Search Results for: financial

Rising demand for Grade A office space helps sustain Edinburgh commercial property market

Rising demand for Grade A office space helps sustain Edinburgh commercial property market

by • Cities, Coworking, Facilities management, News, Property, Public Sector

State Street Bank at Quartermile 3 EdinburghTechnology, media, and telecommunications (TMT) companies are continuing to play a prominent role within Edinburgh’s office market, accounting for approximately 30 percent of transactions in the city. But rising demand for Grade A office space in Edinburgh by a variety of organisations, including coworking,  private and public sector tenants has fuelled significant occupier demand during the first quarter of 2018, according to analysis by property consultancy, Knight Frank. The latest commercial property figures show approximately 460,000 sq. ft. of new occupier requirements came onto the market in the first three months of the year from companies looking to lease office space in Edinburgh. (more…)

UK enjoys largest jump in productivity for a decade but challenges remain

UK enjoys largest jump in productivity for a decade but challenges remain

by • News, Workplace

Britain’s economy enjoyed uncharacteristically solid productivity growth in the last three months of 2017 to record its strongest six months in more than a decade, new official figures show. Economic output per hour worked rose by 0.7 percent in the fourth quarter of 2017 – above its long-run average though marginally less than estimated in February – and the third-quarter figure was revised up slightly to 1.0 percent. Together they show the strongest growth since the second half of 2005. British productivity has largely stagnated over the past decade and is commonly seen as a chronic challenge. Over the past 10 years Britain’s productivity growth has been the weakest since modern records began and appears to be the slowest since the early 1820s. Overall output per hour, a driver of living standards, is only 1.8 percent above the pre-financial crisis peak it reached at the end of 2007.

 

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Quarter of people are ready to welcome robots as our new overlords

Quarter of people are ready to welcome robots as our new overlords

by • AI, News, Technology

Around a quarter of British people would happily replace MPs with robots, according to a study of 6,000 individuals from Reboot Digital Marketing and  Mindshare. The surveys asked people whether they would prefer machines or humans in eight different occupations and scenarios. It found that when making car comparisons with the intention to eventually purchase, a significant percentage of Brits would want robots (60 percent) aiding them instead of humans (40 percent). Thereafter, Brits would be most inclined to accept music and film recommendations from artificial intelligence at 49 percent – though 51 percent would still opt to do so from other people. Even though most respondents (75 percent) would still prefer humans to be MP’s, 25 percent would elect robots to be in this position of power.

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Take up of shared parental leave is held back by cultural inertia

Take up of shared parental leave is held back by cultural inertia

by • Comment, Flexible working, Workplace

A recent report by the House of Commons’ Women and Equalities Committee, Fathers and the workplace, has brought into sharp focus the problems fathers have juggling participation in family life with their employment obligations. We are moving away from the traditional gender stereotypes of the father being the breadwinner and the mother being responsible for childcare. Today, many families have two parents in either full or part-time work, with dual income households being far more common now than just 30 years ago. The pace of technological change and the growing gig economy have both contributed significantly to this shift in working patterns. As a result, some of the UK’s laws are becoming outdated, as many laws were formulated on the assumption that it would usually be the woman within a family who would have responsibility for childcare.

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With a year to go, occupiers are less concerned than they were about the impact of Brexit

With a year to go, occupiers are less concerned than they were about the impact of Brexit

by • News, Property

Occupiers are less concerned about Brexit than they were a year ago, according to a new CBRE research survey of over 100 major occupiers across Europe, most of whom have pan-European or global operations. By late 2017, the proportion of European occupiers worried about Brexit having a ‘very significant’ impact on their operations in the UK had dropped from 15 percent to 6 percent compared with a year earlier. The proportion of occupiers worried about Brexit having a ‘significant’ effect has also fallen, from 38 percent to 33 percent, meaning that the number of occupiers worried about negative impacts from Brexit has fallen in total from 53 percent to 39 percent. A year to the day on which Britain aims to exit from the EU, global real estate advisor CBRE has published an updated guide unpicking some of the key real estate impacts of Brexit.

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UK Government shrinks size of its estate for eighth consecutive year

UK Government shrinks size of its estate for eighth consecutive year

by • News, Property

The size of the UK government’s estate fell for the eight consecutive year in 2017, according to the annual State of the Estate report. The Cabinet Office’s report found that the government reduced its land holdings by more than 1m sq ft over the period 2016-2017, netting the government £620m in capital receipts and slashing running costs, which the Government claims is a direct consequence of its use of mobile technology and workplace design. The report outlines the property disposals in 2016/2017, which included the sale of its stake in the King’s Cross Central development and the 70-acre Sunningdale Park estate. The aim of the divestment programme is to generate £5bn in receipts and sell enough land for 160,000 homes by 2020. In the first two years of the Asset Efficiency programme, £1.66bn has now been raised in capital receipts from disposals, according to the report.

