Search Results for: management

April 9, 2014

The Wall Street Journal (and others) are wrong about human resources

Everybody ready? Great. Then it’s time for another round of HR bashing and a tipping point for more existential navel-gazing for everyone’s favourite corporate pantomime villain – the human resources department. Or is it? You can choose your own particular moment at which the crowd boos and hisses at the bad guys in HR, but hot on the heels of the Lucy Adams debacle at the Beeb and a report that finds human resources to be the profession with the most “can’t do” attitude comes an article from, of all places, the Wall Street Journal that looks at what it means to do away with your HR function altogether. The restrictions of the word count being what they are, coupled with the way sweeping generalisations provide the quickest way to guarantee a bump in readership, the WSJ takes the broadest of brushes to add another coat to the painting of HR as an ancillary function that, far from oiling the wheels of commerce, is often a distraction at best and, at worst, an active obstruction.

April 3, 2014

Remove flexible working stigma to improve women’s career chances says report

by Sara Bean • Comment, Flexible working, News, Workplace

Employers need to stop viewing female progression as a diversity issue and see the promotion of women in the workplace as a core business priority. This is according to a major new report by charity Opportunity Now, which surveyed 23,000 women between the ages of 28 and 40 as well as 2,000 men, to try and determine why women tend to be less successful than men at work after the age of 28, The report found a gap between organisational policies and the actual experiences of women at work, particularly women aged 28-40, including real challenges around bullying and harassment. And in a challenge to proposals for female-only programmes, the research found that women actually want better line management and initiatives such as flexible working – without the stigma it can cause which can often be an obstacle to progression.

March 31, 2014

Consultation opens on changes to construction project safety

by Sara Bean • Facilities management, News, Property

A consultation on changes to the way safety on building projects is managed has opened today. The ten week consultation is being carried out by the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) on proposals to replace the Construction (Design and Management) Regulations 2007 (CDM 2007). These currently apply to all construction work in the UK, and cover construction, alteration, fitting-out, commissioning, renovation, repair, upkeep, redecoration or other maintenance, decommissioning, demolition or dismantling. Key changes being proposed include the replacement of the CDM co-ordinator role with a principal designer role within the project team; introducing a duty on information, instruction, training and supervision to replace the duty to assess competence; removal of the domestic client exemption and transfer of these limited duties to the contractor/designer; and the replacement of the ACoP with tailored guidance. More →

March 27, 2014

Design of the Year shortlist contrasts what is practical with what is possible

by Simon Heath • Architecture, Comment, Workplace design

A great many of us pay architecture and design very little attention until it’s too late and we’re confronted with the workings of a mind that doesn’t consider whether just because we could really means we should. The kind of mind that designs a building that melts cars on the street or one with wind turbines that are so noisy they can’t be turned on. And so this week sees the announcement of nominees for the Design Museum Designs of The Year awards. It’s a studiedly eclectic list. In amongst the Lego calendars and texting fire alarms we also find a mobile gaming app designed to be used over many centuries (it is impossible to finish it in your lifetime, natch) that, it says here, “questions the inevitability of death, the meaning of legacy and the nature of progress”. I’ve searched for signs that this might be satire without success. However, we’ll focus our consideration on the nominations for designs for the built environment. More →

March 25, 2014

The workplace should be designed for (and by) people, not robots

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

From existential and dystopian fears expressed through books and films, we have long had an uneasy relationship with the idea of automatons and artificial intelligence. The UKCES saw robotics and automation as significant enough to include in it’s recent report on the future of work and the risks to jobs are very real based even on the more widespread adoption of the technologies already available to us. The possibility that many people may cease to have any economic value is a challenge we seem ill-equipped to meet. As ever, the web giants are leading the charge with Amazon prototyping delivery of packages by the kind of drones more commonly used over the tribal badlands of Afghanistan, as well as Google’s recent purchase of Boston Dynamics, makers of military-spec robots. The people behind the algorithms that gave us the unintentional hilarity of Google Suggest are now branching to create the sort of killer robots produced by OmniCorp in the Robocop movies.

March 25, 2014

Robotic managers likely to lack empathy and forget ethics, claims CMI report

by Mark Eltringham • Workplace

A new report into the judgements of managers has concluded that they are significantly more prone to responding in a ‘robotic’ way to moral questions than the general population, relying on handed-down rules rather than their own ethical standards. The report, Managers and their Moral DNA, was commissioned by the Chartered Management Institute (CMI) in conjunction with personality testing website Moral DNA. It found that nearly three quarters of managers (74 percent) lack empathy and do not fully consider the moral consequences when they take decisions, which is 28 percent higher than the general population. The report also claims that managers are 4 percent more compliant with rules and 5 percent less caring in their ethical decision-making at work than in their personal lives, a figure that tallies with other results from the Moral DNA database according to the report’s authors.

