Search Results for: employee experience

March 7, 2014

Large and small firms demand greater transparency in government procurement

by Mark Eltringham • Company news, Facilities management

The whole thorny issue of public sector procurement is never far from the news, but this week gained new prominence as one contractor walked out on a £1 billion contract because it felt the Ministry of Justice hadn’t grasped the idea of intellectual property amongst other things, while the Confederation of British Industry raised the stakes overall by claiming that a culture of secrecy in government purchasing continues to foster mistrust and waste taxpayers’ money. The CBI goes so far as to claim that even the most high profile botched contracts over recent years have not deterred the government from its move to inculcate a culture of opacity rather than transparency when procuring goods and services. It called on the Government to move to open book contracts so that all parties are aware of contract terms and margins.

February 20, 2014

Could personality profiling help create a more productive office environment?

by Suzanne McMinn • Facilities management, News, Workplace, Workplace design

Creating the most productive working space to help get the best from your people is an ongoing battle. What suits some doesn’t suit others. So if there was some way of assessing up front how people like to work and the environment that would make them their most productive, engaged and committed – before you rearrange the furniture, fittings and layout – would you leap at the chance of finding out? One approach could be personality profiling. If you could climb inside the minds of your current and future employees and assess how they best like to work, their personality and how this then drives them to be more productive in certain working environments than others – who wouldn’t want to have a delve around? Or are we in danger of pandering to personality stereotypes? More →

February 19, 2014

Employment is on the rise but pay not matching the rate of inflation

by Sara Bean • News, Workplace

The latest labour market statistics shows employment has continued to rise, but at a slower rate than seen last month. However, at 67.2 per cent, record-breaking numbers of women are now in work, the highest since records began. The figures published today by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) show the employment rate in the three months to December 2013 rose to 72.1 per cent, lower than the previous three months and with just a small rise in total pay of 1.1 per cent. This slower pace of growth in employment and pay is reflected in the latest CIPD/ SuccessFactors quarterly Labour Market Outlook survey, which reveals that, although recruitment intentions remain positive, the rate of increase has slowed significantly and the vast majority of organisations expect to give pay awards below the current rate of inflation. More →

February 14, 2014

Employers urged to offer flooded staff access to workplace facilities

by Sara Bean • Facilities management, News, Workplace

As much of the UK prepares to endure yet another winter storm, the TUC has issued guidance for employers on ways to support staff affected by the flooding, and offered advice on the sort of health and safety risks the floods could pose to workplaces. The guidance aims to help employers and employees ensure that workplaces situated within flooded areas are safe before anyone returns to work. This covers both journeys to work through flooded areas and the sort of dangers to look out for in affected buildings, including for example, from contaminants and faulty electrics. The union also urges employers to offer extra support to staff whose homes are either already partially submerged or are at risk from the rising floodwater; which for example could include allowing them to use showers and washing facilities at work. More →

February 13, 2014

No pay rise for a while? Get used to it, says the CIPD

by Mark Eltringham • News, Workplace

The Chartered Institiute of Personnel and Development has today released a report analysing the most sustained and severe fall in real wages since at least the Second World War, and warns that the decline will not be reversed until there is a substantial improvement in the UK’s productivity. The report is accompanied by new survey data showing many employees expect pay rises in 2014 to be below inflation – a repeat of their experience in 2013. ‘Have we seen the end of the pay rise?‘, which is the third in a series of four Megatrends surveys exploring the future of work and the economic challenges which lie ahead, examines the effects of average weekly earnings that are now between 7.8 percent and 10.2 percent lower in real terms than they were five years ago, in January 2009, leading to a sustained squeeze on household finances.

February 13, 2014

Why do we bother going to work? Good question.

by Mark Eltringham • Comment, Facilities management, Flexible working, Workplace

While the UK Government continues to explore new ways of getting people back to work more quickly following (or even during) illness, there are a number of counterpart questions that they continue to fastidiously ignore, one of which is ‘why bother?’. We might all ask ourselves that from time to time, whether petulantly or as a pressure-relieving alternative to ramming a co-worker’s head through a window or a laptop in a dumpster. But there are also reasons to raise the question coldly, rationally and with full awareness of all the facts, not least when it comes to assessing the increasing cost of going to work in the first place. Put simply, for many people it makes little or no financial sense to go to work.

