Search Results for: business

More than half of twenty-something UK men would like all male offices, claims survey

by • Comment, Workplace

boys-clubsAt Insight we report surveys from firms on an almost daily basis. We generally do so without too much comment, trusting that readers are smart or jaded enough to apply their own filters based on whichever company is responsible and the number of people surveyed before dusting them all with a liberal pinch of salt and coming to their own conclusions. Even so, here’s one that may need more seasoning than most. According to a new survey from business supplies company Expert Market, slightly more than half of the UK’s male workers under the age of 30 would like to work in an all male environment, mostly based on the idea that this would mean less flirting, fewer arguments and more work.

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Nearly two thirds of SMEs now trust employees to work flexibly

by • Flexible working, News, Workplace

One of the main arguments against flexible working amongst blue chip organisations – which was well documented following the Yahoo furore earlier this year, is that it is detrimental to fostering a collaborative working culture. Amongst small and medium sized companies, the reasons against are more straightforward, in that it demands a level of trust small business managers can ill afford to bestow unwisely. Now a new survey, carried out among over 200 UK-based SME decision-makers, highlights a growing acceptance of flexible working within these businesses. Well over half (63%) of senior executives say they trust their employees to remain productive when working away from the office, the Citrix-commissioned YouGov survey has shown. (more…)

UK Green Building Council partners with Ecobuild to agree event programme

by • Environment, Events, Facilities management, News

UK Green Building Council partners with Ecobuild to agree sustainable event programmeThe UK Green Building Council has entered into a new long-term partnership with Ecobuild, the annual event for sustainable design, construction and the built environment. The agreement means the two organisations will work closely on the programme of events for Ecobuild to promote the business case for a greener and more sustainable built environment. UK-GBC Chief Executive Paul King, who already sits on the Ecobuild Advisory Board, said: “This partnership marks the start of a new and exciting chapter in our close relationship with Ecobuild, an event which has firmly placed sustainable construction on the UK and international agenda over the past ten years.” (more…)

Third of Europe’s large firms have already lost data through BYOD

by • Facilities management, Flexible working, News, Technology

gordian_knotBring Your Own Device remains the Gordian Knot of workplace technology. While firms have tried to label and co-opt the unstoppable propensity of employees to use their own devices for work as a way of cutting the business’s technology costs, they are paying in other ways. As we reported last week many remain unaware of the extent of the practice and of its potential to clash with company policy. Now, the full extent of the inevitable security breach inherent in either sanctioned or unsanctioned use of personal technology is becoming evident. According to a new report from Samsung, around a third of Europe’s largest companies have lost company and confidential data through the practice.

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Stress taboo is the elephant in the room in many workplaces

by • News, Workplace

Stress taboo is the elephant in the room in many workplaces

Attitudes towards mental ill health are supposed to be more enlightened these days, but the fact that a large supermarket chain would sanction the sale of a “mental patient” Halloween outfit shows that in business, there is some way to go. The mental health charity Mind, which received an apology and a donation from Asda following the withdrawal of the offending outfit, has published new statistics today which reveals 42 per cent of employees believe that in their workplace, stress and mental ill health is regarded as a sign of weakness or that you can’t cope. 45 per cent of workers said that staff are expected to cope without mentioning stress at work and a third (31%) would not be able to talk openly to their line manager if they felt stressed. (more…)

Where’s the desk? UK offices weighed down by paper clutter

by • Facilities management, News

UK offices weighed down by paper clutterWe’ve been hearing about the paperless office for more than two decades, BYOD (or CYOD) is supposed to replace ‘dead trees’; but we’re still drowning in paper. Today, the average UK desk is weighed down by almost a stone of clutter – with over a fifth of office workers losing important documents at least once a week, according to office equipment manufacturer Brother. Recent research by the EDM Group echoed these findings, estimating that employees wasted one and a half hours a week looking for misplaced documents and information. One of the causes is the sheer amount of information and data employees now receive, with over half (56%) in the EDM poll claiming that they receive more information at work than they did three years ago. (more…)

