Search Results for: business

April 16, 2018

Local authorities spend £3.8bn on commercial property in last five years

by Mark Eltringham • News, Property, Public Sector

Local authorities have invested around £3.8 bn in commercial property over the last five years, a new study claims. The report (registration required) from property consultancy Carter Jonas and Revo claims that of the £3.8 bn invested, nearly half was spent on the acquisition of office space. It found that Spelthorne Borough Council in Surrey (pictured) was the largest local authority investor committing £477.1 m to assets within its domain. This is more than double its nearest rival Warrington Borough Council (£219.5 m) and is largely down to the purchase of BP’s International Centre for Business & Technology in Sunbury for £360 m.

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April 13, 2018

Lack of effort by UK employers to retain staff is increasing talent turnover

by Sara Bean • Flexible working, News, Wellbeing, Workplace

UK employers are facing increasing levels of staff turnover with one in seven (14 percent), or roughly 4.5 million employees predicted to seek a new job in near future, according to research carried out by Robert Half UK. Employers have registered this shift with almost three in five (61 percent) reporting an increase in voluntary employee turnover in the last three years. The research also showed that over half (51 percent) expect employee turnover to increase in the next three years. Yet many businesses still fail to employ basic retention initiatives. Only half (47 percent) of organisations run training and development programmes to help build employees’ skills and support career development, while most don’t have any programmes in place to support employee wellbeing or reward performance. Organisations are also missing out on valuable insight from their departing employees, with more than four in five (83 percent) failing to undertake exit interviews.

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April 12, 2018

Third of fathers lack access to flexible working arrangements, claims study

by Mark Eltringham • Flexible working, News

Almost a third of working fathers in the UK lack access to flexible working arrangements, new research says. The British Sociological Association’s annual conference in Newcastle heard this week that 30 percent of employed fathers surveyed could not work part-time, have flexible employment hours or work in a job share. The rate for women without flexible working was lower –10 percent, the researchers, from the UCL Institute of Education, the University of East Anglia, and the National Centre for Social Research (NatCen) found.

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April 12, 2018

Brexit: CBI stresses importance of getting new rules right for UK construction

by Sara Bean • Facilities management, News, Property, Public Sector

Brexit presents opportunities for rule changes in sectors such as agriculture, shipping and tourism that could ultimately benefit the British economy and consumers. This is according to a new CBI study, “Smooth Operations, compiled over a six-month period, which states that the opportunities for divergence are vastly outweighed by the costs of deviating from rules necessary to ensure smooth access to the EU market. Another important finding is that changes to rules in one sector have significant knock on effects for companies in other sectors and throughout supply chains. There are specific regulatory needs for the construction sector, according to the report, the first being regulatory convergence on rules for construction products and materials, vital to protect the competitiveness of manufacturers and avoid major barriers to trade. The CBI also argues that maintaining equivalence in procurement rules between the UK and EU is important, but there are still opportunities to improve how the UK procures work in the construction sector without diverging from EU rules.

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April 12, 2018

Poor company culture is costing the UK economy £23.6 billion per year

by Neil Franklin • News, Workplace

A new report claims that a third of people (34 percent) who leave their job, do so because of perceived poor company culture. The report, authored by breatheHR claims the associated cost of bad company culture is around £23.6 billion per year. The survey of 2,500 people analysed in The Culture Economy, also suggests that well over half of SME leaders (60 percent) consider company culture as a ‘nice to have’ in their business.This mindset has a number of knock-on effects. According to the Chartered Management Institute, effective leadership could improve Britain’s productivity by 23 percent. However, with over half (53 percent) of employees surveyed who distrust their senior management, thinking their bosses ‘didn’t appear to know what they were doing’, there is some work to be done.

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April 11, 2018

Quarter of workers say job negatively affects their mental health and a third feel overworked

by Sara Bean • News, Wellbeing, Workplace

One in four workers (25 percent) feel their job negatively affects their mental health, while nearly a third (30 percent) say their workload is too high, according to a brand new report from the CIPD, the UK Working Lives survey. Although the survey found that two-thirds of workers (64 percent) were satisfied with their job overall, one in ten (11 percent) report regularly feeling miserable at work. More than a quarter (28 percent) of senior leaders say that they find it difficult to fulfil personal commitments because of their job, while over a quarter (27 percent) say that their job does not offer good opportunities to develop their skills, jumping to two in five (43 percent) among unskilled and casual workers. Focusing on the three main groups in the labour market, those at the lower levels are far less likely to have access to skills and training, those in middle management feeling significantly squeezed by their workload and those at the top find it difficult to maintain a work/life balance.