January 16, 2014

Workplace is in a state of flux, with many more changes to come

by Sara Bean • Flexible working, News, Workplace

Although we remain wary of predicting the workplace of the future, it is useful to discover what managers think is likely to happen, even if some of it is pretty obvious. In a new survey, HR decision-makers forecast the workforce of 2018 will look fundamentally different from that of 2013; including more workers opting to work part-time rather than retire (92%), managing an older workforce (88%), individuals maintaining and developing skill sets in multiple simultaneous careers (79%) and more than half of all workers being temporary / on contract or freelance (60%). A whopping 98 per cent of organisations have already experienced some kind of major organisational change over the last five years – the most common being restructuring (74%), a change in leadership (64%) and downsizing (64%). More →

December 20, 2013

Google is a better source of information than HR team, say line managers

by Sara Bean • News, Workplace

The image of the cosy Personnel Manager, part mentor part counsellor, has little in common with the reality of the modern Human Resources professional, steering the organisation through the upheavals of a prolonged recession and engaged in strategic thinking, such as big data. In many ways the professionalisation of HR, which (unlike FM) has achieved Chartered Status, is an encouraging sign that organisations understand the importance of their most important assets – the people. However, the rise of the HR professional has also created barriers between them and line managers. A lack of openness and slow response to queries from HR is driving line managers to Google the answers rather than wait for their increasingly preoccupied HR colleagues to respond. More →

December 18, 2013

Companies need to work out what they want to emerge from the BYOD pile-up

by Mark Eltringham • Comment, Facilities management, Flexible working, Technology

Anybody who tells you they understand what is happening with BYOD, doesn’t understand what is happening with BYOD. Even by the standards of workplace technology, trying to get a firm grasp on the current state of play when it comes to the practice of Bring Your Own Device is particularly challenging. Surveys, opinions, research and case study pile up each day, crashing and bouncing off each other like the culmination of the multiple car chases in the Blues Brothers and just as difficult to untangle. The latest batch of news and views highlights exactly how disparate and conflicting the available information is. But underlying it all appears to be a single discernible and consistent point; while organisations may be less focussed on BYOD’s perceived advantages and rather more worried about the consequence of not implementing the practice, they still don’t trust it.

December 16, 2013

Book Review: The Emergent Workplace

by Mark Eltringham • Comment, Facilities management, Workplace design

Looking for patterns in the mash. © Columbia Pictures

It’s rather refreshing to see a book or report in which the word ‘Workplace’ in the title is prefaced by ‘Emergent’ rather than something misleading like ‘Tomorrow’s’ or ‘Future’. And so the authors Clark Sept and Paul Heath define their vision of the workplace presented in this slim but engaging book as a thing which is ‘in the process of becoming prominent’ to use the dictionary definition of the word emergent. By using this particular epithet, they are describing the consequences of the various forces that drive today’s workplace rather than lapsing into the fallacies most commonly associated with works of this kind; principally those of either assuming there is an evolution of all offices towards an ultimate model, or that already commonplace factors such as technology which frees us to work anywhere and at any time can in any way be associated with ‘the future’.

December 11, 2013

Good practice guide for employers on using social media as a vetting tool

by Sara Bean • Legal news, News, Workplace

The debate over the right to privacy of job applicants whose activities may be checked on social media websites such as Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter, has led to some confusion over what is legally acceptable. Employers’ body the CIPD’s recent social media research revealed that two in five employers look at candidates’ online activity or profiles to inform recruitment decisions, but few inform applicants as a matter of course that this is being done. But just how aware are employers of the legalities around this kind of vetting? Managers have wide discretion within the law to decide whether or not to recruit a particular candidate, but to avoid risk of legal challenge they should be fully aware of the law on data protection and discrimination in employment. The CIPD has now published some useful guidance on what constitutes good practice. More →

December 1, 2013

Case study: dPOP’s jaw-dropping new offices light the road ahead for Detroit

by Rob Kirkbride • Case studies, Facilities management, Flooring, Furniture, Workplace design

If you think you know what’s going on in Detroit based on the stories of the city’s financial woes and pictures of some crumbling buildings, it is worth a visit to the offices of dPOP, the two month old design firm with origins in creating the award-winning office spaces for Quicken Loans and its family of companies.The design firm’s space in the basement of a long defunct Detroit bank embodies what being from the Motor City is all about — being tough, but talented; gritty yet glamorous; fun with a funky twist.They design like they don’t care what you think — and that might just be true. Their own offices and those they created for the 11,000 workers that were moved from divergent suburban sites to the center of Detroit are bold, bright and fun. Most of all fun. But the result is spectacular.