Search Results for: communication

March 1, 2017

Increasing adoption of wellbeing strategies to improve engagement and culture ⁰

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

Workplace wellbeing strategies are being implemented by employers at an unprecedented rate, with 45 percent of UK companies now having a clearly-defined wellbeing strategy in place, compared to less than a third (30 percent) in 2016, claims a new report. According to ‘Employee Wellbeing Research 2017: The evolution of workplace wellbeing in the UK’ from Reward & Employee Benefits Association (REBA), in association with Punter Southall Health & Protection, of those that don’t, virtually all plan or wish to implement one – with 46 percent planning on implementing one this year, 24 percent in the next few years and a quarter (25 percent) having it on their ‘wish list’. Over a third (37 percent) launched their wellbeing strategy to improve employee engagement, and just over a quarter (26 percent) to improve organisational culture. Other drivers included improving productivity levels (11 percent), reducing long and short-term sickness absence (6 percent & 5 percent) and retaining talent (5 percent).

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February 22, 2017

Big disconnect between employees, business leaders and IT when it comes to innovation ⁰

by Mark Eltringham • News, Technology

Most North Americans believe their employers and IT teams should be doing more to unleash their capacity for innovation, according to a new study by Softchoice, a North American provider of IT solutions and managed services. The study, Enabling Innovation: When Actions Speak Louder Than Buzzwords, found just 37 percent of employees believe their employers are very innovative, and even fewer felt their organisation did a good job with other leading innovation indicators, such as anticipating market trends, taking risks, and investing in technology that enables innovation. The study is based on a survey of 1,000 full-time employees and 250 IT decision-makers across the U.S. and Canada to uncover whether workplaces really walk the walk when it comes to having the right leadership, culture, processes and technology tools to drive innovation.

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February 10, 2017

Reflections on the future of work from a mirrored room ⁰

by Neil Usher • Comment, Facilities management, Technology, Workplace design

This is the first of two responses to an excellent article by Antony Slumbers, in this instance offering that his views offer too conservative a view of how technology will shape the future of work. Dr Pangloss, the teacher of metaphysics in Candide, Voltaire’s hilariously sarcastic attack on Leibnizian optimism, offered a timeless and universal explanation of the most cruel and tragic events as “the best of all possible worlds”. I would argue however that far from creating a landscape of optimism, it facilitates a dismissal of all significant change as an irrelevance given that effectively we have no option other than to happily accept it. For example, whether property transitions to a service or remains locked in its existing institutional quagmire, it doesn’t matter. Either way its fine as it’s the best we can hope for. Accept it, happily. A Panglossian future only looks appealing if you’re –well, Dr Pangloss.

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February 9, 2017

Birmingham creates city development blueprint with global dimension ⁰

by Mark Eltringham • Cities, News

Researchers at the University of Birmingham have developed a way of investigating or diagnosing the challenges facing their home city that could be used to help improve the lives of city dwellers around the world. And the blueprint they are working with could help city policy makers and other countries to take more effective actions to boost the quality of life for residents by providing better outcomes. Project leaders are already looking at how the work might be applied in countries like India, Brazil and South Africa. The first part of the Urban Living Birmingham pilot project used a wide range of data and evidence used by city leaders to inform policy combined with an analysis of 248 datasets – identifying the challenges facing Birmingham.

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January 25, 2017

Just one in five UK workers still take the traditional lunch hour ⁰

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

Only one in five workers in the UK still take the traditional lunch hour break; a stark contrast to France, which sees the lunch hour as a key part of the working day, a new survey by commercial property agency Savoystewart.co.uk claims. Digital marketers take the shortest breaks, taking a meagre average of 14-minutes, followed by recruiters and those in telesales. At the opposite end of the spectrum are media & communication professionals, who take almost their whole hour at 55 minutes. Some of the reasons cited for the shorter break were to please the boss, too much work to do, other colleagues don’t take lunch, there’s nowhere to go or one hour is too long. Half of those polled work right through their lunch break, 30 percent will take under 30 minutes off, 52 percent admit to eating over their desk most days and 27 percent deliberately take a shorter break to please their boss. Yet UK legislation actually allows for a 1 hour interrupted 20-minute rest break after working 6 hours+, and those who are under 18 are entitled to 30 minutes if working above 4.5 hours. Some work contracts may even allow for additional breaks alongside lunch, like tea breaks.

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January 24, 2017

The impact of technology on corporate real estate: A Panglossian future? ⁰

by Antony Slumbers • Features, Property, Technology, Workplace design

Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman introduced the concept of Loss Aversion in 1984, highlighting people’s tendency to strongly prefer avoiding losses to acquiring gains. Most studies suggest that losses are twice as powerful, psychologically, as gains. Lose £100 and we will feel a remorse that easily outweighs winning £100. In a similar fashion we find it very hard to see future positives when confronted with short term loses. We understand easily what we have lost but cannot imagine what there is to be gained. Furthermore, as Frederic Bastiat wrote in an 1850 paper, “That Which is Seen, and That Which is Not Seen”, man has a tendency to “pursue a small present good, which will be followed by a great evil to come, rather than a great good to come, at the risk of a small present evil”. Put these together and it is no wonder that, by and large, the future of work, corporate real estate and the workplace is so widely misunderstood.

