Search Results for: economic

September 19, 2018

New report aims to debunk myth that AI will be intrinsically bad for people at work

The latest report that claims to debunk the myths surrounding AI in the workplace arrives from Tata Communications who worked with academics at UC Berkeley to interview 120 business leaders about their attitudes to AI. The report, AI and the Future of Work (registration required) claims to shift ‘the conversation from dystopian fears toward human collaboration and cognitive diversity, the study identifies how AI can diversify human thinking rather than replace it. The study identifies opportunities for businesses and employees based on insights from leaders such as Tony Blair, Executive Chair of the Institute of Global Change and former UK Prime Minister, who predicts that, AI will allow us to do what it is that we are uniquely meant to do: focus on high-level thinking, strategy, and paving the way for innovation.’

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September 19, 2018

Better urban design could improve the lives and wellbeing of millions of people

by Neil Franklin • Cities, News, Wellbeing

Adjusting the planning system to put good design at the heart of urban development could lead to a £15 billion boost to the UK economy and improve the wellbeing and mental health of millions of individuals across the UK. The new report, A Design for Life, commissioned by British Land says that improving mental health and wellbeing in our cities could have significant and positive impacts in several ways, including boosting productivity in the workplace, reducing absenteeism and bringing down the NHS and welfare bills.

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September 18, 2018

Britain should make it easy for high skilled immigrants in the wake of Brexit vote

by Mark Eltringham • News

The UK Government should restrict levels of immigration by low-skilled workers after Brexit, but at the same time make it considerably easier for for medium-skilled and high-skilled workers from around the world, according to a new report from the Migration Advisory Committee. The detailed report was commissioned in July 2017 by Home Secretary Amber Rudd. Its main conclusion is that there is a great deal of hard evidence of the benefit enjoyed by the UK as a result of the migration of highly-skilled migrants and that future policy should reflect this. The study published today, Tuesday, is expected to have a significant effect on the contents of the government’s immigration white paper, due for publication later this year. The report’s conclusions closely match the policy proposals that Home Office officials have outlined to immigration specialists. However, no special preference would be given to EU citizens in the UK’s future immigration system post-Brexit.

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September 18, 2018

Half of all workplace tasks will be performed by machines within seven years

by Neil Franklin • News, Technology

The world is going through a workplace revolution that will bring a seismic shift in the way humans work alongside machines and algorithms, according to new research by the World Economic Forum. By 2025 more than half of all current workplace tasks will be performed by machines as opposed to 29 percent today. Such a transformation will have a profound effect on the global labour force, however in terms of overall numbers of new jobs the outlook is positive, with 133 million new jobs expected to be created by 2022 compared to 75 million that will be displaced. The research, published in The Future of Jobs 2018, is an attempt to understand the potential of new technologies to disrupt and create jobs. It is also seeks to provide guidance on how to improve the quality and productivity of the current work being done by humans and how to prepare people for emerging roles.

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September 18, 2018

Building a culture of creativity that unites the physical and digital workplace

by Serena Borghero • Comment, Technology, Workplace design

Agreeing on the definition of creativity is no easy task, as it can mean a whole range of different things to different people. To some, creativity means painting a beautiful picture or creating a unique sculpture, while for others it might mean writing a catchy tagline, developing a new business model, or building an innovative online tool. The fact is, creativity can be found in all walks of life, not just those we traditionally see as creative, such as art, design or music. And furthermore, it’s playing an increasingly pivotal role in the growth, development and success of all types of organisations, and the employees working for them.

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September 13, 2018

Call for employers to do more for older workers

by Neil Franklin • Flexible working, News, Wellbeing

A new report from the charity and lobbying group the Centre for Ageing Better has called for employers to be more age-friendly and inclusive of those over 50, including doing more to tackle age discrimination in the workplace. According to the study, significant numbers of older workers feel they are being discriminated against at work because of their age, including believing they have been turned down for jobs (9 percent) and being offered fewer opportunities for training and progression (32 percent).

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September 12, 2018

Reinventing jobs for an automated future workplace

by Ravin Jesuthasan • AI, Comment, Technology

Earlier this year, the European Commission announced it will invest €20 billion in Artificial Intelligence (AI) research and development by 2020 to boost the adoption of AI and robotics across multiple industries, which will have a significant impact on the way work across sectors gets done. Facing demographic deficits, Europe and Japan – and to an extent the US and China – are highly motivated to continue investment into AI, which is growing at an annual rate of 15 percent, and set to reach $1 trillion globally by 2050, according to Morgan Stanley.

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September 12, 2018

A new era of technology could resolve UK low productivity at last

by Neil Franklin • News, Technology

A new McKinsey study sets out to address the reasons why the United Kingdom experiences chronically low productivity and what can be done to use technology to improve its performance. In the report, Solving the UK’s productivity puzzle in the digital age, the authors argue that “Britain stands out as one of the worst productivity performers among its peers”. They argue that there are four distinct reasons for the weakness since the economic crisis: “boom and bust” in the financial sector, the strength of employment growth, weak investment and uneven “digitisation”. It claims that the UK is operating at only 17 per cent of its digitisation potential, indicating how much scope for improvement there is.

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September 12, 2018

Employees more productive when they understand the company goals

by Sara Bean • News, Workplace

Being made to feel you’re making a positive contribution to your organisation is an important motivator, but a new study suggests over half of employees believe they would be more productive if they knew how their work fitted into overall company objectives. According to the research from Asana this lack of transparency means a third of UK employees believe their business suffers from a lack of direction, with employees complaining that they do not know what their company stands for and are completely unclear of the company’s long term and short-term goals. This unsurprisingly is having a direct impact on employee motivation, with and framed within the context of the UK’s productivity conundrum. A lack of clarity of company goals across businesses is not the sole reason that the UK is experiencing a productivity conundrum, but there is a clear disconnect between strategic goals and the jobs being executed on a day to day basis.

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September 6, 2018

Leading a hybrid future workforce of robots, episodic employees and gig leaders

by Mark Eltringham • Flexible working, News, Technology

Visions of hybrid workforces, episodic employees, gig leadership and acceptable failure have been unearthed in a new study, ‘Work 2028: trends, dilemmas and choices’, revealing business and society leaders’ projections for the fourth industrial revolution. The project was led by Professor Bernd Vogel at Henley Business School and run in collaboration with Deutsche Telekom and Detecon Consulting, who commissioned Henley to carry out the survey. The research involved interviews with over 50 influential leaders from across a variety of sectors and countries including senior figures from Amazon and Unilever to look at the challenges facing organisations and their future workforce.

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September 4, 2018

Don’t stand so close to me: why personal space matters in the workplace ⁰

by Paul Goodchild • Comment, Wellbeing, Workplace design

As successive BCO Specification Guides and the research of organisations like CoreNet Global have proved, the spatial dynamics of offices have changed dramatically in recent years. Put simply, the modern office serves significantly more people per square foot than ever before. Originally this tightening was largely down to the growing ubiquity of flat screen and the mobile devices, but more recently the major driver of change appears to be the gradual disappearance of personal workstations in favour of more shared space.

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September 3, 2018

Workplace wellness programmes may be a waste of time and money, study concludes

by Neil Franklin • News, Wellbeing

The $8 billion dollar wellness industry in the US may not be achieving very much, according to a new analysis from academics at Chicago University and the University of Illinois published by the National Bureau of Economic Research. While the researchers concede that the difficulties of measuring the impact of such programmes depends very much on the characteristics of the people who enter them voluntarily, their study of 5,000 people found that the effects of a wellness programme were non-existent to negligible across a range of metrics.