Search Results for: business

What happens when you take transparent office design to extremes

What happens when you take transparent office design to extremes 0

by • Case studies, Comment, Facilities management, Furniture, Workplace design

133-wai-yip-street-5A rigid and unswerving adherence to a principle is rarely a good thing in the long run. This is perhaps doubly so when it comes to office design because the end result is often something that overlooks what offices are really for; namely giving human beings a place to go to be with one another. So, when you take a design dogma to extremes that ignore the human being that should be your core concern, you end up getting something like the office with no chairs, because ‘sitting is the new smoking’. Or you get the office made completely of glass because ‘transparency generates trust’. While it’s true that the Dutch firm MRVDV responsible for the refit of the building in Hong Kong has included some genuinely successful features, not least in the use of natural light and the environmental performance of the building, the interior itself is clearly the end product of meetings in which nobody felt comfortable telling everybody to knock it off.

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Home or away. What should employers be doing about the game?

Home or away. What should employers be doing about the game? 0

by • Comment, Flexible working, Legal news, Workplace

Watching-sport-at-workThe Euros 2016 are underway. It’s an exciting time for the nation, but not so much for businesses that are potentially facing a largely absent workforce, be it physically or simply because they will spend at least 90 minutes of their afternoon glued to their mobile phones watching the match. Some employees might have been organised enough to book annual leave for the afternoon, but for many, they will be devising a cunning plan as to how they can get away to watch the match. Employers can expect to be faced with a hike in “sickies” and last minute requests to work from home as suddenly there’s a delivery due or a poorly child to look after. Some employees will just decide to chance it and not come back to the office after their lunch breaks, with no pre-authorisation at all. So what should you be doing as an employer?

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Younger and older workers share many of the same attitudes to the workplace

Younger and older workers share many of the same attitudes to the workplace 0

by • Flexible working, News, Technology, Workplace design

presenteeismThe behaviour and attitudes of young people in the workplace are very similar to those of older generations. We keep repeating this point but it’s always worth reminding ourselves given the prevailing narratives that obscure this truth. Indeed, so powerful is the narrative that even when a piece of research or a survey contradicts it, there is often an attempt to ignore the report’s own finding’s in favour of something that fits the meme. This happens more often than you think which is why it’s always worth going beyond the headlines to look at what lies beneath. This week, two reports have appeared which highlight just how much a younger generation of workers shares the same attitudes and challenges as other generations. According to the reports, this is true for issues such as presenteeism and the need for the company of colleagues and so suggest we don’t need to treat different age groups quite so differently as is often claimed.

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Homeworking loses appeal as workers prefer flexible office environment

Homeworking loses appeal as workers prefer flexible office environment 0

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

Flexible working loungeMost workers now look for flexibility in where and how they work finds a new survey from the British Council for Offices. But this doesn’t mean homeworking; as less than a third (28 percent) of workers now say they would prefer to work from home, a figure that has dropped from 45 percent in 2013, when the research from the BCO and Savills was last conducted. Over three-quarters of respondents (77 percent) said that they currently work in a traditional office, with the majority (60 percent) choosing to work from a dedicated workstation compared to only four percent that are asked to share desks with colleagues. This desire for a dedicated desk has increased over the past three years, rising from a figure of 41 percent in 2013; but despite demand for a dedicated desk, most workplaces (70 percent) now also include a communal environment to work from, providing a space for more dynamic working.

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Poor office acoustic design biggest issue for workers, but bosses aren’t listening

Poor office acoustic design biggest issue for workers, but bosses aren’t listening 0

by • Facilities management, Flexible working, Wellbeing, Workplace

office acoustics

Open-plan offices are meant to encourage collaboration and contribute to a collegial workplace culture, but they also come with serious drawbacks like noise and distraction. New research claims that more than half of employees said poor office acoustic design reduces their satisfaction at work. Many feel compelled to solve the problem on their own, blocking out distraction through visits to break out spaces, taking walks outside, or listening to white noise and music on headsets or headphones. The survey of more than 600 executives and 600 employees by Oxford Economics and Plantronics set out to understand what works for employees—and what doesn’t—about open-plan layouts, and to test for disconnects between workers and their managers. The results show that threats to productivity and worker peace of mind are bigger issues than most executives realise, and most do not have the technology or strategies in place to deal with the problems.

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London market for flexible workspace outstrips conventional space

London market for flexible workspace outstrips conventional space 0

by • Cities, Facilities management, Flexible working, News, Property

flexible workspaceThe UK market for flexible workspace has grown 11 percent in just the last 12 months. The main driver of the upsurge is inevitably London, which saw the biggest increase of flexible space at 16 percent and now represents a third of the whole UK market. According to the new research by The Instant Group, traditional occupier inquiries for London grew at a lower rate (nine percent), meaning the supply of flexible workspace in London has outstripped conventional office space by some margin over the last year; a trend the report suggests that seems set to continue into the future. Double digit growth for flexible workspace was also been seen across the UK’s regions, with suburban locations seeing some of the UK’s most aggressive growth in terms of workstation rates and inquiries, despite a 12.5 percent increase in supply, as occupiers have chosen cheaper locations with good transport links over the highly competitive market in central London.