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January 24, 2017

Many business leaders lack the skills to manage and develop people ⁰

by Sara Bean • News, Workplace

Two new reports published today reveal a dearth of people management skills among both current and future leaders. Over half of the HR professionals polled for the latest CIPD HR Outlook survey believe too many leaders lack the people management behaviours and skills needed to get the best from their workforce. One of the reasons behind this is suggested in the results of a survey from Robert Half which claims that half (50 percent) of management candidates lack leadership skills, with nearly one in five (18 percent) candidates falling short on planning skills, and 14 percent lacking communication skills. In the CIPD poll, people management was voted the top leadership skill needed by organisations over the next three years. However, out of those who chose performance management, more than half (53 percent) said leaders’ current skills in this area were ineffective. Similarly, 44 percent of HR professionals felt senior leaders’ skills were ineffective.

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January 16, 2017

Nearly half of the stressed employees of SMEs want to move jobs ⁰

by Sara Bean • News, Wellbeing, Workplace

Two-thirds (67 percent) of employees in small to medium employers (SMEs) are currently fed up at work and lack motivation, but the large majority of their employers (81 percent) believe they aren’t affected by the January blues, claims new research by Moorepay. Nearly three-quarters (73 percent) feel their colleagues are also affected by the January blues, which sit in stark contrast to the perception of managers and small businesses owners, who are unaware of how their staff feel. Work-related stress is considered the primary reason for feeling demotivated by most employees (36 percent), followed by the long wait to pay day (17 percent) and the financial fallout of the Christmas celebrations (10 percent). Consequently, almost half (46 percent) of all employees say they are likely to look for a new job in the next three months. Only 19 percent of small to medium businesses (SMBs) realise what impact the January blues has on their business.

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January 12, 2017

Recruitment, change management and morale are chief HR challenges in 2017 ⁰

by Sara Bean • News, Technology, Wellbeing, Workplace

While a fifth of respondents to a study commissioned by Cascade HR revealed the topics most likely to keep HR awake at night in 2017 said they don’t foresee any challenges as Brexit begins to unfold, the remainder highlighted recruitment, managing organisational change and staff morale as the overriding struggles they expect to encounter. While 80 percent of participants said their organisation is OK, good or excellent at managing major change, significant areas for improvement were also identified, with 61 percent stating better communication is required, 57 percent striving for greater staff involvement/engagement and 50 percent highlighting the need for improved planning. Of the 275 industry professionals questioned in the survey, to uncover their plans and fears surrounding Brexit and other significant economic developments, 59 percent said they will rely on technology to help them manage such change.

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January 6, 2017

Thirteen ways the physical environment shapes knowledge management

by Agustin Chevez and Laurie Aznavoorian • Facilities management, Premium Content, Work&Place, Workplace design

Knowledge management (including its creation, transference and storage) within an organisation is now widely considered to be one of the primary drivers of a business’s sustainability. Driven by changing demographics, businesses are recognising the ways in which valuable knowledge is lost when employees leave the organisation, including when they retire or are made redundant in response to changing economic conditions. Geyer, an Australian design practice, is just one organisation that has undertaken important research to understand the role of the physical environment in knowledge management.The aim of the research was to explore the kinds of environments and their attributes (if any) that could support the management of knowledge in an organisation. The research also aimed to expand the focus of existing knowledge management literature; from information technology to workplace design.

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January 6, 2017

Learning to love staff means letting them disconnect from work, and other stories ⁰

by Mark Eltringham • Flexible working, News, Technology

Topical workplace issues featured prominently at this week’s British Psychological Society’s Division of Occupational Psychology annual conference held in Liverpool. Four of the key takeaways from the event deal with issues such as the right to disconnect when working from home – a right recently enshrined in law in France, the way different personality types deal with emails, the toxic relationship between employers and employees and even how managers can learn to show their staff more love. The focus at teh event underlines a growing awareness of the complexities of our new relationship with work and workplaces.

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December 19, 2016

UK digital divide narrows, but major problems remain for homes and offices ⁰

by Mark Eltringham • News, Technology

The UK’s patchy and frequently shoddy broadband network has held back the country for a long time. According to a new report from industry regulator Ofcom, however, there are signs of improvement with the number of UK domestic and commercial properties unable to get a decent broadband connection falling by one million over the past year. Even so, around 5 percent of offices and homes are unable to enjoy broadband speeds over 10 Mbit/s, the speed Ofcom claims is required to meet a typical household’s digital needs. The findings are part of Ofcom’s Connected Nations 2016 report – an in-depth look at the state of the UK’s telecoms and wireless networks. This year’s report shows good progress on the availability and take-up of communications services, which are crucial to people’s personal and working lives.