February 23, 2022

We need a growth mindset for buildings to make them adaptable

by Matthias Rebellius • Comment, Environment, Property, Technology

The world is in a race. And it’s a race against time – against rising sea levels, overcrowded cities, and a virus that has shown us a thing or two about being adaptable. Although the current developments around infection rates and the omicron variant are cause for hope that the virus will soon become endemic, the experience of the last two years have emphasized something important: There is an urgent need to transform infrastructure across different dimensions – one of which is the physical space: the changing needs and expectations of people in their buildings, factories, facilities, offices and homes call for adaptability. (more…)

February 14, 2022

Record pay rises on the cards to address tough recruitment conditions

by Neil Franklin • News, Workplace

Employers anticipate offering record pay rises of 3 percent in 2022 as they look to combat increasing recruitment and retention difficulties. This is the headline finding from the CIPD’s latest quarterly Labour Market Outlook, which highlights the scale of the growing challenge facing organisations in finding and keeping staff, and how they are responding. This quarter’s pay award figure is the highest since the survey was conducted using its current methods in the winter 2012/13 report. The Labour Market Outlook surveyed more than 1,000 employers in January 2022 about their hiring, pay and redundancy intentions for the first quarter of the year. (more…)

February 11, 2022

Wellbeing strategies often fail to align with business objectives

by Neil Franklin • News, Wellbeing, Workplace

Employers feel far more responsibility for employee health and wellbeing than ever, yet formalised strategic action often remains unchanged, claims Aon’s UK Benefits and Trends Survey 2022. The report suggests there has been a significant increase over the last year in the number of employers that strongly agree they have a responsibility for the health and wellbeing of their employees, rising from 20 percent in 2021 to just over half of all respondents (51 percent) in 2022. Forty-four percent agree they have a responsibility, and just 5 percent disagree or have no view. (more…)

February 8, 2022

The office sector needs to develop better arguments for its products

by Mark Eltringham • Comment, Flexible working, Property, Workplace design

The distillation of every received and laundered idea of the past two years leads us here. A claim from Gallup that in future just over a third of the desks in offices will be empty. Whatever Gallup thinks, this is great news for the office sector. One of the truths the office sector hasn’t always liked to talk about too much over the last few decades is that in a typical office over that period, around half of the desks have already been empty. (more…)

February 8, 2022

New business climate demands agility from managers, report claims

by Jayne Smith • Business, News

A new report, The Big Reset Playbook: Change Agility (registration) from work trends analyst The Josh Bersin Company, claims that traditional approaches to change management have often fallen short of expectations, and that new workplace practices based on agility are now needed to manage change in a new business climate. According to the report ‘businesses are looking to tackle the challenge of managing change in a new reality that includes the shift to hybrid working, globalization and The Great Resignation’. The research claims that in companies that successfully manage change, leaders and high performers reinforce the company’s mission and purpose, explain how their reinvented business models work, create cross-functional teams to design and implement change, and maintain forward momentum. (more…)

February 4, 2022

Want people to return to the office? Then create the best office in the world

by Mike Hills • Features, Wellbeing, Workplace design

More obituaries have been written for the office in the past two years than at any time in history. It has often seemed like even the best office in the world couldn’t preserve the idea of the office. And it’s not like the obituaries were all that rare even before the pandemic forced us to reappraise our relationship with work and the times and places we do it. While all these death notices were being served, one particularly well-informed organisation was making some more interesting observations about it all. In particular, it constantly raised the most fundamental question of all. (more…)

January 18, 2022

Firms need to do more to engage, attract and retain staff

by Neil Franklin • Flexible working, News, Workplace

Over 40 percent of employers are finding it more difficult to retain and recruit staff, according to Aon’s Benefits and Trends Survey 2022 (registration). The report claims that many employers have adjusted their benefits strategies to address an intense labour market, in which employee work motivations have shifted in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. Forty-one percent of employers said they have found it more difficult to retain staff in the last year, while 44 percent have found it more difficult to recruit new staff. Many employers anecdotally expressed in the survey that they need to pay higher salaries or sign-on bonuses to entice new recruits. (more…)

January 18, 2022

Cities need to open themselves up to Nature, report claims

by Jayne Smith • Cities, Environment, News

Cities contribute 80 percent to global GDP – but they also account for 75 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions. Integrating nature-positive solutions can help protect cities from growing risks associated with extreme weather while driving sustainable economic growth, according to a new study from the World Economic Forum. In collaboration with the Alexander von Humboldt Institute and Government of Colombia, WEF’s BiodiverCities by 2030 Initiative published a report addressing the urgency of cities’ untenable relationship with nature. The Initiative’s goal is to reverse this existential global threat and move forward with a plan that will result in cities and nature co-existing in harmony by the end of the decade. (more…)

January 17, 2022

Is your office worth the journey it takes to get to it?

by Despina Katsikakis • Comment, Flexible working, Property

A couple of years ago, in the wake of a surge in self-care start-ups and viral diet fads, Forbes declared 2019 as the year of the “wellness revolution”. Three years and a global pandemic later, the revolution appears to have swept our offices. Why? Quite simply, we have woken up to the fact that we could be productive remotely, while also realising the risks of not accommodating employee wellbeing in the office. (more…)

January 14, 2022

Social media posts are harming many people’s job prospects

by Neil Franklin • Jobs, News, Workplace

With the ‘Great Resignation’ driving people to look for new employment opportunities in the New Year, social media activity could be harming career prospects, with a third of British workers (32 percent) reporting this to be the case, according to new data from Kaspersky. This number rises to almost half (47 percent) of those at graduate or entry level. In addition, 40 percent worry that their historic online presence could have an adverse effect on their future employment. (more…)

January 13, 2022

Stress of pandemic has brought people closer, claims Microsoft

by Neil Franklin • Flexible working, News, Technology, Wellbeing

Microsoft’s new Work Trend Index Special Report, entitled “Technology Can Help Unlock a New Future for Frontline Workers”, suggests that 78 percent of frontline workers in the UK claim to feel “very bonded” to co-workers because of shared stress brought on by the pandemic and the shift to new ways of working. (more…)

January 7, 2022

Mitsui Fudosan UK and EDGE partner to acquire prime Shoreditch development site

by Freddie Steele • Company news

The approximately 1-acre island site, which sits in close proximity to the new Liverpool Street Elizabeth Line station, is the first acquisition for the newly set up joint venture between Mitsui Fudosan U.K. Ltd. (“Mitsui Fudosan UK”), the European operation of Japanese real estate developer Mitsui Fudosan, and European sustainable real estate pioneers, EDGE. (more…)