Search Results for: employee engagement

September 16, 2016

Career advancement opportunities help attract and retain staff ⁰

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

Three in 10 US employees say they are likely to leave their employer within the next two years as employers continue to experience difficulty with attracting and retaining staff. According to the Global Talent Management and Rewards Survey, from Willis Towers Watson roughly half of employers are experiencing difficulty attracting critical-skill employees, top performers and high-potential employees. More than a third of respondents reported challenges in retaining high-potential employees (37 percent), top performers (36 percent) and critical-skill employees (35 percent). The firm’s Global Workforce Study identified advancement opportunities as key. Over a third (36 percent) cited opportunities to advance as a key reason to join a company and to leave (45 percent). However, only four in 10 (41 percent) indicated their employer does a good job of providing advancement opportunities, while nearly half (47 percent) said they would need to leave their organisation to progress.

September 6, 2016

British workers miss fewer days at work than those in rest of Europe ⁰

by Mark Eltringham • Flexible working, News, Wellbeing

Ayming, a business performance consultancy, has released its 8th absenteeism barometer, analysing workplace absenteeism and employee engagement across Europe. The research claims that UK workers missed fewer days at work last year than anywhere else in Europe, with 84 percent of workers at work each day. That compared to 72 percent in the rest of Europe, including 71 percent in France. By gender, the proportion of women in the UK who were at work every day was 88 percent surpassing that of men (83 percent). Employees aged 26-30 had the lowest attendance record – only 71 percent missed no days at work – while employees aged 51-62 had an attendance record of 92 percent.Despite the fact that UK workers took less time off work, British workers had the smallest proportion of happy and motivated employees, at just 23 percent. By contrast, 46 percent of German and 54 percent of Dutch employees regarded themselves as both happy and motivated.

September 2, 2016

Institute for Employment Studies launches new Brexit Observatory ⁰

by Mark Eltringham • Knowledge, News, Workplace

The Institute for Employment Studies, a human resources and employment think tank, has launched what it calls a Brexit Observatory, which will aim to track the effects of the UK’s vote to leave the EU on employment levels and issues. According to the IES, the Observatory will ‘provide a space to collate evidence, share relevant research and commentary, track datasets, and link to sources of independent information as the debate continues and the terms of the UK’s departure are revealed. It will build over the following weeks, months and years as events unfold and data surfaces. In addition to content originating from IES, the pages will feature guest blogs and links to external sources.’ The IES says that it hopes the Observatory will stimulate and facilitate debates on key topics, such as the labour market; education and skills; migration (including the impact on the UK’s nursing workforce); the impact on HR; workforce planning and recruitment; employment law; and employee engagement.

August 16, 2016

A well executed wellness strategy benefits staff and employers ⁰

by Beate O'Neil • Comment, Wellbeing, Workplace

Employee health and wellbeing is moving up the agenda of many companies. A recent report from the Reward and Employee Benefits Association (Reba) and Punter Southall Health & Protection found that a third of companies have a wellness strategy in place, with 80 per cent having introduced one in the last three years. Of the 70 per cent that don’t yet have a strategy, a third plan to implement one this year, a third plan to implement a plan in the next few years and the final third have it firmly on their wish list. This is driven by the fact that the UK is experiencing a major demographic change – in 2014 the average age of the population exceeded 40 for the first time. With the percentage of the total population over 60 predicted in a report from AgeUK to rise from 24.2 percent at present to over 29 percent in 2035, employers are beginning to wake up to the fact that wellness is good for staff and good for business.

June 6, 2016

How performance data can help enhance your employment metrics ⁰

by Andrea Hak • Comment, News, Technology, Workplace

The rise of data based applications has brought about a new era for the HR department. Processes developed in the 70s are now going through a transformation, with tools for gathering more accurate reports based on people analytics. But what exactly can you do with this information? The main objectives of every organisation, is to boost engagement, lower turnover, provide effective training & development and attract great talent. Aside from turnover, these objectives are difficult to measure. How do you measure engagement or the effect of a training programme? This is especially difficult when your company only tracks performance annually. Data based on continuous feedback is providing new answers. There are four ways it can help: by measuring and tracking engagement; give you better insights into the causes of turnover; helping you develop a feedback culture and enabling your organisation to create better hiring and recruitment strategies. We take a closer look at these below. More →

May 25, 2016

Limited budgets greatest challenge to wellness programmes at work ⁰

by Sara Bean • News, Wellbeing, Workplace

Sixty-five per cent of respondents in a new survey across Europe, the Middle East and Africa claim that stress and mental health are the health and wellness issues they are most concerned about. Fifty-three per cent say that employees’ physical health is the biggest issue, while unhealthy lifestyles are judged to be the biggest issue by 49 percent. However, according to the study from Aon, only 32 percent of employers have emotional or psychological health programmes in place and 69 percent say limited budgets are their biggest challenge. While 93 percent of employers see a correlation between health and employee performance, just 13 percent of respondents measure outcomes of health strategies. The findings pinpoint areas for improvement and make recommendations to increase health benefits take-up, improve measurement on the impact of health initiatives and to maximise the return on investment that firms make in employee health.

