Search Results for: management

August 17, 2015

What Edward T Hall (and Jerry Seinfeld) can teach us about stress and design

by Mark Eltringham • Comment, Facilities management, Workplace, Workplace design

Work-related stress is the biggest cause of working days lost in the UK. According to the HSE’s most recent statistics, around 11.3 million days were lost to it in 2013/14, the most significant cause of absenteeism. The reasons for this are clear in the minds of many: the demands made on us by employers are increasingly intolerable, our own time is being eroded by work, we spend too much time at work, we’re under excessive pressure to perform and as a result we’re all either knackered, unfulfilled, stressed, depressed or anxious. Or guzzling a noxious cocktail of all of them. But there is another factor that has come into play over the last few years. As workstation sizes have contracted in response to new technologies and new space planning models, people have been forced closer to their colleagues, meaning that not only has their time been eroded, so has their space.

August 14, 2015

Far from being on board, older women still face recruitment bias ⁰

by Sara Bean • Comment, News, Workplace

The news that the Davies review has met its 25 per cent target for female representation on boards, and is now considering setting a target that a quarter of executives at FTSE 100 companies should be female, has been met with approval by the Institute of Directors, which said it was right that the focus is on increasing the number of women in senior executive positions. But what about those further down the salary scale, where many older women struggle to even get a job interview? A recent study carried out by Anglia Ruskin University’s Lord Ashcroft International Business School shows that older jobseekers face widespread discrimination in the UK, with older female applicants more likely to experience bias than men. The study found no significant link between a company having a HR department or providing commitments to equal opportunities, and the level of discrimination it displayed.

August 11, 2015

Regional differentiations as job pay gap accelerates worldwide ⁰

by Sara Bean • News, Workplace

Since 2008 the pay gap between lower level employees and senior managers has widened in every region across the world, a global survey has found. The pay gap between lower level workers (comprising skilled manual, clerical, supervisor or graduate entry jobs) and senior managers (heads of departments or equivalent) is now on the rise in as twice as many countries as it is falling (42 to 21). The latest research from global management consultancy Hay Group reveals however that Europe has the smallest gap, with an average increase in the pay gap of only 2.2 percent since 2008. This has been fuelled in part by the use of communal pay cuts to avoid redundancies, whereas US firms prefer to cut jobs and urge remaining senior managers to expand their job roles. The research underlines how a large job pay gap can lead to discontent and disengagement among the workforce.

August 6, 2015

Government publishes details of £118 bn pipeline of construction projects ⁰

by Mark Eltringham • Facilities management, Knowledge, News, Property, Public Sector

The UK Government, in conjunction with construction industry data specialist Barbour ABI, has published a full detailed list of around £118 billion of publicly funded building projects scheduled for the next five years. You can find the pipeline as a spreadsheet here, with the data broken down by sector and including some basic data for each project. The Government has also introduced a dedicated website with details of the projects with updates to the raw data available via both the central government website and at data.gov.uk. The government construction pipeline is now updated twice a year which the Government claims will ‘extend its reach beyond the major construction spending departments and improve the integrity of the data’ and demonstrate its commitment ‘to continuous engagement with industry and government clients on current use and future improvements’.

August 5, 2015

Using office relocation as a vehicle for positive organisational change ⁰

by Lee Parsons • Comment, Facilities management, Workplace, Workplace design

The impact of office relocation can no longer be solely measured in immediately tangible terms. This doesn’t mean market factors can be dismissed, especially given CBRE’s recent announcement that office vacancies are at an all-time low while rents skyrocket and favourable terms for tenants erode. However, in an era where 67 percent of workplaces cite employee attraction and retention as the most important driver of their workplace design, and 46 percent cite productivity, the human factor also can’t be ignored. If such CBRE statistics aren’t challenging enough, there are also the realities of the modern workspace to contend with, such as creating an environment that suits generations of employees. It’s these human impacts that drive the importance of workplace design and urge top-flight businesses to use office relocation as a vehicle for positive change. Here are some of the latest findings.

August 3, 2015

More evidence of people’s growing inability to simply go on holiday ⁰

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

If you’re reading this on holiday this week, don’t. Life’s too short. Go jump in the pool or something…. For everybody else, a slew of surveys have been published over the last few weeks that confirm something that we may already know; we are finding it increasingly hard to forget about work, even during our supposed time off and many people are forgoing holidays altogether, although not necessarily because they’ve forgotten about the off switch on their smartphone. We reported recently on one of these, from the Institute for Leadership and Management, but three more have passed over our desks over recent days. With the usual caveat about vested interests, the studies, from the TUC, alldayPA and public sector members club CSMA all confirm not only how prevalent this form of presenteeism is, but also how harmful it can be to ourselves and employers.

