April 30, 2019

Best workplaces in London honoured at BCO annual Regional Awards

by Mark Eltringham • News, Property, Workplace design

Six London businesses celebrated success at the BCO Annual Regional Awards earlier today, with Facebook, 2TVC, Deloitte, Boden, Project North and Fora Borough all recognised as the capital’s best workplaces. The prestigious BCO Awards programme recognises the highest quality developments in the UK and sets the standard for excellence in the regional and national office sector. Today’s ceremony marked the third of the BCO Regional Property Awards dedicated to London, celebrating the best office space in the country. London winners will compete with those from other regions at the BCO National Awards in October this year.

April 26, 2019

Government announces plans to to boost digital skills for adults

by Neil Franklin • News, Technology

The UK Government has unveiled new qualifications which it claims will help to give adults the digital skills they need to succeed in the modern world. Free courses will be offered to thousands of people to help the 1 in 5 UK adults with no or low basic digital skills learn how to thrive in an increasingly digital world. The new qualifications, unveiled by Apprenticeship and Skills Minister Anne Milton, will be based on new national standards and will be available for free to anyone over the age of 19 from 2020. They have been designed to help adults learn the essential skills, such as sending emails, completing online forms or using a tablet, that many people take for granted. More →

April 26, 2019

Great expectations at work causing stress and rise in mental ill health

by Marie Hillen • Flexible working, News, Wellbeing, Workplace

Employees feel expectations at work are playing an integral role in diminishing their mental health a new report suggests, which includes increasing pressures to work outside of office hours, through annual leave and even on sick days. Westfield Health’s inaugural Wellbeing Index, which claims to shine a spotlight on stress, found 61 percent of HR professionals identified mental health related issues as the main reasons for absences within their workforces, with over half (51 percent) noticing an overall increase in sick days. ‘Leavism’ – working outside of contracted hours and on annual leave days – is also prevalent throughout the British workforce, with 67 percent in HR saying it’s a very real issue for them.

April 18, 2019

Stress in legal profession widely misunderstood, research paper claims

by Neil Franklin • News, Wellbeing

The latest Bellwether research paper titled, ‘Stress in the Legal Profession: Problematic or Inevitable’, published by LexisNexis UK claims that stress is an endemic issue in the legal profession with two thirds of respondents currently experiencing high levels of stress despite the confident ‘business as usual’ industry outlook. Almost 1 in 4 solicitors feel that more could be done to support them in the workplace although 4 in 5 report high levels of job satisfaction and 5 out of 10 consider they have a positive state of mind.

April 17, 2019

Uncertain times demand a new approach to strategic people management

by Neil Franklin • News, Workplace

Is the management of people in organisations today really about growing the long-term value of an employers’ most important asset in an increasing uncertain and skills-short labour market? Or is it more to do with continuing to drive costs down and shareholder returns up; and meeting the bare minimum standards required by legislation? The Institute for Employment’s (IES) latest research, carried out in partnership with the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD), looks at the reality of people management and comes up with some generally positive findings and conclusions. More →

April 17, 2019

What to expect and not to expect from an Office 365 intranet

by Sergey Golubenko • Company news, Technology

According to the latest report by Nielsen Norman Group, Office 365 is one of the most popular platforms for intranets. Providing a rich toolset, it helps to build multifunctional and eye-catching corporate intranets that improve employee collaboration and communication and streamline business processes. Let’s see whether an Office 365 intranet is as good as described and try to look through its reported benefits with a cool head. More →

April 17, 2019

Bristol has lowest Grade A office vacancy rate among UK largest cities

by Mark Eltringham • News, Property

Bristol has the lowest vacancy rate for Grade A offices amongst the UK’s leading Big 6 cities, reflecting strong demand combined with a shortage of high quality commercial space, according to new figures published by property consultants JLL. Although the city and region’s reputation for talent and innovation has so far countered the shortage of space, with inward investors citing access to a highly skilled, graduate workforce as one of the main reasons for relocation, JLL is warning that more needs to be done to ensure Bristol continues to attract investment. More →

April 16, 2019

UK employees work £3.2 billion in unpaid overtime every week

by Neil Franklin • News, Wellbeing, Workplace

The UK is the unpaid overtime capital of Europe. This is according to new research by ADP (registration), which has found that employees are giving away an average of £5,038 of their time every year, amounting to £164.8 billion annually across the working population. The study of over 1,400 UK employees reveals that two-thirds (66 percent) of respondents regularly work longer than their contracted hours, with respondents averaging 6.3 hours unpaid per week. However, for more than a fifth (22 percent) of employees, this rises to at least 10 hours per week – twice as many as in other European countries, including Germany and France (10 percent and 12 percent respectively). More →

April 10, 2019

Insight promotion: Sedus announces latest paradigm shift in seating design

by Freddie Steele • Insight promotion

Sedus designers and engineers have created the new se:motion, a swivel chair that works without conventional mechanics and makes ergonomic and agile work affordable to everyone. The chair marks a paradigm shift in the way chairs are designed specifically to meet the changing needs of people in the workplace. More →

April 8, 2019

Navigating organisations through digital transformation

by Ian Tickle • Comment, Technology

It’s hard to escape the digital disruption that is reshaping not only the world we live in, but the fundamental way that businesses operate. Greater levels of data exchange and automation are creating new layers of innovation, shifting functional workflows to agile systems. And to prosper in this upheaval, leaders must look at how they can support their company’s ability to adapt and identify new opportunities to embrace these changes.

April 8, 2019

Overhaul of shared parental leave is already overdue, claims TUC

by Mark Eltringham • Flexible working, News, Wellbeing

The TUC is calling for an overhaul of shared parental leave legislation just four years after its introduction. Last year only 9,200 new parents took shared parental leave – just 1 percent of those eligible to do so. The TUC believes take-up is low because the scheme is so low-paid (£145.18 per week) making it unaffordable for most fathers. It claims that large numbers of dads in insecure work, such as agency workers and those on zero-hours contracts, are not eligible for it. And currently men and women who are self-employed don’t get any shared leave rights at all. More →

April 5, 2019

The ladder of life, the death of work, the cane toad of property and some other stuff

by Mark Eltringham • Features

We start with a question. Why hasn’t the gig economy killed traditional work?, asks Greg Rosalsky and goes on to explain what many people have now realised. The answer, as Greg points out, is that the gig economy doesn’t replace traditional work, never has, and the rise of casual work of this kind has primarily been a way for people to deal with a volatile labour market and shrinking real incomes. Offer them the choice of a decent monthly income, benefits and a contract and most of them will take you up on it.