Search Results for: employed

March 22, 2016

While politicians squabble, here’s what the Budget meant for the workplace ⁰

by Mark Eltringham • Comment, Facilities management, Legal news, Workplace, Workplace design

Strange as it may seem now, there was a Budget last week. We’d planned to produce a report on it once the dust had settled but given that whatever dust had originally been kicked up has now been swept away by a political storm, it’s only now we feel able to offer some perspective a few days out. As ever these days, the budget touched on a number of aspects of the workplace, sometimes hitting the mark and sometimes suggesting politicians don’t yet understand how people work. There was the usual stuff about rates and commercial property but also plenty to digest about the freelance economy, productivity, new technology, flexible working legislation and the current, often faltering attempts to develop wealth and infrastructure as well as the 21st Century creative and digital economy in places other than London. There’s plenty to digest here and plenty of people have already had their say, so a chance to grab a coffee and take all or some of it in.

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March 22, 2016

Third of workers over 50 will retire later than planned, but not all reluctantly ⁰

by Sara Bean • News, Workplace

A third of people aged over 50 who are employed in the private sector are now planning to retire later than they previously thought according to Aviva’s latest Working Lives report. A lack of pension savings (46 percent) is the primary reason for people to postpone their retirement plans, and the amount that would be available through the state pension (32 percent) was also an issue. Not all the reasons given for working longer were negative though, with one in five (21 percent) of those expecting to work longer doing so because they feel they still have a lot to offer their employer. A similar proportion (20 percent) said that job satisfaction has encouraged them to put off retirement. Levels of job satisfaction were highest amongst those aged over 65, with a large majority (86 percent) of private sector workers in that age group saying they enjoy their work, compared with just 57 percent of those aged 18-64.

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February 29, 2016

Report sets out challenges for rapidly changing Australian workplace ⁰

by Mark Eltringham • Flexible working, News, Technology, Workplace design

When it comes to innovation in workplace design and management, there are few countries in the world quite so forward thinking as Australia right now. Even so, Australia’s workers, firms and legislators remain under-prepared for the rapidly changing world of work, according to a new report from the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO), a Government funded research agency. Many of the trends outlined in the report will be familiar to readers of Insight. Over the next twenty years, it claims that around half (44 percent) of all jobs will be subject to computerisation and automation. Over the same period, it suggests that the majority of people will become active in the gig economy, many of them based in shared coworking spaces. The report also suggests that while Generation Z will be faced with the highest degree of change, an ageing population presents its own challenges.

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February 20, 2016

‘Ghosting’ employers + Office buildings still relevant + Millennial engagement ⁰

by Sara Bean • Environment, Facilities management, Flexible working, Newsletter, Property, Wellbeing

In this week’s Insight Newsletter; Darren Bilsborough on why office location is as important as design; Mark Eltringham says ‘ghosting’ an employer in the manner of the Spanish civil servant who hadn’t turned up to work for six years, is more common than you’d think; how office design is in the beauty of the beholder and why the office property market continues to thrive, despite rumours of its demise. A new report finds dysfunction at the heart of the public sector workplace; the government largely ignores the self-employed; younger workers are more engaged than the middle aged; RIBA consults on the future of its HQ; and many UK commercial buildings are failing to meet energy standards. Download the latest issue of Work&Place and access an Insight Briefing produced in partnership with Connection, which looks at agile working in the public sector. Visit our new events page, follow us on Twitter and join our LinkedIn Group to discuss these and other stories.

February 15, 2016

UK commercial buildings emit far more carbon than they were designed to ⁰

by Mark Eltringham • Architecture, Environment, Facilities management, News

Commercial buildings in the UK may be producing an average of 3.8 times more carbon than the estimate presented at their design stage, according to research from InnovateUK. The study examined six years of data from Innovate UK’s Building Performance Evaluation (BPE) Programme. It found that only one of the 48 buildings studied produced the amount of carbon specified by its design. In some cases, total emissions were 10 times the rate calculated for Part L compliance. ‘Building Performance Evaluation Programme: Findings From Non-Domestic Projects’, identifies complex energy controls and building management systems (BMS) as significant factors in poor levels of carbon emissions, suggesting that they should be simplified. Although two-thirds of the buildings studied employed renewable energy, a significant proportion of these experienced problems that had a negative impact on their energy consumption and carbon emissions.

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February 12, 2016

Unpredictability and office environment are key causes of workplace stress ⁰

by Sara Bean • News, Wellbeing, Workplace

The two most common factors influencing work related stress levels are unpredictability (26 percent) and workplace environment (21 percent) according to a poll by US jobs site CareerCast.com. The results, based on 834 respondents found that most of the respondents (62 percent) rated their jobs as highly stressful, while just 11 percent felt the amount of stress on the job was low. Other key stressors were deadlines (20 percent) and safety of others (16 percent). Interestingly, few people felt that length of work day/week (7 percent), personal well-being in danger (5 percent), potential for promotion (3 percent) and travel (1 percent) were major job stressors. Any number of factors can contribute to an unpredictable workplace; either the flow of responsibility changes from day-to-day with new tasks added or changed at random intervals or expectations may change. Running a close second is the workplace environment and culture, which includes interactions with bosses, co-workers and clients/customers.

