Search Results for: employee

September 2, 2015

We need to do more than pay lip service to workplace wellbeing ⁰

by Ann Clarke • Case studies, Comment, Wellbeing, Workplace design

Too many companies continue to talk about employees as their ‘greatest asset’ yet their fine words are not always not borne out in their behaviour, be that through working culture, remuneration or environment. With more and more investors using employee wellness and engagement as a barometer for the health, stability and culture of the business – the concept of workplace wellbeing is finally garnering the attention it deserves. Our workplace behaviours, cultures and environments are not keeping us fit, well, productive, happy or profitable. Finally businesses are accepting their moral responsibility to take better care of their people. So what affects employee productivity, creativity and happiness and how can changes to the workplace promote the best financial and moral outcomes for businesses and employees alike?

September 1, 2015

Government announces plans to improve national levels of fair pay ⁰

by Sara Bean • Legal news, News, Workplace

A package of measures designed to improve levels of fair pay have been announced by the Government today; including doubling the penalties for non-payment of the National Minimum Wage and the new National Living Wage; increasing the enforcement budget and setting up a new team in HMRC to take forward criminal prosecutions for those who deliberately do not comply. A new team of compliance officers in HMRC will investigate the most serious cases of employers not paying the National Minimum Wage and National Living Wage when it is introduced in April 2016. This team will have the power to use all available sanctions, including penalties, prosecutions and naming and shaming the most exploitative employers. Employers who fail to pay staff at least the minimum wage they are legally entitled to will have to pay double what they do now.

August 31, 2015

Lack of flexible working cost firms £1.5 million during tube strikes ⁰

by Mark Eltringham • Flexible working, News, Technology

The strikes by London Underground workers over the past two months have cost UK businesses some 1.5 million working hours because they did not have the flexible working policies and systems in place to allow them to adapt. According to a study of 1,000 employees from comms provider MeetingZone, just nine percent of firms offered staff the chance to work from home. Nearly three quarters (72 percent) of respondents said they felt let down by their employers’ policies and response to the strikes. The lost working time cited by the report has been calculated on the basis of people arriving late for work. Almost half of respondents claimed they were up to an hour late arriving at work on the days of the strikes with two-thirds (66 percent) claiming they were an average of 38 minutes late. A further two strikes are planned for 8 and 10 September.

August 28, 2015

Mind research reveals relentless email checks extend to toilet breaks ⁰

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

There have been quite a number of polls over the summer warning of the dangers of presenteeism and overwork; but the latest one from Mind does make for uncomfortable reading. It has found that more than 1 in 7 of people (15 percent) who receive work emails sometimes check them while in the toilet and nearly 2 in 5 (38 percent) of those who receive work emails admit that they often check them outside of work. Only half of respondents (50 percent) say that their manager respects that they have a life away from work. As well as having personal lives interrupted, the survey found that this relentless email-checking culture is making it difficult for workers to switch off when they should be preparing for sleep and the mental health charity warns a culture of working round-the-clock is making it difficult for people to achieve a healthy work/life balance.

August 28, 2015

The reason offices will always be needed is tied up with human nature

by Nigel Sikora • Comment, Flexible working, Technology, Workplace design

People have a tendency to confuse what is possible with what will happen. This appears to be a particular issue when we consider the effects of new technology. Hence the enduring talk of the death of the office, which technology makes possible but which people make impossible. One of the key areas of research that describes this tension is the work of Tom Allen at MIT. Allen made his name in 1984 with the publication of a book called Managing the Flow of Technology which first popularised the Allen Curve, a graph of his research findings which shows a powerful negative correlation between physical distance and the frequency of communication between colleagues. So precisely can this be defined, that Allen found that 50 metres marks a cut-off point for the regular exchange of certain types of technical information.

August 26, 2015

Women in full time work earn 22 percent less than men, claims study ⁰

by Mark Eltringham • Legal news, News, Workplace

Women managers are effectively working for free nearly two hours every day, according to a report into the gender pay gap from the Chartered Management Institute and Xpert HR. The report draws on a survey of 72,000 UK managers published which found that women working in full-time roles earn 22 percent less than men, which the authors claim means they are ‘unpaid’ for 1h 40m a day. According to the analysis of the data from the 2015 National Management Salary Survey, for men and women of all ages and in all professional roles the pay differential now stands at an average of £8,524, with men earning an average of £39,136 and women earning £30,612. In 2014, the gap stood at £9,069, or 23 percent. The difference rises to £14,943 for senior or director-level staff, with men earning an average of £138,699 compared to the average for women of £123,756.