March 19, 2014

Employers say improved morale has helped reduce staff absences

by Sara Bean • Flexible working, News, Workplace

A third (34%) of UK employers have seen their absence rates improve over the last 12 months and almost two thirds think this is due to improved morale in the workplace. The new research, from trade body Group Risk Development (GRiD), echoes that of recent ONS Labour Market statistics which showed that UK sick days were down by 47 million since 1993. The employers polled also revealed they have better measures in place to reduce absence and improve attendance; with more than two in five employers (44%) using return-to-work interviews, 36 per cent having flexible working initiatives and 26 per cent having disciplinary procedures in place for unacceptable absence. Employers are also feeling more confident about working with fit notes, with 40 per cent saying they feel they can work with the advice given. More →

March 11, 2014

Building Futures Group announced following merger of FM bodies

by Sara Bean • Facilities management, News, Property, Public Sector

The name of the new organisation resulting from the merger of Asset Skills, the CSSA and the FMA is the Building Futures Group. Talks regarding the merger of the groups began last May, and despite the BIFM pulling out of the discussions in August the rest of the groups have gone ahead to form the new representative organisation for the Housing, Property, Planning, Cleaning, Parking and Facilities Management sectors. The new group has also announced Sarah Bentley of Asset Skills as its Chief Executive. She said: “The rationale for the merger was that the industry lacked a consolidated, unified voice. The Building Futures Group will coordinate the sector’s voice and provide a platform that has been so sadly missing. We are fully committed to raising the profile of the industry and transforming the sector”. More →

March 11, 2014

A field guide to workplace terminology (part 2)

by Simon Heath • Comment, Facilities management

A year ago we published the first part of Simon Heath’s acid lexicon of the terms people use to obscure the reality of what it is they actually mean. Part One can still be read here. While much has changed over the past year, we are fortunate that Simon’s corrosive, witty and informed take on corporate bullshit, and especially that applied to the parochial field of workplace design and management remains constant. He’s part of a long tradition of those who apply satire to skewer logorrhea, doublethink and obfuscation, the best example of which remains Ambrose Bierce’s Devil’s Dictionary which is quite remarkably caustic and spares no one. First published in 1881 it maintains much of it power and topicality, for example in its definition of Conservative as: “a statesman who is enamored of existing evils, as distinguished from the Liberal, who wishes to replace them with others.”

March 10, 2014

International Women’s Day: odds still stacked against women in the workforce

by Sara Bean • Flexible working, News, Workplace

The 110^th International Woman’s Day took place this weekend, and, aside from highlighting the continuing struggles of women across the world, comes research that reveals how in this country, the odds are still stacked against women at work. More than four in 10 (42%) women aged between 18-34 said they have personally faced a gender barrier, followed by 34 per cent of those aged between 35-54 and 26 per cent of women aged 55 and over. Of those women who have experienced inequality at work, over a third (35%) say they believe male colleagues at the same level earn more than they do. Thirty one per cent indicate they are assigned work that is below their level and are therefore unable to demonstrate their abilities, while almost one in five (19%) say that junior colleagues don’t take instructions from them, but will do from male colleagues of equal seniority. More →

March 6, 2014

Business continuity report confirms technology still biggest threat to firms

by Mark Eltringham • News, Technology

Forget the recent UK floods. When it comes to risks to their businesses, it’s still tech that keeps business leaders awake at night, according to the latest annual Business Continuity Institute Horizon Scan report. Technology related threats continue to rank higher than natural disasters, security and industrial action according to the report which gauges the threats that organisations consider to be their biggest concerns. Nearly four-fifths of business leaders fear that an unplanned technological event, cyber attack or data breach will harm their business. Nearly three quarters (73 percent) consider malicious attacks through the Internet a major threat that needs to be managed closely, while nearly two-thirds (63 percent) think that social media remains a challenge. Meanwhile, one of last year’s threats – supply chain resilience – dropped out of the top ten completely.

March 3, 2014

‘Big Data’ is shaping the human experience within buildings

by Sara Bean • Environment, Facilities management, News, Technology

As the cost of implementation comes down, the same “Smart” technology that is harnessing the predictive power of “Big Data” to help solve congestion problems in cities is being more routinely deployed in buildings. The Changing Face of Smart Buildings: The Op-Ex Advantage, published by Jones Lang LaSalle, explains how bringing a Big Data analytics-based approach to facilities management can increase employee comfort, engagement and productivity; whether helping organisations adapt more readily to supporting flexible workplace practises or using sustainability as a hook for engaging employees. In one notable example; by adding smart building components to a major Empire State Building energy refit, real-time energy displays enable tenants to better monitor and control their energy consumption, and even compete with other tenants in the landmark building to achieve energy savings. More →