference at the Science Museum may prove to be a watershed moment for the global facilities management and workplace sectors, as its focus was on connectivity, data and the Internet of Things. The event’s keynote speaker was Ben Waber, one of the world’s leading thinkers on the ways in which this unprecedentedly connected era relates to people and the workplace. Ben is the president and CEO of people analytics firm Humanyze, an alumnus of MIT and a visiting scientist at MIT Media Lab.

I was fortunate to be able to sit down with him recently to discuss the characteristics of this new age of connectivity and the changing nature of digital ethics and ask him whether the future of HR, IT and FM is at the mercy of people data analytics, amongst other things. This is becoming a common theme for the Workplace Matters podcast as we see a more widespread realisation that the workplace is no longer a merely physical entity and our attention shifts to people and how they interact with each other and the places they work. Subscribe and listen to this and all episodes on Acast or iTunes, on any mobile device.

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Ian Ellison is one of the UK’s foremost commentators on workplace and facilities management issues. He is a Partner of consultancy 3edges (@_3edges) and the host and creator of the Workplace Matters podcast (@wpmpodcast). Prior to that he was a lecturer at Sheffield Hallam the University and had a ten-year career in operational FM in both in-house and outsourced roles. If you have any feedback or suggestions for future episodes – contact him @ianellison or at www.3edges.co.uk.

June 26, 2017

US experiences huge increase in telecommuting since 2005, claims study ⁰

by Neil Franklin • Flexible working, News, Technology

FlexJobs and Global Workplace Analytics have published their 2017 State of Telecommuting in the US Employee Workforce report, which claims to be the most up-to-date and comprehensive data analysis available on the state of working from home in the United States. According to the study, the number of people telecommuting in the US increased by 115 percent between 2005 and 2015. Other key findings of the study include: 3.9 million U.S. employees, or 2.9 percent of the total U.S. workforce, work from home at least half of the time, up from 1.8 million in 2005 (a 115 percent increase since 2005); the average telecommuter is 46 years of age or older, has at least a bachelor’s degree, and earns a higher median salary than an in-office worker; roughly the same population of women and men telecommute; and in more than half of the top US metro areas telecommuting exceeds public transportation as the commute option of choice. The report’s definition of telecommuting refers to non-self-employed people who principally work from home at least half of the time.
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June 26, 2017

Digital tech is fastest growing sector in Scotland, claims report ⁰

by Mark Eltringham • News, Technology

The digital technology sector is forecast to grow twice as fast as the Scottish economy overall in the years to 2024, according to research published by Skills Development Scotland and the Digital Technologies Skills Group. This growth is ‘creating unprecedented demand for digital skills with employers across all sectors seeking to harness the benefits of technology to drive innovation and increase competitiveness’. The new publication, Scotland’s Digital T echnologies, found that digital tech was the fastest growing sector of the economy accounting for five percent of Scotland’s total business base and employing two per cent of the national workforce.