August 25, 2015

The long hours culture may be making us unwell and less productive ⁰

by Mark Eltringham • Flexible working, News, Wellbeing, Workplace

We should have worked out by now that long hours and productivity are not the same thing. It’s been a long-standing issue in the UK where people manage to combine some of the longest working hours in Europe with levels of productivity that fall habitually some way behind those of our partners on the mainland. Over the past couple of weeks a couple of reports have been published which not only make the point that the long hours culture and an obsession with work may actually be reducing our productivity and even harming us physically, emotionally and psychologically. The range of ailments associated with the dysfunctional ways we work include stress, stroke, deep vein thrombosis, relationship breakdown, a range of infections and feelings of isolation. The question they posit is whether it’s all worth it, especially if we’re not getting as much done as we’d like to think.

August 19, 2015

Home-workers are happier, healthier and more productive than ever ⁰

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

Home-workers are more productive, happier and more capable of attaining a healthy work/life balance than those who work in an office, claims a new survey. Around 84 percent of home-workers believe they are equally or more productive then their office-based colleagues; and over three quarters (77 percent) of the UK’s working population agree that working from home has a positive impact on productivity. The survey of 1,800 professionals from CV library found that 18 percent work from home, with a further 15 percent splitting their time between home and the office, and the data shows that flexible working hours contributes to increased productivity (28 percent and 26 percent respectively). Although well over half (66 percent) of home-workers believe they work longer hours, more than three quarters (83.2 percent) find it easier to manage a good work/life balance.

August 14, 2015

Apathy, laxity and ineptitude continue to dog data security issues ⁰

by Mark Eltringham • Flexible working, News, Technology

How firms must hanker for the days when the issue of corporate data security could usually be addressed simply by asking what somebody had in their bag when they left the building or were fired. Amongst other things, the practice of Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) means that the ways for data to leak out of the organisation are now numerous, if not generally malicious. A new cluster of reports has emerged that highlight how carelessness, indifference, cultural ineptitude and the complexities of unmanaged, privately owned technology make it increasingly difficult for firms to maintain the security of their data. While some of the sources of this leakage are generally well known, a couple that are not generally acknowledged is the apathy of employees when it comes to keeping work files safe and secure and the lax attitude of employers when breaches occur.

August 13, 2015

Take-up of sit-stand desks still lagging in UK, but change is coming fast ⁰

by Mark Eltringham • Furniture, News, Wellbeing, Workplace design

The number of UK employers offering staff sit-stand workstations remains sluggish, despite rapidly growing awareness of their benefits, according to a new study from office furniture firm Kinnarps. Compared to the near universal provision of sit-stand desks in Scandinavia, and in spite of the fact that UK buyers now universally acknowledge what they can do to improve employee wellbeing, the UK market has yet to fully adopt workstations that encourage more active working. Based on a study of 132 senior decision makers, facilities managers, designers and HR managers, 98 percent of respondents say they can see the attraction of introducing sit-stand working, citing improved health (73 percent), increased productivity (11 percent) and attracting and retaining talent (5 percent), among the principal benefits. Yet only 8 percent say that such workstations are ‘widely available’ in their workplaces.

August 11, 2015

Regional differentiations as job pay gap accelerates worldwide ⁰

by Sara Bean • News, Workplace

Since 2008 the pay gap between lower level employees and senior managers has widened in every region across the world, a global survey has found. The pay gap between lower level workers (comprising skilled manual, clerical, supervisor or graduate entry jobs) and senior managers (heads of departments or equivalent) is now on the rise in as twice as many countries as it is falling (42 to 21). The latest research from global management consultancy Hay Group reveals however that Europe has the smallest gap, with an average increase in the pay gap of only 2.2 percent since 2008. This has been fuelled in part by the use of communal pay cuts to avoid redundancies, whereas US firms prefer to cut jobs and urge remaining senior managers to expand their job roles. The research underlines how a large job pay gap can lead to discontent and disengagement among the workforce.

August 5, 2015

Proofs of the link between workplace design and productivity? Here are three

by Charles Marks • Case studies, Facilities management, News, Wellbeing, Workplace design

Three new studies have joined the already extensive body of work linking workplace design and productivity. The most extensive is the research carried out by communications consultancy Lansons which looks at every aspect of the British workplace to uncover the experiences and most commonly held perceptions of around 4,500 workers nationwide. The study is broken down into a number of sections which examine topics such as workplace design, wellbeing, job satisfaction, personal development and leadership. The second is a study from the Property Directors Forum which explores the experiences of occupiers and finds a shift in focus away from cost reduction and towards investing to foster employee productivity. The final showcases the results of a post occupancy survey conducted by National Grid following the refurbishment of the firm’s Warwick headquarters by AECOM.