July 29, 2015

Public sector lagging behind in use of technology and flexible working

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

As we reported last week, the UK public sector is embracing some interesting new ideas in the way it uses real estate, especially its commitment to get rid of some of it by adopting flexible working and shared space. However, it’s one thing looking to use space in more flexible ways but without the technological infrastructure, it’s hard to see how they will be able to achieve as much as they could. It is in this regard that they are lagging behind their contemporaries in the private sector, according to a new report from O2 and YouGov. While the report, Redefining selling, serving and working, offers up the usual appeals for us all to make more use of the sorts of things O2 wants us to buy, there is plenty of interesting detail to tease out once the pinch of salt has been applied, not least how business practices and the way people use technology vary across sectors.

July 28, 2015

Millennial ‘job hopping’ is the new normal according to US research

by Sara Bean • Flexible working, News, Workplace

Following a recent survey claiming that Millennials comprise more than one-in-three US workers, comes new evidence on the impact this could have on recruitment and retention. Over 1,000 US full-time Millennials who were questioned on their careers by RecruitiFi confirmed that ‘job hopping’ had become the norm. During the course of their careers, 53 percent have held three or more jobs. And while many have plans to stay in their current jobs for 3-5 years (33 percent), many respondents plan to leave after 1-2 years (20 percent). 34 percent acknowledged falling levels of employee morale in the office and 22 percent explained that their clients/customers have taken notice. While 83 percent of millennials acknowledge that job hopping on their CV could be negatively perceived by employers, 86 percent say that it would not prevent them from pursuing their professional or personal passions.

July 22, 2015

Workers of all ages want employers that commit to digital progress

by Sara Bean • News, Technology, Workplace

Employees across all age groups want to work for businesses committed to digital progress, and companies that are slow to embrace digital technology will not thrive and are more likely to lose talent, according to a new global report. Strategy, Not Technology, Drives Digital Transformation from MIT Sloan Management Review and Deloitte Digital is based on findings from the fourth annual global survey of more than 4,800 business executives across 27 industries and 129 countries. It suggests the ability to digitally transform and reimagine a business is determined in large part by establishing a clear digital strategy, supported by leaders who foster a culture that can change and reinvent their organizations. People want to work for digitally maturing organizations, with nearly 80 percent of respondents preferring to work for a digitally enabled company or digital leader. This sentiment crossed all age groups nearly equally, from 22 to 60.

July 21, 2015

Neocon highlights four of the world’s most important office design trends

by Neil Franklin • Comment, Events, Workplace design

We live in the Global Village, Marshall McLuhan’s idea from 1962 of an electronically contracted world in which attitudes, cultures and our political, business and legislative framework begin to pull together. Yet each nation is shaped by little differences. That is why the comedy programme The Office found an audience on both sides of the pond, but one that needed Wernham Hogg in Slough to become Dunder Mifflin in Scranton, Pennsylvania for it to work for the local audience. The central idea of the show has a universal appeal but needs a local voice. And what is true for The Office with a big O is also true for the office with a small o. This was the takeaway conclusion of a series of events staged in London and Manchester last week by Milliken and Humanscale. The touchstone for these events was a debate about the main conclusions of of June’s Neocon.

July 20, 2015

Majority of women do not feel they are discriminated against at work

by Mark Eltringham • Flexible working, News, Workplace

The overwhelming majority of women do not feel they face discrimination at work, according to a new report based on data from 170,000 UK workers. However, the study from the Great Place to Work Institute does identify a number of challenges that women face at work. The report – Women at work. Is it still a man’s world? – highlights the need for employers to pay closer attention to the specific differences between men and women’s experiences at work, rather than just focusing on overall results. The authors suggest that ‘this will help to identify and address any inequalities such as making pay and promotions more transparent and ensuring policies and practices are gender and age relevant’. The study makes clear that it is the combination of age and gender that presents the greatest challenges, especially in ensuring diversity in senior roles.

July 17, 2015

Do we really think the future of work involves our replacement by robots?

by Simon Heath • Comment, Flexible working, Technology, Workplace

A report published recently by my former colleagues at CBRE called “Fast Forward 2030: The Future of Work and the Workplace” claims that by 2025 so many people will be more interested in being happy and having creative roles that up to 50 percent of current occupations will be defunct. 35 years elapsed between the release of Orwell’s 1984 and the eponymous year and very little of Orwell’s dystopian vision came to pass. 2030 is a scant 16 years away so, even if one takes the exponential pace of change into account, it’s perhaps a bit of a stretch to think robots will have taken their seat at the table in quite the way we appear to think they will. Also unchanged one assumes are the attitudes of those who have a vested interest in the status quo or in dictating where the benefits of change will fall.