Search Results for: flexible

February 5, 2016

Employers believe Millennials are the most demanding workers ⁰

by Sara Bean • Comment, News, Wellbeing, Workplace

It seems unfair to brand Millennials difficult, when you consider they are the less experienced generation of workers, but new research suggests they require more hand holding in the workplace. When asked about workers they’ve dealt with, 48 percent of bosses felt that millennials were more reliant on detailed targets and required regular progress meetings in order to stay motivated. However, the majority of bosses (89 percent) agreed that these demands indicated that millennials were highly career driven. Over one third (39 percent) named generation X as the most self-sufficient, as this group required less guidance, with Baby Boomers a close second (34 percent). Millennials were also cited as the generation most incentivised by reward and praise (41 percent), followed by Generation X (26 percent), Baby Boomers (22 percent) and Generation Z (11 percent), while Generation X had the biggest desire for a work life balance (37 percent).

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February 2, 2016

Stress is now a fact of life for the vast majority of employees ⁰

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

Excessive stress threatens the wellbeing of employees across the UK and the rest of Europe, with 88 percent of British workers regularly experiencing stress at work, according to research by payroll software firm ADP. Nearly half (43 percent) of UK employees go further to say that stress is a constant factor in their roles and that they feel stressed ‘often’ or ‘very often’. In fact, just 12 percent of employees feel that they never experience workplace stress while 79 percent of UK workers feel that their employer is trying to help them manage stress levels. The report, The Workforce View in Europe 2015/16, surveyed 11,257 working adults across Europe, including 1,500 employees in the UK. It found that many employees now believe flexible working will help them deal with stress and achieve a better work life balance while over three-quarters (79 percent) of UK respondents feel their employer is trying to help them manage stress.

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January 28, 2016

The future of next generation TMT workplaces explored in new report ⁰

by Mark Eltringham • News, Property, Technology, Workplace design

A new report from property adviser Cushman & Wakefield claims to outline the key future property trends for TMT workplaces based on the views of decision makers from global Fortune 500 organisations, architects, designers, founders of start-ups and high-growth businesses. The Future of the TMT Workplace report produced in association with Unwork, identifies the key forces ‘driving change and necessitating TMT players to fundamentally rethink their workplace strategies’. These include frictionless growth, engineered serendipity, the ‘gig’ economy, the pace of technological change, demand for top technological talent far outstripping supply and where to locate in order to succeed.At this week’s launch event for the report, a panel of expert speakers agreed that workplaces have a critical for TMT firms to respond to challenges such as the need to attract the most talented tech workers.

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January 25, 2016

Families struggle for work life balance despite changing gender roles ⁰

by Mark Eltringham • Flexible working, Wellbeing, Workplace

A new report published today by the charity Working Families and nursery provider Bright Horizons suggests that parents are at greater risk of burn out as they strive for work life balance, with fathers at increasing risk as a result of their changing roles and expectations. The Modern Families Index is an annual study that explores how working families manage their work-life balance. This year’s report claims that nearly half (42 percent) of Generation Y fathers (born after 1980) feel burnt out most or all of the time, compared to just 22 percent of Gen Xers aged 36 to 45 and 17 percent of baby boomers aged over 45. The report claims that a growing number of fathers are now facing the same challenges and life choices most commonly ascribed to mothers. The study found that in half (49 percent) of the 1,000 couples surveyed, both parents were working full time. The figure rose to 78 percent for those in their twenties or thirties.

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January 25, 2016

Fourth industrial revolution + UK’s best employers + Big data and design ⁰

by Sara Bean • Facilities management, Flexible working, Newsletter, Property, Wellbeing, Workplace, Workplace design

In this week’s Insight newsletter; Mark Eltringham says work is still good for us; but five million jobs could disappear worldwide over the next four years in the fourth industrial revolution; and 40 percent of young workers believe their current job could be replaced by automated systems. More than half of US firms still allow smoking in the workplace; over a third of UK employers have introduced flexible working to reduce absenteeism and British firms lead the top UK employers list. Digitisation still has a largely positive effect on our working lives; and a huge surge in the availability of Big Data infrastructure in EMEA countries predicted over the next four years. And regional office take-up reaches 20 percent above the five year average. Download the latest issue of Work&Place and access an Insight Briefing produced in partnership with Connection, which looks at agile working in the public sector. Visit our new events page, follow us on Twitter and join our LinkedIn Group to discuss these and other stories.

January 22, 2016

New smart working code of practice launched by BSI and Cabinet Office ⁰

by Mark Eltringham • Facilities management, Flexible working, Legal news, News, Public Sector

We’ll return to this in detail next week, but yesterday the business standards company BSI working with the Cabinet Office launched a new code of practice on Smart Working. The Smart Working Code of Practice, BSI Publicly Available Specification (PAS3000) has been designed to support organisations in implementing smart working principles. The Cabinet Office sponsors it on behalf of the Smart Working Charter Steering Group of industry, academia, institutions and other public sector bodies. According to the Cabinet Office, the code brings together best practice from across the world and across disciplines and will enable organisations to move from principles to standards and benchmark themselves against high performers in smart working. At the launch, the organisers also announced the second annual The Way We Work (TW3) Awards, a Civil Service programme recognising government teams that have created smarter ways of working.

