Search Results for: business

Companies continue to neglect the strong business case for health and wellbeing

by • Flexible working, News, Workplace

Companies continue to neglect the strong business case for health and wellbeingThe Government must comprehensively reform its strategy if it’s to tackle the barriers that remain for many businesses in implementing health and wellbeing programmes. This is the message from the Health at Work Policy Unit’s first paper which was launched yesterday (21 October 2014) by Lancaster University’s Work Foundation at an event featuring Professor Dame Carol Black and Professor Sir Cary Cooper. The Way Forward: Policy Options for Improving Workforce Health in the UK examines why a large number of businesses have continued to neglect health and wellbeing given the strong business case and identifies the barriers facing employers at three main stages: planning, implementation, and evaluation of these policies. However, according to the lead author, Dr Zofia Bajorek, these barriers can be overcome by developing a health and wellbeing strategy which illustrates the potential for competitive advantage, investing in and executing evidence based outcomes which must then be measured and reported.   (more…)

Is workplace management now a core capability for knowledge businesses?

by • Events, Facilities management, News, Workplace design

workplace managementThat’s the key question for delegates coming to this year’s Workplace Week Convention at PWC’s More London office on the 6th November. Entitled ‘The Work/place revolution….taking human performance to new levels’ the convention aims to explore what organisations need to do to get ‘personal best’ performance from every worker on the payroll.For years, the management of Facilities has been viewed by many leaders as ‘non core’, but recent research by AWA (Advanced Workplace Associates),the organisers of Workplace Week, suggests that this may no longer be true for knowledge based businesses. ‘It’s becoming clear that the way the workplace is designed and managed can have a really dramatic impact on the performance of knowledge workers in ways that have not previously considered. Knowledge workers think for a living it’s critical that everything is created to give them the best chance of delivering a great performance.

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New property programme supports co-working between tech businesses

by • Facilities management, News, Property, Technology

co-workingOver the next decade, London’s digital tech sector is expected to grow at a rate of 5.1 per cent per annum, creating an additional £12 billion of economic activity and 46,000 new jobs, which in turn is driving change in the commercial property market. Now the rapid rise of the UK property tech market is to get a boost with the announcement of a programme which provides tech companies with access to investment, mentoring and co-working business space. In a strategic partnership with Cushman & Wakefield and Spire Ventures; Pi Labs, Europe’s first property-focused technology accelerator company, will invite start-ups to apply to join the Pi Labs accelerator programme. This will be located within ‘Second Home’, a new iconic 20,000 sq. ft. co-working space in Shoreditch, designed to set new global standards in the provision of stimulating private and social workplace environments supporting collaboration and co-working amongst creative and technology businesses.
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Avanta Serviced Office Group to open Shoreditch business centre at heart of ‘Tech City’

by • News, Property

serviced officeAvanta Serviced Office Group has signed a deal to establish a new business centre in the heart of London’s Tech City at The Eagle, a 27 storey art-deco-style development on City Road, EC1, from Mount Anvil – Central London’s specialist residential-led developer. The centre is set to open on the 1st March 2015. The new centre will provide over 26,000 square feet of flexible office space over two floors, with approximately 400 desks. Set within a mixed-use development comprising retail, affordable accommodation, offices and high-end residential, it is located within TFL’s Zone 1, approximately five minutes’ walk from Old Street Rail and Underground Station, just two stops from Kings Cross.bThis is Avanta’s first site within Tech City, also known as Silicon Roundabout, which is the third largest technology start-up cluster in the world and home to over 15,000 growing businesses.

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Business leaders seem powerless to stem tide of always on working, claims report

by • News, Technology, Workplace

Always on workingAmongst the reported findings in the latest edition of the annual Deloitte Global Human Capital Trends survey is a growing belief amongst business leaders that information overload and the always on working culture are significantly undermining personal wellbeing, engagement and productivity. This challenge has been identified before in the same report, but the latest edition perhaps signals that despite the high level of awareness of the issue at both a personal and general level, little is being achieved in terms of stemming the inexorable erosion of personal time. The report is based on a survey of more than 2,500 business leaders. It found that over a third think that constant access to work is undermining employee productivity and engagement and fewer than one in ten feel they are dealing with the problem adequately. (more…)

Hotels allocating more public space to meet the needs of business travellers

by • Flexible working, News, Workplace design

Business TravellersPresenteeism isn’t restricted to the workplace. Growing demand from business travellers means hotels are increasing the amount of working and meeting space they provide in their facilities in cities across Europe and the rest of the world. Three quarters of British employees work while staying in a hotel according to the survey carried out by the Fraunhofer Institute on behalf of hotel business solutions firm HRS. Only Italians spend more time working in hotels (76 percent), followed the UK (75 percent), Poland and Switzerland (50 percent respectively), Germany (46 percent), China (45 percent), Russia (43 percent), Austria (42 percent) and France (25 percent). The firm has also identified a number of hotels around the world which it believes offers exemplars of the new working spaces available.