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April 9, 2018

Rising demand for Grade A office space helps sustain Edinburgh commercial property market

by Sara Bean • Cities, Coworking, Facilities management, News, Property, Public Sector

Technology, media, and telecommunications (TMT) companies are continuing to play a prominent role within Edinburgh’s office market, accounting for approximately 30 percent of transactions in the city. But rising demand for Grade A office space in Edinburgh by a variety of organisations, including coworking, private and public sector tenants has fuelled significant occupier demand during the first quarter of 2018, according to analysis by property consultancy, Knight Frank. The latest commercial property figures show approximately 460,000 sq. ft. of new occupier requirements came onto the market in the first three months of the year from companies looking to lease office space in Edinburgh. (more…)

April 9, 2018

How the UK car industry is driving the future of workplace design

by Paul Dunn • Comment, Workplace design

The British car industry has grabbed numerous headlines since the Brexit referendum due declining car sales and the uncertainty of its economic and regulatory prospects. In spite of these mounting concerns, the industry continues to invest in the design of its workplaces, not only by creating inviting and engaging places to work, but also by integrating automotive approaches to design and construction into the work environment. As a result, these workplaces don’t just help car companies to stay competitive; they also provide new ideas for all sectors eager to build smarter and more efficient places to work.

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April 6, 2018

Women are happier and more engaged at work than men, despite the gender pay gap

by Sara Bean • Legal news, News, Workplace

Following the deadline for organisations to publish their gender pay this week, it came as little surprise to find that almost eight in 10 organisations pay men more than women. The debate over the reasons why will continue, but new research now claims that women remain happier and more committed at work than men, despite this disparity. Employee benefits provider Personal Group’s Gender Happiness Gap research shows that contrary to, and perhaps in spite of the fact that the Gender Pay Gap tends to favour men, happiness at work tends to fall in favour of female staff, with men much less happy in the workplace than their female counterparts. Whilst 77 percent of PAYE female employees are happy at work at least some of the time, the figure is only 66 percent for men. This means that one in three men are rarely or never happy at work. The case is similar when looking at the total workforce: 45 percent of female staff stated that they’re happy most of the time at work, versus only 38 percent of male staff. Amongst women, the 30-49-year-old age group is the unhappiest age group, which may be due to juggling family life alongside working commitments.

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April 6, 2018

The UK’s incredible shrinking office phenomenon

by Neil Franklin • Cities, News, Property

Apparently prompted by the recent boom of so-called ‘micro-homes’ in Britain, commercial property firms Savoystewart.co.uk has set out to investigate whether the ‘micro-trend’ has also taken root in the office sector as well. The firm analysed office floorspace available relative to the number of active businesses in England and Wales from 2012 to 2016, finding that the office floorspace is shrinking both on regional and local levels. Results of the research, which is based on the latest GOV data on business floorspace from the Valuation Office Agency and official stats on business demography from ONS, revealed that the change in office floorspace available per business has been downward in all regions. The results reflect trends in the BCO’s specification guide

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April 5, 2018

A vision of how the facilities management profession can embrace the modern workplace

by Mark Eltringham • Facilities management, News

Following its March announcement of a proposed name change to reflect a greater focus on workplace issues, the British Institute of Facilities Management has published a new report to explore the relationship between FM and a nascent workplace discipline. According to the authors, the purpose of the report is to ‘highlight the opportunities and challenges that workplace presents for FM by exploring the relationship between FM and workplace – and considering how this relationship could change in the future’. While the report acknowledges that facilities managers have always addressed workplace issues as a core element of their role, recent developments in the way people work and the way firms think about their workspace have led to a new emphasis on workplace as a discipline coupled with a sense that its core principles are subject to a number of misunderstandings.

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April 4, 2018

Government announces details of new real estate agency

by Mark Eltringham • News, Property, Public Sector

The UK government has announced the creation of the Government Property Agency (GPA) which will aim to ‘improve the efficiency and effectiveness of the Government Estate and generate benefits of between £1.4 billion and £2.4 billion over the next ten years’. GPA’s initial portfolio of 80 properties will grow to over 1,000 as it takes on increasing responsibility for managing the general purpose central government real estate portfolio. This is intended to manage the government’s property portfolio strategically in order to realise the benefits that departments cannot achieve on their own. The GPA will partner with government departments to find innovative property solutions, and provide expertise to enable them to deliver wider business change more efficiently. More broadly, the GPA will also be an enabler for the delivery of Civil Service transformation, regional growth and the government’s vision to strengthen the Union.