Search Results for: management

December 12, 2013

US employees name top 50 firms to work for in 2014

Consultancy firm Bain & Company has topped the list of the 50 best places to work in the US. The top five companies in the annual Employees’ Choice Awards, compiled by careers specialist Glassdoor includes the three leading social media companies, Twitter, Linkedin and Facebook, which came in fifth, just behind Eastman Chemical. The Employees’ Choice Awards rely solely on the input of employees who elect to provide feedback about their job, work environment and company, via Glassdoor’s anonymous online company review survey. Employees are asked to rate how satisfied they are with their company overall, how they feel their CEO is leading the company, as well as key workplace attributes like career opportunities, compensation and benefits, culture and values, senior management and work-life balance.

December 12, 2013

Staff would “rather have the money” than endure an office Christmas party

by Sara Bean • News, Workplace

The annual office Christmas party is typically viewed as an annual treat that recognises and rewards employees – but for nearly half of the population the events are a chore more associated with drunkenness and often regrettable romantic liaisons than bonding or motivation. In a poll by serviced office provider Business Environment, one in five (20%) find Christmas parties a chore, while one in ten (13.7%) wish there would be no Christmas parties at all. Although roughly a third of people (31.6%) reported that Christmas parties helped them bond with their colleagues, and slightly more than a quarter (27.3%) reported the events make them feel rewarded for hard work, 62.2% of respondents “would rather have the money”.

December 11, 2013

Advice to Government to stick to carbon reduction budget welcomed by UK-GBC

by Sara Bean • Environment, News, Property

The Coalition must stick to agreed targets to dramatically reduce carbon dioxide emissions, the government has been told. The Committee on Climate Change (CCC), the statutory body set up to advise the government on meeting long-term carbon goals says there has been no change in the circumstances upon which the fourth carbon budget (2023 – 2027) was originally set in 2011 that would justify lowering current proposed levels of emissions cuts. Responding to Chancellor George Osborne’s request to review the carbon budget, the committee said if anything, changed circumstances point towards a tightening of the budget. Its findings were backed by the UK Green Building Council, which says that the construction and property sector has been plagued by Minister’s shifts in energy management policies.

December 10, 2013

More than half of UK’s increasingly disengaged workforce looking to switch jobs

by Mark Eltringham • News, Workplace

Staff disengagement is already costing the UK economy dear, and is also one of the reasons why nearly half of all UK employees are currently looking to leave their current jobs over the next year, a contrast of two new surveys reveals. The first report, from private healthcare provider BUPA, found that disengaged and unhealthy staff cost the UK economy around £6 billion each year. The second report from Investors in People (IIP) – a Government created business improvement agency – claims that just under half of all British employees (47 percent) are considering whether to move jobs during 2014. This represents some 14 million individuals so if you lend both reports credence, employers may have serious issues retaining their best employees as the jobs market picks up.

December 6, 2013

Businesses missing the potential of property to benefit performance says BCO

by Sara Bean • Facilities management, News, Workplace design

The UK spent an estimated £28.5 billion on offices in 2012 – outstripping business expenditure on legal services (£24.3bn), accounting (£14bn) and insurance services (£23.8bn). Yet despite this, nearly three fifths (57%) of 250 senior executives from large organisations in a recent poll said property issues are not regularly discussed in the boardroom and responsibility for property is still likely to fall outside management teams. The research, carried out by the Centre for Economics and Business Research (Cebr) and Populus, found businesses take a very cost-centric view towards the workplace. Although almost three-quarters of organisations were constantly analysing and assessing whether their space is being used efficiently, cost was still found to be the most important factor in assessing the office’s performance (73%). More →

December 6, 2013

Don’t be caught by surprise by the hidden costs of commercial property

by Richenda Oldham • Comment, Facilities management, Knowledge, Property

According to Colliers International’s recent Global Investor Sentiment Report, 2014 will see an increase in commercial property investor confidence, with 74 per cent of UK based investors saying they were more likely to risk investing across all property sectors, although offices remain the most popular category to invest in. Yet despite this vote of confidence, it seems strange to report that the real costs involved in property acquisition and maintenance, are frequently overlooked by the purchasers. It appears that businesses often have a patchy knowledge of the range of costs involved in owning or leasing commercial real estate, which is surprising when you consider that a company’s biggest single investment next to its workforce is commercial property.