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Flexible working and the rise of coworking reducing demand for London office space

Flexible working and the rise of coworking reducing demand for London office space

by • Coworking, Flexible working, News, Property

The number of new office buildings constructed since the financial crisis in 2008 has fallen in a year on year comparison by 56 percent, according to an analysis of planning applications carried out by property lending platform Lendy. The authors claim that the primary reason for the sharp decrease has been the greater uptake of flexible working and coworking models of space use. According to the study, only 2,300 applications to build new office buildings were approved last year, down from 5,200 in 2007/8. Lendy adds that applications to build new offices have also fallen since the financial crisis – down 58 percent to 2,500 last year from 6,000 in 2007/08.  Flexible working has reduced the requirement for new office buildings. Other innovations, such as shared workspace and coworking, have reduced the need for employees to have their own dedicated workspace, according to the report.

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Gender pay gap could in part be due to women’s lack of confidence in seeking job progression

Gender pay gap could in part be due to women’s lack of confidence in seeking job progression

by • Legal news, News, Workplace

Gender pay gap could be due to women’s lack of confidence in seeking job progression

A new survey that confirms the ongoing gender pay gap with stats that show men are paid 42 percent more than women after ten years in workforce, goes on to suggest that the reason is not just to do with a lack of diversity but the attitude of women moving up the corporate ladder. The report from Adzuna claims that British men are significantly more confident than women in furthering their career. The career progression confidence gap between the genders widens greatest with those who have more than ten years’ experience in the workplace, with men twice more likely than women to hold a top job. The research analysed 500,000 CVs submitted through Adzuna’s ValueMyCV tool, comparing the gender and estimated pay grade with number of years’ experience in each respective industry. The research also highlights a disparity in the average salary commanded by men and women for the same position with the same number of years in experience.

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Activity and a positive attitude are best treatments for back pain, claims major new study

Activity and a positive attitude are best treatments for back pain, claims major new study

by • News, Wellbeing

Although lower back pain is the leading cause of disability worldwide, affecting an estimated 540 million people at any one time, it is often mistreated, according to a new series of papers in The Lancet medical journal. The series provides evidence that back pain should be managed with activity, in the workplace and in primary care. However, a high proportion of patients worldwide are treated in emergency departments, encouraged to rest and stop work, are referred for scans and surgery or prescribed pain killers including opioids. The authors claim this is at best pointless and at worst harmful. Exercise and psychological therapy are the only things that work for the majority of cases of chronic back pain but too many people wrongly believe the idea that rest is best for the condition, according to the authors. The series of papers also concludes that job satisfaction and a positive attitude are among the strongest indicators of how well people will overcome chronic back pain and related issues.

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There are at least some reasons to be optimistic about the UK’s tech sector post Brexit

There are at least some reasons to be optimistic about the UK’s tech sector post Brexit

by • Comment, Property, Technology, Workplace design

Making detailed predictions about the economic consequences of Brexit has proved a mug’s game many time over the past couple of years. The most accurate summation of what is happening might be ‘mixed’. Most recently, a report from the CBI has highlighted the resilience of many sectors while bemoaning a lack of skills in the economy. Meanwhile former Commercial Secretary to the Treasury Lord O’Neill also recently conceded that the UK economy had been more robust than he had expected following the Brexit vote, which he attributed primarily to the thriving world economy. An argument almost immediately dismissed by the economist Ruth Lea writing for the LSE, who put forward a more nuanced and mixed explanation. The same picture of tempered resilience is also evident in specific sectors, and especially those that were seen as the most likely to feel the consequences of the Brexit vote, including London’s crucial tech sector.

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Rigid cultures, lack of vision and poor tech are main barriers to workplace agility

Rigid cultures, lack of vision and poor tech are main barriers to workplace agility

by • News, Technology

A new study commissioned by Ricoh Europe claims to reveal the factors that European business leaders believe are keeping them from achieving workplace agility. The list is topped by regulation (39 percent), lack of investment in new technologies (37 percent) and inescapably rigid internal hierarchies (35 percent) according to the 2,140 business leaders surveyed. These barriers limit what the report calls ‘the fluid, agile nature of a digitally empowered workplace that enables companies to quickly capitalise on changes in the market’.

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Four UK cities ranked in Europe’s top ten most attractive locations for businesses and employees

Four UK cities ranked in Europe’s top ten most attractive locations for businesses and employees

by • Cities, News

London has been ranked as Europe’s most attractive city for businesses and employees for second year running according to Colliers International’s latest European Cities of Influence report, which reviews and ranks cities based on their occupier attractiveness, availability of talent, and quality of life factors alongside economic output and productivity; Paris, Madrid, Moscow and Birmingham making up the rest of the top five. The report claims that the UK remains a highly desirable destination for capital and occupiers, largely driven by its ‘magnetism as a centre of diverse high-quality service sector talent’, which is in turn is helping to drive economic output and productivity. Other UK cities which score in the top 10 include Birmingham (5th), Edinburgh (7th) and Manchester (10th).

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