Search Results for: information

February 19, 2015

Acas publishes guidance on shared parent leave as countdown begins

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

With just eight weeks to go until new rules on Shared Parental Leave (SPL) come into force, parents with babies due on or after 5 April 2015 should now give their employers 8 weeks’ notice of the pattern of leave they intend to take. The estimated 285,000 working couples a year who are expected to be eligible can start sharing up to 50 weeks of parental leave after 5 April and expectant parents need to have that all-important conversation with their employers. Acas has published a new free guide on Shared Parental Leave to help employers and employees understand how these new changes will affect them and how to manage leave requests fairly. They advise that eligible employees and their employers need to start having early discussions about the different options available so that preparing and planning the leave is as straightforward as possible.

(more…)

February 19, 2015

UK Government announces plans to increase access to wi-fi on trains

by Mark Eltringham • Flexible working, News, Public Sector, Technology

The UK Government has announced that it is to invest £50 million in providing free Wi-Fi on a number of regional rail networks across England and Wales. The rollout will extend to Thameslink, Southern and Great Northern (TSGN); Southeastern; Chiltern and Arriva Trains Wales. In addition, all future bids for new rail franchises will have to include provisions for Wi-Fi infrastructure. The government has said it is focusing on those operators that currently have limited plans to invest in Wi-Fi infrastructure to give the greatest benefit to customers, which may explain the absence of long distance carriers. The plan is to offer greater access to free wi-fi on the country’s rail network by 2017. The money is equivalent to the amount Network Rail has returned to the Government for missing punctuality targets.

(more…)

February 13, 2015

Our personal choices can tell us a lot about the state of the economy

by Alison Kitchingman • Comment, Products, Workplace design

The announcement by Pantone that its Colour of the Year for 2014 was a muted reddish brown called Marsala was met with the annual carping about the subjectivity of the whole thing. Yet there are two things we know for sure. One is that Pantone puts a lot of time and effort into making its decision and looks at a range of social and economic factors, fashions and tastes before making its decision. The other is that this idea that you can gauge trends by tracking changes in taste has some high profile adherents. One of them is Alan Greenspan, perhaps the world’s most famous living economist, former Chairman of the Federal Reserve and a great believer in the idea that you can get a good idea of the health of the economy by looking at the length of women’s hemlines and heels and the amount of money men invest in underwear and ties.

(more…)

February 9, 2015

The open plan remains an important office design element

by Paul Goodchild • Comment, Facilities management, Workplace design

For half a century the default office design model in large parts of the world has been the open plan. Even though that continues to be the case, a growing number of voices are questioning this hegemony and suggesting there may be better ways of designing offices that balance the advantages of the open plan while eliminating or mitigating drawbacks. On the face of it, the case for working in open plan offices is clear cut. Not only are they believed to be more conducive to collaborative work, open plan workstations take up around half the space of cellular offices. As well as taking up less space, a crucial consideration is that fit-out costs are typically around 25 per cent lower, even in eye wateringly expensive commercial property hotspots such as London.

(more…)

February 6, 2015

Winners announced for first ever employee engagement awards

by Sara Bean • News, Wellbeing, Workplace

Hotel management company The Dorchester Collection has picked up The Investors in People Company of the Year Award, in the inaugural Employee Engagement Awards. Although awards programmes are as much about marketing and revenue as recognising talent and achievement, it’s clear that the launch of the first ever awards that recognise employee engagement reflects a growing realisation by employers that it’s an area to be taken seriously. As the economy improves, the labour market grows more competitive and businesses have to offer and be seen to be doing things differently, to create an engaging and rewarding working environment. Other notable winners include The University of Sheffield, which won the Wellness Award and Transport for London, for Project of the Year Award (Public sector).

(more…)

February 3, 2015

Government publishes details of UK’s digital infrastructure for first time

by Mark Eltringham • Flexible working, News, Public Sector, Technology

The UK government has today published new information about over 13,000 miles of publicly owned digital infrastructure and outlined steps to ensure that these networks are used to improve connectivity for users and businesses across the country. Each year the government claims to spend around £1.5 billion of taxpayers’ money on public sector networks, including signal masts, fibre optics, and cables but had no comprehensive database of the details of the current infrastructure. The Government now hopes that the publication of the details of the nation’s public digital infrastructure will allow its spare capacity to be used effectively, to minimise the chance that a lack of knowledge will lead to unnecessary duplication and to allow more parts of the UK to enjoy better digital coverage and enhance the benefits of flexible working.