December 5, 2013

New report finds lack of consensus in measurement of social sustainability

by Sara Bean • Environment, Facilities management, News

A lack of consensus on what is to be reported on and measured makes comparison difficult when measuring social sustainability. This is one of the key findings of the first annual Sustainable FM Index report, which examines how sustainability is embedded within facilities management service companies. Compiled by Acclaro Advisory, the University of Reading and Workplace Law; the index provides a comparative assessment of FM providers within the UK market. The results, which can be applied to internal and outsourced organisations, aims to showcase achievement, as well as highlighting areas of weakness to stimulate change and raise the delivery of sustainability. The companies which made the index, including Carillion, CBRE and Vinci facilities, have reported high levels of commitment to sustainability in terms of the governance, social and environmental criteria assessed. More →

December 3, 2013

Majority of businesses acquire employee data; far fewer apply it, claims report

by Mark Eltringham • Facilities management, News, Workplace

Peter Drucker’s old adage that ‘what gets measured gets managed’ may be a cliché, but it’s endured to become one because there is a lot of truth in it. Now a new report commissioned this year by recruitment consultants Alexander Mann Solutions and the HRO Today Institute has found that firms that use employee data to inform strategic decision making outperform their competitors around 58 percent of the time. Which is great except the survey of HR managers and directors at over 300 companies also found that only a third of businesses use data in this way. This is in spite of the fact that nearly all (90 percent) of companies acquire employee performance data. According to the report, Success: How metrics & measurement correlate with business, nearly a third don’t use the data in any way whatsoever.

November 28, 2013

RICS ‘Think Strategic’ campaign opens with advice to FMs on cutting costs

by Sara Bean • Facilities management, News, Property

The Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) has published the first in a series of monthly articles offering practical advice from leading industry professionals for FM practitioners. It marks the beginning of RICS new ‘Think Strategic’ campaign designed to encourage FM professionals to think and act more strategically by providing the tools to develop an FM plan that will directly feed into their wider corporate objectives. The idea is to help FM leaders demonstrate the value of the profession to business and gain a competitive advantage. Click the link Why cutting FM costs can have a business-wide impact to access the first of the articles, which are all available to download for free from the RICS website. More →

November 28, 2013

The future belongs to those who leave themselves choices of how to deal with it

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

Everybody likes to talk and read about the future. It’s one of the reasons we see so many reports about what the ‘office of the future’ will look like. Often these attempts at workplace prognosis are overwhelmingly rooted in the present which might betray either a degree of timidity or lack of awareness of just how far along their standard list of trends we really are. Even when such reports appear to be bang on the money, they tend to disregard one of the most important factors we need to consider when trying to get a handle on the future, which is the need to leave ourselves choices. This is important because not only will the future be stranger than we think, but stranger than we can imagine, to paraphrase J B S Haldane.

November 20, 2013

Lawyers often view flexible working as ‘career suicide’, claims report

by Mark Eltringham • Flexible working, Legal news, Workplace

As we reported just a few weeks ago, when it comes to implementing flexible working practices, one of the UK’s most obdurate sectors is the legal profession. While an increasing number of law firms are implementing flexible working of one sort or another, progress remains slow compared to other types of organisation and is offered primarily to certain echelons of employees. Now a new survey from commercial solicitors Fletcher Day explores the reasons for this recalcitrance and suggests that many law firms are culturally reluctant to offer flexible working, may only agree to it as a short term measure and believe that flexible working is not compatible with a successful career. This view also appears to be held by over three-quarters of the lawyers surveyed, including those who may have requested flexible working arrangements recently.

November 19, 2013

2020 vision is a useless metaphor for far-sightedness in a number of ways

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

The year 2020 is a mere seven years away. Yet the designers of the future workplace and those who invite them to talk about it are still referring to it as if it marks the next frontier of human endeavour and as if we weren’t already up to our collective armpits in the 21st century. The idea of 20/20 vision is considered, in ophthalmological circles at least, to represent “normal” visual acuity and is dependent on the sharpness of the retinal focus within the eye and the sensitivity of the interpretative faculty of the brain. In practical terms, this means it’s about seeing and interpreting what is directly in front of us at a distance of around 6 metres. So as a metaphor for farsightedness regarding the future of work or workplaces it’s always been a poor one. And as we get closer to the eponymous year, it becomes worse day by day.