Search Results for: flexible working

November 20, 2014

Gender pay gap at lowest point in history, reports ONS

by Sara Bean • Flexible working, News, Workplace

The gender pay gap is now at its lowest point in history, with more women in work than ever before. According to new statistics by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) the pay gap has reduced by 0.7 percentage points over the past year to 19.1 per cent, and for those in full-time work the gender pay gap has reduced to almost zero for those under 40. Action is being taken to tackle one of the reasons for the pay gap – career breaks, often to raise a family by extending flexible working to all employees, and from next year, tax-free childcare and shared parental leave will come into effect. However, one of the main causes of the gender pay gap is that men tend to work in better paid sectors to women so a range of measures are being introduced to help women move from low-paid, low-skilled work into higher paid, higher skilled work. This includes a new £2 million training and mentoring programme of events for women, including those working part-time and older workers, to be carried out by the UK Commission for Employment and Skills. This will target women working in the science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM), retail and hospitality management and agricultural sectors.

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October 31, 2014

UK Government announces new research programme into workplace wellbeing

by Mark Eltringham • News, Public Sector, Workplace, Workplace design

The UK Government’s interest in what makes us happy continues unabated with the news that it has officially launched its new What Works Centre for Wellbeing. The centre will commission researchers to study ‘the impact that different interventions and services have on wellbeing’. It will focus initially on work and learning, communities, cultural and sporting activities. It claims that the results of the research will help the government, councils, health and wellbeing boards, charities and businesses make decisions on what ‘really matters for the wellbeing of people, communities and the nation as a whole’. The centre is the latest addition to the What Works Network, which was launched by the government last year to improve public services through evidence-based policy. It builds on the work of the Office for National Statistics which has been tasked with measuring national wellbeing, and of the Commission on Wellbeing and Policy.

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October 27, 2014

Majority of UK SMEs believe technology can help rebalance the economy

by Mark Eltringham • Flexible working, News, Technology

The UK’s small and medium sized businesses believe that the regional divide in the economy can be bridged to a large extent by technology, according to a new report from Brother UK. According to the report, Regional Attitudes to Growth and Competitiveness, carried out in conjunction with Cardiff University and based on a survey of 600 SMEs around the country, over half (57 percent) believe technology was the key driver of their region’s competitiveness and only one in ten say the competitiveness of their region has declined since the start of the recession. Over two thirds (71 percent) believe technology can improve regional competitiveness and slightly more (73 percent) believe it’s possible to service customers and clients across multiple regions efficiently from their current location. The survey also claims that because each company spends an average of 244 working days a year on business travel and the UK has the second highest annual business travel spend of any Western European nation, despite its comparatively small size, many firms are turning to technology to enhance their competitiveness.

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October 27, 2014

Over 50s have highest rate of long term unemployment

by Sara Bean • Flexible working, News, Workplace

More than a million people over 50 have been pushed out of the workplace a new report from The Prince’s Initiative for Mature Enterprise (PRIME) has revealed. Up to 1.5 million people aged 50-69 “involuntarily” left employment over the last eight years due to a combination of redundancy, ill health or “forced” early retirement. Of these, 1.1 million people would be willing to work. Yet if the employment rate of this 50–64 age group matched that of the 35–49 age group, it would boost UK GDP by £88 billion (5.6%). The report: ‘The missing million: illuminating the employment challenges of the over 50s’ was produced by PRIME, now part of Business in the Community, in collaboration with The International Longevity Centre (ILC), the leading think tank on longevity and demographic change. The report explores the employment challenges facing older workers and calls for urgent action from policy makers and employers to ensure that people over 50 remain in the labour market, for example through flexible working and retraining. (more…)

October 24, 2014

No natural light in almost half of European offices, finds report

by Sara Bean • Environment, Facilities management, Flexible working, News, Workplace design

Almost half (42%) of European office employees have no natural light in their working environment, over half (55%) don’t have access to any greenery and 7 per cent have no window in their workspace. Yet according to the findings of The Human Spaces Report, commissioned by Interface and led by Organisational Psychologist Professor Sir Cary Cooper, European employees who work in environments with natural elements report a 13 per cent higher level of well-being and are 8 per cent more productive overall. With nearly two-thirds (63%) of EMEA office workers now based in either a town or city centre and spending on average 34 hours per week in the office, their interaction with nature is becoming increasingly limited. Yet despite city dominated lives, the research found workers have an inherent affinity to elements that reflect nature. Flexible working was a surprisingly low preference, with just 11 per cent of workers choosing a space that suits their needs as their productive way to work.. (more…)

October 23, 2014

Half of women would consider remaining childless rather than risk career

by Sara Bean • Flexible working, Legal news, News, Workplace

The expansion of flexible working rights was not only intended to improve workplace wellbeing and productivity, but encourage mothers to remain in the workforce. But it seems there is much work to be done to convince women that work and motherhood can mix. New research from the Association of Accounting Technicians (AAT) has found that half of women believe that having a baby poses such a risk to their career that they would consider remaining childless. The survey among women of childbearing age also found that two-thirds of women (67%) are concerned about the impact that having children might have on their career and half of the women who don’t currently have children (49%) feel their current career doesn’t offer them the flexibility they would need to care for a family. Over half of mothers (55%) admitted that balancing childcare and work has been a barrier to staying in work, with one in five (20%) stating that a lack of support from their employer has made life as a working mum more difficult. (more…)