(more…)

February 3, 2015

UK Government lays out its plans and hopes for Internet of Things

by Mark Eltringham • Facilities management, Legal news, News, Technology

Ofcom, the UK Government’s regulatory body for the telecoms industry, has published its strategy to establish the ways in which the UK can have a leading role in the development of the Internet of Things. The technology, which links objects to each other wirelessly, is already installed in some 40 million devices in the UK and Ofcom predicts this number will grow in to the hundreds of millions by 2022 with more than a billion daily transfers of information. The report is calling for a collaborative programme of work led by the private sector and government to create a regulatory and business environment that encourage the uptake of the technology and drives investment and innovation. The report lays out the key criteria needed to make this a reality and presents a range of scenarios in which the technology yields discernible benefits.

(more…)

February 3, 2015

Development of urban infrastructure held back by city leaders

by Mark Eltringham • Cities, News, Property, Public Sector

The main obstacles to the implementation of urban infrastructure are those raised by the organisations and people who do most to champion them. That is the standout finding of a new report, Urban Infrastructure Insights 2015, published by the Economic Intelligence Unit and FCC Group. The survey of more than 400 business leaders and policy makers worldwide found that a majority believe the greatest impediment to the development of urban infrastructure is a lack of will and skill amongst civic leaders and officials. Lack of political will was cited by 40 percent of respondents, alongside a lack of skills among officials (39 percent), and poor governmental effectiveness (34 percent). Lack of funds was cited by 34 percent. Policy makers were especially scathing about city leaders with more than half citing their lack of skills and knowledge.

(more…)

January 28, 2015

Digital revolution continues to transform the way we work

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

The full extent of the way digital technology is transforming British working life is apparent in new research published by Brunel University. The study – essentially a snapshot of the digital revolution in 2015 – found that 98 percent of the 830 businesses surveyed have a website, 8 in 10 manage finances online, 53 percent provide flexible working and 63 percent see innovation as a way to improve customer satisfaction. However, the study also reveals a major gulf between big business and SMEs, with larger firms significantly more digitised than their smaller contemporaries. This raises concerns over the preparedness of the SME sector at a time when the Government’s growth agenda has prioritised nurturing and supporting new and evolving enterprises – and for whom the digital battleground has broken down traditional barriers to entry.

(more…)

January 28, 2015

How well designed office hives can foster swarm intelligence

by Lee Parsons • Comment, Facilities management, Workplace design

A beehive in your back-garden is hardly ideal, nor is stumbling across an ants’ nest while searching for a picnic spot. However, these swarms have become the inspiration for a revolutionary new way of working. Swarm intelligence describes how a group of people find effective solutions to difficult problems and their ability to adapt automatically to changing environments and work as a team of equals. To get the full benefits of swarm intelligence, we need to make sure that our offices have areas where staff can collaborate. There can be no rigid structures or process chains that ideas have to go through. The flow of knowledge shouldn’t be restricted. It should be allowed to flood through our businesses and offices and take no account of whether the people sharing knowledge, ideas and opinions have been with a company for five days or five years.

(more…)

January 26, 2015

Latest figures show record last quarter for UK commercial property investment

by Sara Bean • Facilities management, News, Property

Investment in the UK commercial property sector totalled £20.5bn in the final quarter of 2014 – a 26 per cent increase on the previous quarter and the highest quarterly performance on record. The demand for Central London offices was a key driver for this as in the final quarter of the year, investment in this sector more than doubled from the previous quarter. The latest edition of Lambert Smith Hampton’s UK Investment Transactions report reveals that investment in the UK regions increased overall by 41 per cent to £21.1bn for the year as a whole – the second highest figure on record. Overseas investors continue to be the largest buyers of UK commercial property, with investment from the US more than doubling year on year and interest from the Far East also increasing significantly. Click here for more information.

January 26, 2015

Flexible working improves the quality and quantity of sleep

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

Morning Sun by Edward Hopper

Giving employees more control over their work schedules may help curb sleep deficiency, according to health researchers in the US. A team led by Orfeu M. Buxton, associate professor of bio-behavioural health at Penn State University set out to explore the question of whether family-friendly work practices and other forms of flexible working had any impact on the quantity and quality of sleep. They results are published this month in the journal Sleep Health. Of the nearly 500 employees from an IT company surveyed over a period of a year, the researchers found that employees who were able to enjoy more control over their working day also enjoyed an average of eight minutes more sleep per night than those with rigid working hours. The research also found that participants’ perceptions of their sleep quality also improved.

(more…)