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Small business has no problem with flexible working – it’s just sceptical of legislation

by • Comment, Flexible working, Legal news

flexible working legislationAt the end of July, the UK Government introduced new legislation that allowed any employee with more than six months in a job to apply to their employer for some form of flexible working arrangements. Now, research from Sage claims that a third of small businesses are ignoring the legislation, a fact which might be interpreted as suggesting that the UK’s SMEs are not so keen on the idea. What other data suggests, however, is that they’re probably more likely to offer flexible working than larger firms. This can only mean that it’s the legislation that’s the problem, not the practice. Leaving aside the ten percent of SMEs who the Sage report claimed were unaware of the new rules, this still leaves a large number of smaller businesses open to litigation and industrial tribunals. But, as the Federation of Small Businesses warned ahead of the new law’s introduction, the right to request was always likely to lead to headaches for business owners anyway.

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Corporate social reponsibility remains a vital part of the business armoury

by • Comment, Environment, Facilities management, Insight promotion

Corporate Social responsibilityThere is now an unstoppable energy for radical change in the way that companies of all sizes conduct their Corporate Social Responsibility duties. There are compelling economic and social reasons for companies to construct new ways of thinking and practice around CSR that go way beyond just doing something worthy or nice, from building effective partnerships to attracting top employees. Some companies prefer terms like ‘corporate responsibility’, ‘corporate conscience’, ‘corporate citizenship’, ‘social performance’, ‘sustainability’ or even ‘future-proofing’ over CSR. But the core CSR principles are that a business voluntarily commits to embracing responsibility for its actions and to impacting positively on the environment, on society and on consumers, employees and other stakeholders. (more…)

BCO study finds office remains the best place to do business

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

BCO study finds office remains the best place to do businessThe challenge for the typical office is that it is meant to satisfy a broad range of individuals and a variety of working practices; which means what some may describe as a distracting open-plan layout, others would view as a busy collaborative workspace. These conflicts are highlighted in a new study by the British Council for Offices (BCO), Morgan Lovell and Hatch, which surveyed 2,000 UK office workers’ working conditions, attitudes and expectations. For example while over two thirds were critical of the distractions of the open-plan office, nine out of ten employees believe that support from colleagues enhances their wellbeing. Putting aside the open-plan debate, the study espouses the continued importance of the office as the best place to do business and comes up with three key starting points to help employers create a culture of wellbeing: care; control and collaboration. (more…)

UK’s snail-paced broadband is failing businesses, claims FSB report

by • News, Technology

Snail paced broadbandThe UK’s snail-paced broadband infrastructure isn’t up to the demands placed on it by 21st century businesses and there is not enough ambition to bring it up to speed with that of other nations, according to a new report from the Federation of Small Businesses.  The report found that while nearly all small business owners (94 percent) consider a reliable internet connection essential, just 15 percent are happy with their provision and a staggering 45,000 small businesses are still dependant on a dial-up connection and many more are struggling by with slow broadband speeds under 2 Megabits per second (Mbps). The FSB also claims that current Government targets of 24Mbps for 95 per cent of the population and 2Mbps for the remaining five per cent will not meet future demands and that it should commit to delivering a minimum of 10Mbps (megabits per second) for all homes and businesses by 2017 rising to 1Gbps (gigabit per second) by 2030.

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UK businesses have mixed attitudes to flexible working, according to two new studies

by • Flexible working, Workplace, Workplace design

Flexible working City of LondonThe mixed attitude of businesses towards flexible working generally – and a new tranche of UK regulation in particular – is evident in two new studies. While a Citrix survey found that under half of small and medium sized business owners support the new flexible working legislation due to come into force at the end of this month with even fewer seeing it as a positive development, another study by recruitment consultants Robert Half found that two-thirds of large financial services firms use flexible working as a way of attracting and retaining employees. According to the report, this is particularly important in The City right now because  many prospective employees are put off by the poor image of the financial services industry and so firms are keen to make themselves more attractive employers so are turning to flexible working and better workplaces to entice high-grade staff.

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BRE launches new business assessment and certification scheme for BIM

by • Architecture, Facilities management, News, Property

BIM Level 2The Building Research Establishment (BRE) has developed a new scheme for assessing and certifying businesses as providers of the Government’s BIM Level 2 services.  Delivered on site, it is designed to help companies provide evidence that they have the policies and procedures required to deliver level 2 BIM in line with the Government’s strategy, as well as acting as a strong marketing tool. The scheme is available for businesses and comprises evidence-based assessment of BIM business and management systems in line with Level 2’s process requirements. Those that successfully meet the criteria are awarded Certificated BIM Capability Assessment status by BRE Global, the BRE Group’s independent certification body. The process includes providing businesses with a full post-assessment report that details areas of compliance and, if applicable, non-compliance. A yearly site audit and review is performed to verify that standards and criteria continue to be met, with a full reassessment carried out every three years.

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