May 24, 2016

A fifth of staff experience more stress at home than in the workplace ⁰

by Neil Franklin • Flexible working, News, Wellbeing

Home may not be the haven we might assume, meaning that employers who encourage staff to work from home may actually be adding to their stress levels. Around a fifth of employees find their domestic lives more stressful than their working lives and many either don’t want to discuss it with managers or feel unable to, claims a new report from MetLife Employee Benefits. According to Building Resilience in the Workplace, 19 percent of employees overall are more stressed at home than at work, with slightly more female respondents to the study claiming to be stressed more by their home lives than the workplace. Around 21 percent of women say their home life is more stressful compared to 15 percent of men. The research claims that 67 percent of employees say domestic issues – including childcare, looking after elderly parents and financial pressures – are having an impact on their work performance.

May 21, 2016

Flexible working babble + Tall buildings + Engaging workplace design ⁰

by Sara Bean • Facilities management, Flexible working, Newsletter, Property, Technology, Work&Place, Workplace

In this week’s Newsletter; Matias Rodsevich suggests three performance management must haves; Neil Barnfather flags up a lack of disabled representation at board level; and Dr Daniel Wheatley says work-life balance and flexible working continue to be viewed as a ‘women’s issue’. From the latest issue of Work&Place, Serena Borghero looks at the role of workplace design in employee engagement; Mark Eltringham argues there’s no evolution towards a universally accepted model of workplace design and management culture; and that when it comes to skyscrapers, big and clever are two different things. There’s evidence that London’s Central office market has hit its peak; the British public remains ‘clueless or indifferent’ about the nature of smart cities; and we reveal that graduates prefer digitised workplaces. You can download our Insight Briefing, produced in partnership with Connection, on the boundless office; visit our new events page, follow us on Twitter and join our LinkedIn Group to discuss these and other stories.

May 3, 2016

Pointless admin and inadequate technology cost UK £60 billion a year ⁰

by Mark Eltringham • News, Technology, Workplace

Inadequate and poorly performing technology coupled with the burden of pointless administrative tasks are having a major negative effect on the UK’s productivity, costing businesses around £60 billion a year. That is the conclusion of a new report from workforce management consultants Kronos. According to the report, The £60Bn Question: Is Employee Engagement the Driver of Business Success?, employees spend around 7 percent of their time on unnecessary admin and 82 percent struggle to complete their daily tasks. According to the line managers that took part in the survey, 77 percent claim that outdated technology is the biggest challenge they face and 72 percent believe that they are hampered by the need to carry out tasks that could be automated. Many respondents also cited a lack of engagement as an issue with 34 percent claiming rating their organisation enjoying high levels of engagement and 59 percent claiming their chief exec was more interested in the bottom line than employees.

April 25, 2016

Staff wellness programmes must target mental ill health and obesity ⁰

by Sara Bean • News, Wellbeing, Workplace

Employers see mental health, obesity and high blood pressure as the areas most likely to impact on their employees’ wellbeing over the next few years. This is according to new research by AXA PPP healthcare, which found that three quarters of decision makers (75 per cent) agreed that employers should proactively support their employees to manage their health and wellbeing and why 77 per cent of employers said their company currently has a health and wellbeing strategy in place. The decision makers polled by the healthcare company are concerned that mental health (51 per cent), obesity/high body mass index (44 per cent) and high blood pressure (30 per cent) will be the biggest challenges to employee health over the next five years with the key to better health in the workplace in that period being improved ease of access (46 per cent) and increased availability (46 per cent) of preventive health services for employees.

April 6, 2016

What Johan Cruyff can teach us about the contemporary workplace ⁰

by Andrew Brown • Comment, Facilities management, Workplace design

The Dutch (and to an extent, their north European neighbours in Scandinavia) are regarded as leaders in ideas on how to improve employee engagement, productivity, wellbeing and basically putting people ahead of the capital asset. It’s why people are heading off to Amsterdam this week for the Smart Workplace Design Summit. What you might not know is that this whole approach is deeply rooted in Dutch culture. There is a distinct Dutch way of doing things. FM World is planning to explore this in a forthcoming issue in May. In the article readers will hear from organisations like Veldhoen and their adherence to the concept of activity based working (ABW). Veldhoen has a philosophy about workplace and how to improve an organisations performance. It all hinges on ABW. They won’t bother working with you unless you buy into their way of doing things. This is very Dutch. And why not. It works: Veldhoen get results.

March 17, 2016

Poor line management blamed for lack of career progression at work ⁰

by Sara Bean • News, Workplace

A third (33 percent) of UK employees say their career progression to date has failed to meet their expectations, with four in ten (39 percent) blaming poor line management for stifling their ambitions. According to the latest Employee Outlook Survey: Focus on Skills and Careers from the CIPD, a lack of effective training programmes (34 percent) and negative office politics (34 percent) are also to blame. The survey of over 2,000 employees considered the key factors relating to employees’ upbringing, education and workplace that affect whether or not their career progression had met their expectations. It also found that over a quarter (26 percent) of those whose career has failed to live up to their expectations identified poor-quality career advice and guidance at school as a key factor to blame, with three in ten (29 percent) saying they are in the wrong career so cannot show their strengths or potential.