Search Results for: colleagues

November 13, 2014

Workplace Week focuses on the office and individual productivity in all its forms

by Cathy Hayward • Events, Facilities management, Flexible working, Workplace, Workplace design

The holy grail of improving people’s productivity was the focus of this year’s Workplace Week, which took place last week from 3-7th November and raised more than £12,500 for Children in Need. The annual event organised by AWA and designed as a celebration of workplace innovation, included visits to 11 workplaces showcasing the latest techniques to get people performing at their very best, a day-long convention and a series of Fringe events. Andrew Mawson, who heads up AWA, opened the convention by setting the discussion in context. “We have maximised asset productivity by getting more people into buildings, and therefore working a building harder. But we need to focus on human productivity. If each organisation could make each person just 5 per cent more productive, that would have a major impact both on that organisation and the wider economy. In the knowledge economy we need to get the very best performance out of each and every brain on the payroll and to create the conditions that consciously support that.

November 12, 2014

Interruptions and a lack of engagement cost UK firms £15 bn each year

by Mark Eltringham • News, Wellbeing, Workplace design

UK businesses are suffering massive losses in company performance due to ‘disengaged’ employees who complain of working conditions that result in constant distraction and disruption and a lack of privacy, according to a new report published by office furniture maker Steelcase. Research by the Centre for Mental Health claims that presenteeism (at work physically but unproductive mentally) costs UK businesses £15bn per year and that includes the cost of disengaged employees. A new IPSOS survey commissioned by Steelcase, claims to highlights this and related issues. The survey of 10,500 employees working in open plan offices across 14 different countries and found that only 11 percent of workers are engaged and inspired at work, 63 percent lack engagement and are unmotivated and 37 percent describe their workplace as ‘stressful’. More →

November 6, 2014

Unethical behaviour at work may reflect a blame culture with little trust or integrity

by Sara Bean • Comment, Wellbeing, Workplace

In the same week Mind revealed that many workers are reluctant to admit to feeling stressed, comes data which shows high levels of unethical behaviour in Britain’s workplaces. And the two pieces of research are not unrelated. In a survey of over 1,600 managers by the Institute of Leadership & Management (ILM), almost three quarters (72%) had witnessed employees lying to cover their mistakes, with the same number reporting their colleagues cut corners and delivered substandard work. A further 68% had seen people badmouthing team members behind their backs. The fault lies in workplaces that foster a blame culture, where staff are worried about owning up to mistakes. This causes undue stress and people taking a combative, rather than collaborative approach. The findings formed part of ILM’s ‘The truth about trust’ report into trust and integrity in the UK workplace, which highlights the business benefits of high-trust high-integrity working environments. More →

November 4, 2014

Badmouthing, arse-covering and bluff are main unethical behaviours in workplace

by Mark Eltringham • Knowledge, News, Workplace

A new report from the Institute of Leadership and Management reveals the most common unethical behaviours displayed by employees in the workplace. Unsurprisingly they form a catalogue of low-level, generalised obfuscation, bluff, blame-shifting, bullshit and outright lying that will be very familiar to many people. The three most cited unethical behaviours according to the survey of 1,600 managers are cutting corners (72 percent), lying to cover one’s own mistakes (72 percent) and badmouthing colleagues (68 percent). People are, unsurprisingly, also prone to pass the buck when they miss deadlines (67 percent), cover up for the mistakes of colleagues (63 percent) and pinch low value items from work (52 percent). The ILM claims in its ‘The Truth About Trust’ report that these behaviours arise from a miasma of misunderstanding of what might be considered unethical behaviour, although equally they could just be things that people do if they think they can get away with them.

November 4, 2014

New CBRE report claims to debunk multi-generational workplace myths

by Mark Eltringham • News, Workplace, Workplace design

Age is less of a factor than widely thought when it comes to workplace preferences in the US, according to a new report by CBRE Group. The study, Designing the office of the future? Don’t plan it around (what you think you know about) US millennials, is based on aggregated workplace strategy surveys from more than 5,500 office workers across a number of sectors. It found that, while current assumptions about the multi-generational workplace and millennials are driving the design of many offices today, there is actually little difference in preferences between millennials, Generation Xers and baby boomers. (We’ve been suggesting this for some time at Insight). The report claims that “with a projected 75 percent of the workforce being millennials by 2025, much has been made about this new workforce generation, particularly when it comes to workplace strategy. While this is causing many companies today to debate how to balance the needs of millennials with those of a more tenured workforce, the study suggests that the generational divide is more perception than reality”.

October 28, 2014

Great Place to Work Institute reveals world’s best multinational workplaces

by Mark Eltringham • News, Workplace

Google Offices in Amsterdam

The Great Place to Work Institute has released its latest list of the 25 multinational companies that it believes are “leading the way into a more hopeful economic age”. The full list is available on the organisation’s convoluted and impenetrable website and as part of a new report, The Dawn of the Great Workplace Era, which describes a world in which “all people can expect to work for an organization where they trust their leaders, enjoy their colleagues and take pride in what they do”. This year’s list of firms has been chosen from 6,200 companies worldwide based on employee surveys and an assessment of each company’s policies. The Top Five for 2014 – Google, SAS Institute, NetApp, W L Gore and Associates and Belcorp – have been ranked as the top multinational workplaces, “for demonstrating rising levels of trust, camaraderie and pride.” These are the companies that “are taking steps to ensure that promotions go to those who best deserve them, to increase transparency, and to encourage employees to balance work and life,” according to China Gorman, CEO of Great Place to Work.

