Search Results for: change

September 2, 2015

Flexible working key to counteracting female workers’ ‘baby shame’ ⁰

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

Whether the gender pay gap is more of a motherhood gap is an ongoing debate, but now a new survey has found that when even planning to have children, one in five (18 percent) working women hide their family plans from their employers. In an interview with the BBC yesterday, Labour Party leader candidate Yvette Cooper revealed that when she took maternity leave from her ministerial job in 2001, there was no procedure in place and when she sought maternity leave a couple of years later, things were made very difficult for her. If that’s how a high powered government minister is treated then it is no wonder over half (58 percent) of women feel they would have to alter their career in order to have a child, and why three quarters feel flexible working which doesn’t leave women feeling ‘baby shame’ for working child friendly hours is essential.

September 2, 2015

We need to do more than pay lip service to workplace wellbeing ⁰

by Ann Clarke • Case studies, Comment, Wellbeing, Workplace design

Too many companies continue to talk about employees as their ‘greatest asset’ yet their fine words are not always not borne out in their behaviour, be that through working culture, remuneration or environment. With more and more investors using employee wellness and engagement as a barometer for the health, stability and culture of the business – the concept of workplace wellbeing is finally garnering the attention it deserves. Our workplace behaviours, cultures and environments are not keeping us fit, well, productive, happy or profitable. Finally businesses are accepting their moral responsibility to take better care of their people. So what affects employee productivity, creativity and happiness and how can changes to the workplace promote the best financial and moral outcomes for businesses and employees alike?

September 1, 2015

A third of British workers believe their jobs have no meaning ⁰

by Mark Eltringham • Comment, News, Wellbeing, Workplace

Here’s a cheery little snippet to welcome you back to work after your holidays and/or washed out Bank Holiday weekend. More than a third of British workers say their job is making no meaningful contribution to the world, claims a report from researchers YouGov. According to the study of just over 900 British workers, around 37 percent say their job is not meaningful, half of respondents (50 percent) say their job actually is meaningful to them, and 13 percent are unsure. Men (42 percent) are more likely to say their jobs are meaningless than women (32 percent). Despite this, most people with ‘meaningless’ jobs say it’s unlikely they will change jobs in the next 12 months – 53 percent, compared to 35 percent who say they might change jobs. According to the report, people who work in London are the most likely to feel unfulfilled by their jobs but, then again, they do work in London.

August 31, 2015

BSI revises design and construction standard for facilities managers ⁰

by Neil Franklin • Architecture, Facilities management, News, Property

BSI, the UK based organisation responsible for developing and publishing standards for businesses, has revised BS 8536-1 Briefing for design and construction: Code of practice for facilities management (Buildings infrastructure). The standard has been included in the Level 2 BIM package which the Government expects companies to offer when tendering for Government contracts. The standard has now been brought into line with the principles of the Soft Landings Framework and Government Soft Landings (GSL) post occupancy evaluation and BIM requirement. Soft landings is designed to enable the transition from design and construction into operation. It advocates collaboration during briefing, design, construction and handover between the design and construction team and the operator, operations team or facilities manager.

August 31, 2015

Lack of flexible working cost firms £1.5 million during tube strikes ⁰

by Mark Eltringham • Flexible working, News, Technology

The strikes by London Underground workers over the past two months have cost UK businesses some 1.5 million working hours because they did not have the flexible working policies and systems in place to allow them to adapt. According to a study of 1,000 employees from comms provider MeetingZone, just nine percent of firms offered staff the chance to work from home. Nearly three quarters (72 percent) of respondents said they felt let down by their employers’ policies and response to the strikes. The lost working time cited by the report has been calculated on the basis of people arriving late for work. Almost half of respondents claimed they were up to an hour late arriving at work on the days of the strikes with two-thirds (66 percent) claiming they were an average of 38 minutes late. A further two strikes are planned for 8 and 10 September.

August 28, 2015

The reason offices will always be needed is tied up with human nature

by Nigel Sikora • Comment, Flexible working, Technology, Workplace design

People have a tendency to confuse what is possible with what will happen. This appears to be a particular issue when we consider the effects of new technology. Hence the enduring talk of the death of the office, which technology makes possible but which people make impossible. One of the key areas of research that describes this tension is the work of Tom Allen at MIT. Allen made his name in 1984 with the publication of a book called Managing the Flow of Technology which first popularised the Allen Curve, a graph of his research findings which shows a powerful negative correlation between physical distance and the frequency of communication between colleagues. So precisely can this be defined, that Allen found that 50 metres marks a cut-off point for the regular exchange of certain types of technical information.

