Search Results for: flex

Report claims empty offices could provide 11,500 homes

by • Knowledge, News, Property

Empty officesAccording to new research from Lambert Smith Hampton, there is nearly 12m sq. ft of obsolete office space in the UK’s regional markets which the firm estimates could yield as much as 7.4m sq. ft. of space suitable for conversion to residential use under the Government’s controversial new planning rules. The researchers claim that this equates to approximately 11,500 new homes. The government has relaxed the planning systems in the UK to encourage developers to shift the use of space although critics have argued that this may serve to distort the market for property in some areas as residential properties are potentially more lucrative than commercial properties. More →

Productivity challenges of modern office workers’ email deluge

by • Facilities management, Knowledge, News, Technology, Workplace

Image credit: <a href='https://www.123rf.com/photo_16117895_heap-of-letters-in-envelopes-falling-from-screen-of-modern-metal-office-laptop-or-silver-business-no.html'>scanrail / 123RF Stock Photo</a>

Possibly the most perplexing picture of the modern office is whether technology has made it more, or less productive. New research by Warwick Business School has found that on average UK office workers deal with 40 emails a day and one in 12 with 100 messages a day, which can’t be good for productivity. Meanwhile another piece of research by psychologists at the University of Chester reveals the somewhat unsurprising fact that an over reliance on social media reduces the ability to maintain ‘meaningful’ relationships due to a lack of visual emotional cues – which could further cast doubts over the efficacy of remote working. More →

One St Paul’s offices attracts “new type” of City tenant

by • Architecture, Facilities management, News, Property

One St Paul's

A marketing campaign aimed at attracting non-traditional City occupiers appears to have paid off, with the entire 60,000 sqft office element of One St Paul’s in the City of London being let to a single tenant. Genesis Oil and Gas Consultants Ltd has agreed a 15-year lease for all six storeys of bespoke office space, and will  take possession upon handover of the building works during the summer of 2013, with the aim of moving its headquarters in the autumn. The deal marks the culmination of AXA Real Estate’s reworking of the property as a major mixed-use redevelopment scheme. More →

Winners announced for 2013 real estate thought leadership

by • Environment, Facilities management, News, Property

CoreNet Global 2013 Awards for Industry Excellence, Economic Development and Sustainable Leadership:

An organisation that helps businesses set up or expand their offices in the San Francisco Bay Area and Google’s campaign to source more sustainable building materials are amongst the initiatives which have been recognized in CoreNet’s awards for Industry Excellence, Economic Development and Sustainable Leadership. Fidelity, Panasonic, Google, the Brick City Development Corporation and the San Francisco Center for Economic Development are all named as winners for three annual best practices awards by the corporate real estate (CRE) and workplace association. The awards are presented each year to industry leaders who demonstrate best-in-class practices in advancing corporate real estate thought leadership. More →

Public sector property initiatives have proved successful but work still needed

by • Comment, Facilities management, Knowledge, Public Sector, Workplace design

Gorilla-in-a-hat1There was a time, not so long ago, when nobody worried too much about the shape of the rooms that led off the corridors of power. But the pressure on UK finances has politicised the design of the UK’s public buildings. The latest example of this was the recent  announcement  in Parliament of a report that, amongst other things, called for a new approach in the way facilities are designed to deliver better services in a more cost effective way. The report Restarting Britain 2: Design and Public Services was the result of an eight-month investigation led by the Design Commission along with politicians, designers and civil servants. More →

Rigid attachment to best practice “killing” talent management

by • Knowledge, News, Workplace

KPMG talent management white paper

A rigid attachment to ‘best practice’, rather than a focus on business needs, is preventing many organisations from unearthing and nurturing staff to drive their business forward and the danger of such an inflexible approach is killing organisations’ ability to properly manage talent. According to Anna Marie Detert, KPMG’s UK Lead for Talent – a tendency to copy or adopt the latest fad or fancy must be challenged if employers are to understand the talent they truly need to succeed, and plan effectively to find and keep it.  More →

New research from China highlights benefits of working from home

by • Facilities management, Knowledge, Workplace, Workplace design

CTripA new report from researchers at Stanford Graduate School of Business and the Guanghua Management School at Beijing University looking into the experience of working from home at one large Chinese firm has found that the practice led to a 13 per cent increase in productivity. The research also found that workers reported increased levels of job satisfaction and half elected to continue working from home when the choice was given to them at the end of the study period even though it was evident that their chances of promotion on the basis of performance had reduced as a result of the experiment. More →

Will an upturn spark a revival of interest in the idea of employer branding?

by • Facilities management, Technology, Workplace, Workplace design

Employer brandingYou may recall that a few years ago there was a voguish interest in the idea of employer branding. This is the kind of thing that has always gone on but can always be defined and popularised,  in this case following the publication of a book on the subject in 2005. By 2008 Jackie Orme, the head of the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development, was calling it ‘an integral part of business strategy’. Still, it appears to have dropped off the radar a bit over the last few years, a fact we might put down to the effect of the recession. Firms certainly seem to have their mind on other things. Research published last year by PriceWaterhouseCoopers showed that  in 2009, 54 per cent of businesses said they placed a special focus on retaining talent. By 2012 that had dropped to 36 per cent. More →

Global wellness hampered by lack of staff participation

by • Knowledge, News, Workplace

Fat worker1

The latest in a surfeit of surveys into employee wellness has found that wellness programmes may be firmly on the global business agenda, but there remains a major problem in persuading the most unfit and least healthy members of the workplace to participate.  A whopping 95 per cent of organizations say they are implementing a wellness strategy, but according to the 2013 Global Workplace Health & Wellness Report, by Global Corporate Challenge (GCC) employee participation is another matter, with wellness initiatives achieving less than 20 per cent participation on average, well short of organizations’ 60 per cent participation goals. More →

Video: Forget Yahoo – why telecommuting is good for your business

by • Comment, Facilities management, Workplace, Workplace design

  [embedplusvideo height=”157″ width=”230″ standard=”https://www.youtube.com/v/R2whPdnCGrM?fs=1″ vars=”ytid=R2whPdnCGrM&width=230&height=157&start=&stop=&rs=w&hd=0&autoplay=0&react=1&chapters=&notes=” id=”ep4389″ /]   Think you’ve seen every possible angle on the recent Yahoo-ha about flexible working? Maybe not because here’s a unique take on the subject courtesy of the guys at MinuteMBA. We’d like to invite somebody to animate the other side of the argument but while we can be certain that nearly everybody thinks they are a writer these days, the skill of animation is not so easily taken for granted.

Survey: Work and poor management biggest cause of stress

by • News, Workplace

Stress-300x193Work is the most stressful factor in people’s lives with one in three people (34 per cent) saying their work life was either very or quite stressful – and the top cause (32 per cent) is frustration with poor management. Research commissioned by Mind found work more stressful than debt or financial problems (30 per cent) or health (17 per cent).  However, employees don’t believe that managers are actively tackling causes of stress in the workplace, with only one in five people saying they felt their line manager took active steps to help staff manage stress (22%) or mental health conditions (19%). More →

Half of workers feel pressured to come to work when ill

by • Knowledge, News, Workplace

 

Staff ill health

You’ve nearly made it through the week and feel like rewarding yourself with a duvet day? Think again, the more realistic picture is you’ve a horrible virus but have staggered into work regardless, rather than risk the wrath of a disbelieving boss. New research this week found that nearly half of all workers feel pressurised to come into work by their line manager when they are ill. “Under Pressure” from Adecco Retail also found that far from “shirking from  home”, a third of the 1,000 people interviewed (31 per cent) feel expected to carry on working from home even when sick. More →
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