October 21, 2014

The death of the office desk may have been exaggerated

by Crispin Williams • Comment, Furniture, Workplace design

Twenty years ago the typical office was a busy place, with printers running, big, bulky computers taking up desk space, post it notes, notepads, scanners and fax machines whirring in the background. In today’s workplace, desks are barren in comparison to the offices of a generation ago, purely because there is little need for so much stuff. With the introduction of modern digital devices it is no surprise that the concept of the ‘work station’ as we once knew has changed. The truth is, almost everything we use in the office nowadays is readily available online, with even websites being created for the specific purpose of serving as online meeting rooms. This means the concept of a physical office, where colleagues go to collaborate, share opinions and exchange meeting notes, is no longer a completely valid concept. With this in mind, are desks really needed to create a solid working environment anymore? More →

October 20, 2014

If you want to reduce the cost of your office, move to a creative area

by Maciej Markowski • Comment, Facilities management, Property, Technology

Clerkenwell Design Week

“First we shape our buildings, thereafter our buildings shape us.” Winston Churchill, House of Commons opening speech. Buildings do indeed shape us, but what seems to affect us even more is the neighbourhood. It’s the immediate environment as opposed to buildings that is much harder to create. It needs numerous factors to influence it, among them the two most precious components– the right people and enough time. Politicians all over the world dream of creating zones that will draw the most innovative companies. But it seems that most of them grow organically – the Silicon Valley in California, the Silicon Alley in New York and the Silicon Roundabout in London. The combination of low rents, proximity to the centre of a dynamic metropolis and interesting culture made the East London neighbourhood of Shoreditch, Clerkenwell and Aldgate a perfect magnet for some of the world’s most exciting companies. So should you think about relocating there too? Here are some things to consider. More →

October 8, 2014

Two thirds of the world’s workers would move to another country to find a better job

by Mark Eltringham • Knowledge, News, Workplace

Almost two thirds of job seekers worldwide say they would be willing to move abroad for work, a ‘startlingly high proportion’ that says a lot about the evolving marketplace for talent, according to a new study by The Boston Consulting Group (BCG) and The Network, a global alliance of more than 50 recruitment websites. The report claims that the proportion of people willing to seek a better job abroad is particularly (and unsurprisingly) high in developing and politically unstable countries. But there is also a very high willingness to work abroad for workers in countries that don’t face such challenges. For example, more than 75 percent of survey respondents in Switzerland, more than 80 percent of respondents in Australia, and more than 90 percent of respondents in the Netherlands say they would consider moving to another country for work, according to the report, Decoding Global Talent: 200,000 Survey Responses on Global Mobility and Employment Preferences, and their preferred destinations are London, New York and Paris.

October 2, 2014

Increasing numbers of over-65s will require flexible working rights

by Sara Bean • Flexible working, Legal news, News, Workplace

We can get so preoccupied with meeting the younger generation’s more flexible approach to work, that we miss the fact that a much greater challenge for employers is in managing the needs of the older workforce. Figures released by the Department of Work and Pensions (DWP) show that nearly a quarter of a million more people aged 65 and over have remained at work since the default retirement age was abolished three years ago. This means that more than a million (103,000) over 65s now choose to stay in work, compared to 874,000 in the quarter October to December 2011 – an increase of 229,000. There are now 9.1 million people aged 50 plus at work, accounting for 29.7 per cent of all those in work aged 16 plus in the UK (30.6 million). This means employers not only need to accommodate an increasingly diverse range of ages but must enable older workers to work more flexibly as they wind down from working life. More →

September 26, 2014

Generation Y make the most trusting managers, finds ILM report

by Sara Bean • News, Public Sector, Workplace

Maintaining high levels of trust at work helps to foster an engaged and productive atmosphere, finds a new report by the Institute of Leadership & Management (ILM), which reveals the youngest generation to be the most trusting and those working within the public sector the least trusting. The truth about trust, honesty and integrity at work found that the millennial generation of managers (born 1981 onwards), are the most likely to trust those within their organisation (54%), followed by baby boomers (born between 1946–1964), almost half of whom (45%) say they trust everyone or almost everyone. Generation X, those born between 1965–1980, had the lowest level of respondents saying they trust everyone or almost everyone (44%) at work. The research also reveals that the five fundamental skills and qualities that leaders need in order to be trusted are openness, effective communication, the ability to make decisions, integrity and competence in their role. More →

September 19, 2014

Universal application of open plan has led to global privacy crisis, claims report

by Mark Eltringham • Flexible working, News, Workplace design

A major new report from office furniture maker Steelcase claims that the universal provision of open plan offices means that organisations are facing an unprecedented privacy crisis with their employees. The claim is based on international research carried out by market researchers IPSOS and the Workspace Futures Team of Steelcase which found that a remarkable 85 percent of people are dissatisfied with their working environment and cannot concentrate. Nearly a third (31 percent) now routinely leave the office to get work done in private. The authors of the report claim that this does not mean a reversal of the decades long shift away from cellular offices but rather a move to create offices that offer a range of work settings to give people a choice of where and how to work. More than 10,000 workers across 14 countries were questioned about their office environments and working patterns.