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Most likely scenario of a Brexit vote is minimal impact on employees 0

by • Comment, Legal news, News, Workplace

A more nuanced and balanced view from both leave and remain campaigns on how the EU Referendum will affect employees is needed, a leading HR authority has warned. Commenting on how the outcome of the EU Referendum will affect employees, Professor of Human Resources Chris Rowley, at Cass Business School, said: “The deluge of increasingly extreme polar dichotomy arguments and claims regarding possible post-Brexit life also applies to the critical area of work and employment where the Remain and Leave camps have some of their greatest internal tensions and contradictions. Both sides betray a lack of historical and contemporary grounding and analysis of both employee relations and politics. One problem is that there is much counterfactual argument of causation – what would have happened anyway.” In the short term and possibly even in the longer term he says that a Brexit vote would be unlikely to impact employment law, as so much is already enshrined at work.

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Biggest risk to company cyber security is mainly staff carelessness

Biggest risk to company cyber security is mainly staff carelessness 0

by • Facilities management, News, Technology, Workplace

Cyber securityBad habits and a lack of awareness about security mean that employees are inadvertently leaving companies’ cyber doors wide open to attack. New research by Norrie Johnston Recruitment (NJR); which forms part of NJR’s cyber security report: how real is the threat and how can you reduce your risk, shows that 23 percent of employees use the same password for different work applications and 17 percent write down their passwords, 16 percent work while connected to public wifi networks and 15 percent access social media sites on their work PCs. It’s not that people are unaware of the cyber threat. The research also shows that just over 50 per cent have experienced a cyber scam in the last twelve months. 29 have received a fake email from PayPal, Apple or a bank, 12 percent have been targeted by a Facebook scam and 7 percent have clicked a link that put a virus on a PC.

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Edinburgh most attractive city for commercial property investors outside London 0

by • Cities, News, Property

Edinburgh is the most attractive British location for commercial property investment outside of London, according to new research by law firm and real estate consultancy Morton Fraser. Research amongst investors by the law firm’s commercial real estate division ranks a list of ten British cities outside of London according to their attractiveness as investment options. Edinburgh, Bristol and Manchester are the most appealing regional locations for investors, based on an indexed score of how many more investors found them attractive propositions compared to those who did not. However, the remaining seven cities did not appeal to the majority of investors, with more rating them an unattractive investment proposition rather than an appealing one. Aberdeen is rated the least attractive location for investors, coming after its energy-dependent economy was hit by falling oil prices, leading to thousands of job losses and the contraction of the oil and gas industry.

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Tech sector drives demand for office space in London’s City fringes

Tech sector drives demand for office space in London’s City fringes 0

by • Cities, News, Property, Technology

Derwent’s White Collar FactoryLondon’s City Fringe market, the once ‘cheap’ office location of Central London has matured into a leading global tech address and, with a number of new mixed use developments underway and more planned, its success is set to continue. According to data from Savills, average Grade A rents in the area have increased by 87 percent in the last six years with the best new office space now trading at a discount of only 3.5 percent to the same quality of building in the City Core (a saving of circa. £1 per sq ft). According to Savills research, the first quarter of 2016 saw average Grade A rents in the City Fringe reach £59.42 per sq ft (compared to £61.60 per sq ft for non-tower Grade A office buildings in the City Core).  This pattern is accelerated by new office developments including Derwent’s White Collar Factory and Helical Bar / Crosstree’s Bower Development, both EC1, and key deals to Adobe, BGL Group, Stripe Limited and CBS Interactive.

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JLL survey claims occupiers and investors think voters will shun Brexit

JLL survey claims occupiers and investors think voters will shun Brexit 0

by • News, Property

BrexitAccording to a new survey from JLL of top international corporate occupiers and UK-based investors into their business attitudes to the EU referendum, 80 percent held the view that the UK will vote to remain in the EU. The survey claims that investors are less fearful of impact of Brexit on their long term property strategies than corporate occupiers and that the London office market is viewed as the property sector that would be most impacted by a vote to  leave. The survey also revealed attitudes of corporates and investors to future property market decisions in the event of a Brexit.  60 percent of the investors surveyed felt that there would be no changes to their property strategy in the short or long term as a result of a leave vote. Only 30 percent expect reduced allocations in UK property. Of the corporate occupiers surveyed, almost half foresaw they would need to review their UK business space in both the short or long term.

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Home workers happier, able to balance responsibilities despite long hours

Home workers happier, able to balance responsibilities despite long hours 0

by • Flexible working, News, Wellbeing

flexible workingNew research claims that home-based employees are choosing to work more hours than those who work in traditional offices. According to the study carried out by homeworking agency Sensée, despite opting to work more hours daily, home workers are generally happier because they’re empowered to choose the hours they work so they can still attend to family responsibilities. Three quarters of home workers (77 percent) stated that working from home enables them to achieve more, including caring for family members or friends and exercising more. Time and money saved on commuting – along with more control over their day – were cited among the top three benefits of working from home. The research also claims there is a desire to work from home among office-based employees. Three-fifths (81 percent) of office-based employees said they would take the opportunity to work from home either full time or part time to care for a family member or friend.

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