October 20, 2014

If you want to reduce the cost of your office, move to a creative area

by Maciej Markowski • Comment, Facilities management, Property, Technology

Clerkenwell Design Week

“First we shape our buildings, thereafter our buildings shape us.” Winston Churchill, House of Commons opening speech. Buildings do indeed shape us, but what seems to affect us even more is the neighbourhood. It’s the immediate environment as opposed to buildings that is much harder to create. It needs numerous factors to influence it, among them the two most precious components– the right people and enough time. Politicians all over the world dream of creating zones that will draw the most innovative companies. But it seems that most of them grow organically – the Silicon Valley in California, the Silicon Alley in New York and the Silicon Roundabout in London. The combination of low rents, proximity to the centre of a dynamic metropolis and interesting culture made the East London neighbourhood of Shoreditch, Clerkenwell and Aldgate a perfect magnet for some of the world’s most exciting companies. So should you think about relocating there too? Here are some things to consider. (more…)

October 15, 2014

UK Government agency offers employers new guidance on BYOD

by Mark Eltringham • Flexible working, Legal news, Technology, Workplace

The UK Government’s National Technical Authority for Information Assurance (CESG) has updated its official guidance on BYOD (Bring Your Own Device), one of the most widely discussed workplace technology phenomena. While it’s tough enough for everybody else to keep up with the personal and cultural implications of technology, the slow but exceedingly fine grinding mills of Government can find it almost impossible to keep up. In an accompanying statement the CESG claims the update is essential because of the rapid uptake in flexible working in the UK and the associated increase in the use of personal mobile devices in a work context. The new guidance suggests that employers should consider the development of a formal BYOD policy, understand relevant legal issues and their potential consequences, manage information and the way it is shared and plan for inevitable security breaches.

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October 10, 2014

Case study: A public sector building that lights the way ahead for others

by Mark Eltringham • Case studies, Facilities management, Public Sector, Workplace design

The new offices of Wiltshire County Council, Trowbridge

Last year, I had the pleasure of producing a case study of the new offices of Wiltshire County Council for Mix Interiors magazine. Given that the building was this week shortlisted for the Prime Minister’s Better Public Buildings Award and had already won an award from the BCO, we thought this seemed a good time to retread its corridors of power…. The recession has led the UK government to develop a number of new approaches to public sector buildings. But some of the UK’s local authorities are way ahead of the new thinking. Even so, there 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 public finances has politicised the design of the UK’s public buildings, with the government launching a wide range of initiatives to improve the efficiency of the way public sector acquires, designs and runs the places it calls home.

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October 7, 2014

Workers struggling to balance home and work, according to CIPD report

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

The UK’s workforce is struggling to find the right balance between their work and domestic responsibilities according to the latest Absence Management report from the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development. The report also suggests that, although overall absence levels are falling, much of this is down to people going into work when they perhaps shouldn’t with a third of employers reporting presenteeism. Stress and mental health problems in the workplace also remain high, with more than 40 percent of employers citing an increase, despite signs of economic recovery. One area in which absenteeism is rising is workers taking time off to care for children and elderly or disabled relatives and friends. More than a third of those employers surveyed reported an increase in absence levels amongst staff who are struggling to cope with their caring responsibilities outside of work. However only a sixth of employers have policies in place to provide a better level of support.

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October 6, 2014

A feeling of togetherness is essential and motivating, so why would we kill off the office?

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

It is still depressingly commonplace to read proclamations of the death of the office. These are usually appended to some survey or other about the rise of flexible working or a case study of a workplace devoid of desks (or, more likely, one in which none are pictured). Of course, the actual conclusion we can draw from such things is that the office as we once knew it is now dead or mutating into something else, but that’s true for every aspect of modern life. The constant factor that ensures offices will always exist, in some form or other is the human they serve. We know that because, as Tom Allen proved at MIT in the 1980s, people communicate less well the greater the physical distance between them. Now new research from Stanford University shows how the very idea of ‘togetherness’ can have a significant impact on the way people perform. The study, by researchers Priyanka Carr and Gregory Walton was published in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology and concluded that ‘social cues that signal an invitation to work with others can fuel intrinsic motivation’.

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October 3, 2014

Julian Assange escapes incarceration to take part in conference as a hologram

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

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We have grown accustomed to the way technology distorts time and space. This, after all, is the underlying tension that defines each of the major debates about the workplace, including flexible working, office design, facilities management and the acquisition of commercial property. But, as they say, we ain’t seen nothing yet as the next generation of technologies starts to scale the upslope of the diffusion of innovation curve. People have been talking about telepresence for a little while, but it is about to achieve mainstream awareness thanks to events such as the appearance of Wikileaks Founder Julian Assange at a conference in the USA last week. Assange is famously holed up in London in the Ecuadorian Embassy, challenging his extradition to Sweden to face trial and can’t leave the building without being arrested. So the way he appeared at the conference in Nantucket was as a hologram.

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