August 24, 2015

Flexible working now an almost universal employee benefit, claims study ⁰

by Mark Eltringham • Flexible working, News, Workplace

A new report from employee benefits provider Unum claims to set out the future trends and challenges affecting the benefits packages firms should offer staff. One of the headline claims from the report is that four out of five employers (79 percent) already offer flexible working. ‘The Future of Employee Benefits’ report surveyed 13 organisations and incorporated the results with those of a series of interviews and roundtable discussions with employers and specialists including representatives from the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development. The report identifies a series of macro trends affecting workplace wellbeing and the recruitment and retention of employees over the next 15 years, which were categorised into four distinct working environments: The Ageless Workplace; The Mindful Workplace; The Intuitive Workplace; and The Collaborative Workplace.

August 21, 2015

Employee’s entrepreneurial opportunities linked to job satisfaction ⁰

by Sara Bean • News, Workplace

US employees are seeking opportunities to perform more like entrepreneurs within their organisation, and according to researchers from the University of Phoenix School of Business this is reason enough to add a new word, ‘intrapreneurship’ into the business-speak lexicon. The survey claims that more than one-third (37 percent) of working adults consider themselves entrepreneurial and more than half (56 percent) acknowledge that their current job gives them the chance to apply an entrepreneurial mindset. Over 3 in 5 (61 percent) of those who say they enjoy a degree of job satisfaction say their organisation provides opportunities to be entrepreneurial and of those who are unsatisfied with their career, only one-third (33 percent) cited entrepreneurial opportunities in their organisation. In addition, 34 percent said firms should provide more training and education opportunities.

August 20, 2015

81 percent of women and over half of men experience sexism at work ⁰

by Sara Bean • Comment, News, Workplace

What’s the difference between office banter and comments which can make people feel uncomfortable at work? That’s the issue which has plagued the workplace for aeons, and the age of so-called political correctness has not made the situation any clearer. Legislation may be in place to protect staff from discrimination or victimisation, but as some well documented cases have demonstrated sexism is still rife in many white collar professions. But it’s worth noting that it’s not only women who can feel that a colleague has crossed the line. A new survey has found that well over three quarters of women (81 percent) have been victims of sexist jokes at work. However, men are not immune to feeling uncomfortable, as according to the survey by Peninsula, well over half of men (63 percent) feel uneasy when female colleagues make indecent remarks about their physical appearance.

August 18, 2015

That story about sexist air conditioning systems…roundly debunked ⁰

by Mark Eltringham • Comment, Facilities management, Wellbeing, Workplace

The main story of the silly season so far has been that one about the inherent sexism of air conditioning systems from a week or two back. Based on a study published in the esoteric journal Nature Climate Change, it appeared that standards for heating and ventilation in building systems were founded on the metabolic rate of an average man which suggested women were toiling away in unconducive, if not exactly unbearable, conditions. This was a compelling tale picked up worldwide by major media outlets including The New Yorker and The Daily Telegraph. There were only two problems with it all. Firstly, the original study was extremely flimsy, based on a tiny sample and ignorant of some basic facts. Secondly the science behind it has now been roundly rejected by ASHRAE, the main US body responsible for informing debate on such matters.

August 18, 2015

Car sharing and longer commutes are the keys to workforce mobility ⁰

by Mark Eltringham • Cities, Flexible working, News

The Government should introduce new policies to incentivise people to car share and travel further afield to find work. Those are two of the key finding of a new report, On The Move, from the think tank Policy Exchange which sets out ways to improve the mobility of the British workforce. Making it easier for people to commute twenty minutes further afield would put them in touch with at least one additional major urban area and potentially 10,000 more job opportunities, according to the report. Additionally, it suggests that drivers who offer fellow commuters a lift should be given a tax break. The authors claim that in a third of local authorities that make up the eight city regions no major employment sites (defined as having 5,000 or more jobs) are within a twenty minute commute by public transport and 80 percent of these Local Authorities have an unemployment rate above the national average.

August 11, 2015

The key to the productivity puzzle may be to give people better jobs ⁰

by Mark Eltringham • Knowledge, News, Workplace

Ever since the UK started to emerge from the economic downturn there has been a great deal of brow beating about the so-called productivity puzzle. Although the UK economy grew between 2012 and 2014, productivity fell by 1.15 percent. In addition, the UK has a productivity gap of between 23 and 32 per cent between it and comparable economies such as Germany, France and the Netherlands. When considering the reasons for this, most of the time a finger has been pointed at some old favourites such as working practices, a lack of engagement or – according to this feature published in HR Magazine this week – individual behaviour. Now a new report from the Institute for Public Policy research (IPPR) claims that the problems are far more complex than people typically assume and that one of the major factors is the jobs people are offered.