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January 19, 2016

Fourth industrial revolution will result in five million job losses by 2020 ⁰

by Mark Eltringham • Flexible working, News, Technology

Disruptive global employment trends, including flexible working, the rise of robots, other forms of automation and Big Data analytics will see over five million jobs disappear worldwide over the next four years, a new report claims. The World Economic Forum’s Future of Jobs report has calculated that current disruptive labour market trends, including improvements in artificial intelligence, cloud technology, the Internet of Things and flexible working arrangements, could lead to a net employment loss of more than 5.1m jobs in the 15 countries surveyed. The report estimated that new trends would result in a total loss of 7.1m jobs – two thirds of which are concentrated in the office and administrative functions – and a total gain of 2m jobs. The WEF surveyed those who it felt were best placed to observe the dynamics of workforces including heads of HR departments and CEOs in 15 developed and emerging economies.

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January 18, 2016

Firms demanding more data about workplaces…and they’re about to get it ⁰

by Mark Eltringham • News, Property, Technology, Workplace design

Companies are increasingly focussed on generating workplace data as they seek to make better decisions about the ways their real estate supports their key organisational objectives. That is one of the key findings of the latest European Occupier Survey from property consultants CBRE (login required). The good news (or bad news, depending on your point of view) is they’re about to get it in spades, according to another study from researchers International Data Corporation which found that there will be a huge surge in the availability of Big Data infrastructure in EMEA countries over the next four years. The acquisition of data about buildings and their inhabitants remains a troublesome issue, especially when executives do things like introduce sensors to monitor working patterns of employees without their knowledge, as bosses at The Telegraph found in a very public way recently.

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January 14, 2016

UK workforce is on the brink of a mass exodus of senior staff ⁰

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

Despite government warnings of a looming skills shortage there remains a strong societal pressure for older workers to leave the workforce at state pension age. In a poll of 2,001 British adults by Randstad, three quarters of respondents report feeling this pressure, with 32 percent of respondents saying the pressure is ‘significant’. Only one in six workers (17 percent) feel there is no pressure. More than a third of workers (35 percent) plan to retire early as they feel “like they won’t be wanted in the workforce when older” – and a small but significant proportion of workers (7 percent) plan to retire early because they are worried about age discrimination. Keeping older workers says the report, requires initiatives like increasing the availability of flexible working and rolling-out phased retirement programmes, as well as a wider effort to publicise these efforts and change the attitudes of older workers.

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January 12, 2016

A cynic’s field guide to workplace terminology, part three ⁰

by Simon Heath • Comment, Facilities management, Technology, Workplace, Workplace design

A New Year and a new chance for some people to heap more fresh corporate bullshit onto the already steaming pile. No matter how often writers like the ever excellent Lucy Kellaway mock and deride the propensity of people in organisations to apply cliches and nonsense in lieu of thought and imagination, we have to face an annual fresh tide of drivel and lazy thinking. So predictable is this yearly onslaught, that it appears to now be a subject for trendspotters, as a recent feature in The Telegraph highlighted. Of course, this is just general corporate speak and does not even begin to scratch the surface of what we have to endure in the more parochial world of workplace design and management. Which is why I have produced the latest update to my continually expanding lexicon of regrettable workplace terminology. You can read parts one and two here and here.

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January 12, 2016

‘Barrier Bosses’ preventing progress in gender equality despite wide support ⁰

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

More men than women believe that equality between the sexes would be better for the UK economy and themselves. Yet despite finding a clear desire for equality, the forthcoming ‘Sex Equality – State of the Nation’ report by the Fawcett Society reveals that there are still significant barriers to progress that need to be overcome. Overall men are more likely to support equality of opportunity for women than women, with 86 percent of men wanting this for women in their lives, compared to 81 percent of women wanting it for themselves. But the survey identified two major barriers to progress – firstly a small but powerful group of ‘barrier bosses’ responsible for recruitment decisions, and secondly the fact that most people believe that men at the top won’t voluntarily move over for women. This year the Government plans to implement Section 78 of the 2010 Equality Act which will require all employers of over 250 people to publish their gender pay gap.

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January 6, 2016

Two new studies that highlight the complexities of gender at work ⁰

by Mark Eltringham • Comment, Knowledge, News, Workplace

The increasingly complex nature of the career and workplace choices made by men and women and the specific challenges they face is the subject of two pieces of research presented at this week’s British Psychological Society’s Division of Occupational Psychology annual conference in Nottingham. The authors of the admittedly small scale studies conclude respectively that men in what are generally considered typically female-dominated occupations tend to value the social aspects of their career more than financial rewards and that ambitious professional women would benefit from a better understanding of how to build, maintain and use their social capital to succeed in their attempts at reaching the top of their professions. Both topics have been raised before but it’s interesting to see yet more research which challenges the often overly simplistic assumptions that seem to go hand in hand with gender issues at work.