Firms increasingly likely to eschew BYOD in favour of CYOD, claims new report

by • Technology

Tablet readerCompanies have an inconsistent approach to the implementation of Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) policies in the workplace and often misjudge the ways in which people use their own technology for work regardless of official policies, claims a snapshot survey of IT managers at 224 UK businesses commissioned by Azzurri Communications. It found that while a greater number of firms are switching to Choose Your Own Device (CYOD) as an alternative in which the business keeps control of the account and SIM card for equipment, staff continue to use their own devices anyway to a far greater extent than their employers assume.

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Open source talent could rewrite the meaning of the term workforce

by • Flexible working, News, Technology, Workplace

Open source talent could rewrite the meaning of the term workforce

The digital revolution has changed the definition of the “workplace”, from a physical building where employees go to perform the tasks for which they get paid – to a more flexible model that allows staff to perform and deliver work from a variety of locations. But the employers’ role, i.e. managing the talent wherever they are based, has remained the same. Not for much longer – suggest analysts from Deloitte in a new paper, The Open Talent Economy, which describes the evolving workforce as a mixture of full-time employees, contractors and freelancers and – increasingly – people with no formal ties to a business at all. What’s more, in the future this “open source talent” will ultimately rewrite what the term “workforce” actually means. (more…)

Over half of UK and US workers still go into work when they are sick

by • Flexible working, News, Workplace

Over half of UK and US workers still go into work when they are sick Over half of UK and US workers still go into work when they’re sick, according to separate surveys from either side of the Atlantic. The US study by Kimberly-Clark Professional found that 59 per cent of people go to work even when they feel ill; with three in 10 saying it was because they were too important to the business operation. In the UK, new YouGov research on behalf of Westfield Health found that exactly the same percentage (59%) of workers turned up despite being unwell because of work commitments; 82 per cent of employees had worked over their contractual hours in the last 12 months and 64 per cent admitted to feeling stressed at work. (more…)

United States and Europe; closing the gap on flexible working law

by • Comment, Flexible working, Legal news

Tortoise and hareVermont became the first U.S. state to enact a law requiring employers to consider workers’ requests for a flexible schedule without fear of retaliation. The law, signed by the governor in May, includes a statutory process which requires “good faith” discussions relative to the employee’s needs and the company’s business operations. Despite Vermont’s efforts to make the workplace more accommodating, the United States still lags behind Europe when it comes to flexible work schedules and accommodating family life issues. For example, Vermont is already a decade behind the United Kingdom which passed similar legislation in 2003. The reasons for this are not cut-and-dried either.

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IPCC climate report: built environment has major role to play in cutting carbon

by • Environment, Facilities management, News

built environment has major role to play in cutting carbon

The built environment has one of the biggest roles to play in tackling global warming, said the UK Green Building Council following the publication of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report which confirms that there is at least 95 per cent certainty that human activities are its principal cause. The Summary of the Report for Policy Makers; prepared by 259 climate experts from 39 countries, warns atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide (CO2), methane, and nitrous oxide have increased to levels unprecedented in at least the last 800,000 years, while CO2 concentrations have increased by 40 per cent since pre-industrial times. It advises that containing these changes will require “substantial and sustained reductions of greenhouse gas emissions”. (more…)

Bad management tolerated to a “shocking degree” say employment experts

by • News, Workplace

Employers wouldn’t dream of appointing a person to a senior role for which they have no experience, yet in a new study nearly half admit individuals within their organisation have been promoted into a managerial role based on their performance record rather than people management or leadership skills. According to a report from the CIPD, 36 per cent of line managers have not received any training for their role, with any time for effective line management often squeezed or lost in favour of more immediate task oriented priorities. With 24 per cent of managers facing situations where they often have to put the interests of their organisation above the interests of team members, many might be left confused and aim for quick wins over the interests and wellbeing of team members. (more…)

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