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February 5, 2016

Embracing the inevitable rise of the robots in the workplace ⁰

by Gary Chandler • Comment, Flexible working, Technology, Workplace design

We often have reason these days to speculate on the truth of an idea known as Amara’s Law. First coined by the researcher Roy Amara it states that “we tend to overestimate the effect of a technology in the short run and underestimate the effect in the long run”. But defining what we mean by short and long term can be very difficult when technology is changing so quickly. Nothing better illustrates this than the issue of how automation will transform society and workplaces. For the past few years, the effects have mainly been the subject of academic and scientific research alongside some lurid headlines in the mainstream media. So, a fairly typical 2013 paper from researchers at Oxford University assessed the risk faced by over 700 professions and discovered that nearly half of all jobs in the US could be categorised as at high risk of automation. Less academic studies such as a report published last year by Deloitte draw similar conclusions.

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January 26, 2016

The road to Bali and other destinations for the world’s remote workers ⁰

by Georgi Georgiev • Comment, Flexible working, Property, Technology

The number of people who work from home or travel as freelancers has grown rapidly in the last 25 years. In 1990, as a percentage of the US population only 5 percent fit this classification, today it is closer to 30 percent. From photojournalists to graphic designers, to computer programmers – an increasing number of people are leaving the traditional office behind. The underlying reason is not difficult to establish. People are taking advantage of the opportunities offered them by technology. It’s no coincidence that the number of people working remotely has risen in parallel with the growth of home computing and internet connections, and more recently mobile technology. While the majority of those that traditionally followed this path became self employed, today companies are beginning to hire people to key positions without actually needing them to work from the office. Remote work is no longer just a freelancer’s game.

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January 8, 2016

The six things all people need from their workplace ⁰

by Jane Kendall-Bush • Comment, Facilities management, Knowledge, Workplace design

Whether we like it or not, we all have to work for some, or more usually, most of our adult life. During this time, many of us will work in an office, which is a place that has changed immensely – not only in the last ten years or so, but almost entirely since the start of the twentieth century. The management structure and style of companies, the tools available to the workforce, and the places within the office buildings have been changing and evolving. There has been a shift from hierarchical management structures to a more diverse and organic model. The tools of work have changed from the humble typewritten letter and Bakelite telephone to 24/7 access to emails though laptops and smart phones. And finally the workplace itself has evolved from one with enclosed offices for the senior managers, or a sea of cubicles to workplaces that encourage creativity and collaboration.

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January 6, 2016

Two new studies that highlight the complexities of gender at work ⁰

by Mark Eltringham • Comment, Knowledge, News, Workplace

The increasingly complex nature of the career and workplace choices made by men and women and the specific challenges they face is the subject of two pieces of research presented at this week’s British Psychological Society’s Division of Occupational Psychology annual conference in Nottingham. The authors of the admittedly small scale studies conclude respectively that men in what are generally considered typically female-dominated occupations tend to value the social aspects of their career more than financial rewards and that ambitious professional women would benefit from a better understanding of how to build, maintain and use their social capital to succeed in their attempts at reaching the top of their professions. Both topics have been raised before but it’s interesting to see yet more research which challenges the often overly simplistic assumptions that seem to go hand in hand with gender issues at work.

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December 15, 2015

Seven essential workplace design trends to keep an eye on during 2016 ⁰

by Dan Callegari • Comment, Facilities management, Workplace design

What has become increasingly apparent over recent years is that the office isn’t just a place to work, but also a driver of competitive advantage. We’ve always known this to a greater or lesser extent, but the dynamic and ever shifting nature of the modern world is presenting organisations with new and evolving challenges that they must address with all of the tools at their disposal. At the heart of this complexity is the physical workspace. Its design touches on every aspect of the changing workplace and the objectives organisations set for themselves and their employees. Although it has lots its primacy as the main place of work, you could also argue that the focus on the office’s key strengths makes it more important than ever within the context of overall working cultures. So, with that in mind, here are ten of the most important current trends in workplace design and management we foresee for 2016.

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December 10, 2015

Australia needs to do more to tackle the problems of mental health at work ⁰

by Mark Eltringham • Legal news, News, Workplace

One in five Australians suffer from a mental health disorder and employers need to do more to tackle the related issues. That is the central claim made in a new OECD report called Mental Health and Work: Australia. The study claims that mental health issues cost the Australian economy AUD 28.6 billion per year, equivalent to 2.2 percent of GDP. Adding indirect costs, such as productivity loss or sickness absence, nearly doubles that amount. The report is the ninth in a series of reports looking at how education, health, social and labour market policy challenges identified in a 2012 report called Sick on the Job? Myths and Realities about Mental Health and Work are being tackled in OECD countries. The report suggest that while Australia’s recent mental health reform is an important and helpful development, the country ‘needs to do more to help people with mild to moderate mental health issues at and into work’.