Search Results for: management

January 6, 2017

Thirteen ways the physical environment shapes knowledge management

by Agustin Chevez and Laurie Aznavoorian • Facilities management, Premium Content, Work&Place, Workplace design

Knowledge management (including its creation, transference and storage) within an organisation is now widely considered to be one of the primary drivers of a business’s sustainability. Driven by changing demographics, businesses are recognising the ways in which valuable knowledge is lost when employees leave the organisation, including when they retire or are made redundant in response to changing economic conditions. Geyer, an Australian design practice, is just one organisation that has undertaken important research to understand the role of the physical environment in knowledge management.The aim of the research was to explore the kinds of environments and their attributes (if any) that could support the management of knowledge in an organisation. The research also aimed to expand the focus of existing knowledge management literature; from information technology to workplace design.

November 21, 2016

Ethics a grey area for staff, when management fails to lead by example ⁰

by Sara Bean • News, Workplace

A third of people have taken a sick day in the last two years when they weren’t really ill, and one in 10 said that every sick day they’ve taken in the last 24 months has been false, a new study of British workers claims. And men are more likely than women to take a sick day when they’re not genuinely sick (36 percent of men compared to 30 percent of women). The survey of 2,000 employed adults in the UK also found that 36 percent would rather work for a company that paid them more, over one whose ethics they agreed with. Fifty-six percent of people in the study would continue to work for a company that avoided paying tax, and 14 percent said they currently work somewhere with managers or senior staff members that they believe are dishonest in their company’s tax returns. Yet despite all of this, nine out of 10 people say they do uphold ethical standards in their workplace.

October 25, 2016

How tech giant EMC standardised the design and management of its office portfolio ⁰

by Cathy Hayward • Case studies, Facilities management, Features, Workplace design

This summer’s headlines have been full of discord, a cacophony of angry voices either directed at continental Europe, or at the Brexiters who voted for Britain to leave the European Union. But EMC, a global leader in information technology-as-a-service which has recently been acquired by Dell, is a leading light of European integration through its One Team approach to workplace management and design across Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA). Over the past three years, the EMC Global Real Estate and Facilities Team (GREF), which supports more than 12,000 people in around 130 office locations across 50 countries in EMEA, has transformed from a group operating independently, to a fully-aligned team which provides a uniform and standardised approach to workplace delivery and management to enable greater business success.

July 13, 2016

World FM Day and the workplace design and management elephant

by Mark Eltringham • Comment, Events, Facilities management

There is an ancient Asian parable which has found its way into a number of cultures including Hindu and Buddhist lore. In one version, the Buddha tells of a king who has nine blind men summoned to his palace. An elephant is brought in and they are asked to describe it. Each man feels a different part of the elephant and describes it to the king. In turn they tell him it is a pot (the man who feels the head), a winnowing basket (ear), a ploughshare (tusk), a plough (trunk), a granary (body), a pillar (foot), a mortar (back), a pestle (tail) or a brush (tip of the tail). They disagree violently with each other to the amusement of the king, and the Buddha surmises that ‘in their ignorance they are by nature quarrelsome, wrangling, and disputatious, each maintaining reality is thus and thus.’ Around 2,500 years later, groups of people continue to describe big things solely based on the bits with which they come into contact and bicker with others who are close to other bits.

July 6, 2016

Ability to meet failure with resilience is a vital management skill ⁰

by Sara Bean • News, Wellbeing, Workplace

The political fallout since the Brexit vote has left many feeling that the UK’s politicians could do with brushing up their leadership skills and prompted debate on whether some of those whose ambitions have been derailed might bounce back. A timely report from the Chartered Management Institute offers advice on the management skills they might need to employ in times of uncertainty. The report claims that within the world of business, unsupportive cultures leave managers to struggle with the fall-out from crises. Most managers (94 percent) have faced crises during their career, but only half (55 percent) have handled them professionally, according to Bouncing Back: Leadership lessons in resilience. The absence of professional management ranks as a major factor in the cause of crises in the survey of 1,100 managers; 78 percent blamed a lack of support from senior management and 68 percent cited culture failure as responsible.

June 7, 2016

Senior management input required to promote workplace wellbeing ⁰

by Sara Bean • News, Wellbeing, Workplace

Just a third of American workers say they regularly participate in health promotions provided by their employer, despite the prevalence of workplace wellness programmes. According to the American Psychological Association a key part of the solution is increasing senior leadership support. In the APA’s 2016 Work and Well-Being Survey, less than half of working Americans (44 percent) reported that the climate in their organisation supports employee well-being, and 1 in 3 admitted to being chronically stressed on the job. However, nearly three-fourths (73 percent) of employees with senior managers who show support through involvement and commitment to well-being initiatives said their organisation helps employees develop a healthy lifestyle, compared with just 11 percent who work in an organisation without leadership support. Among all employees surveyed, 33 percent said they typically feel tense or stressed out during the workday, and only 41 percent said their employer helps workers develop and maintain a healthy lifestyle.

May 6, 2016

Management needs to improve opportunities for career progression ⁰

by Sara Bean • News, Workplace

Almost a quarter of employees (24 percent) are intending to move, as job satisfaction in the UK drops to its lowest level for over two years finds the latest CIPD/Halogen Employee Outlook report. The survey reveals that almost a fifth (23 percent) of employees believe their organisation’s performance management processes are unfair (an increase from 20 percent in Autumn 2015). Over a quarter (27 percent) are dissatisfied with the opportunity to develop their skills in their job and this is reflected in the number of employees who say they are unlikely to fulfil their career aspirations in their current organisation, which has also increased to 36 percent (32 percent in Autumn 2015). Opportunities for women in senior roles have slipped as well with separate research by the European Women on Boards (EWoB) showing that Britain has a below-average proportion of women on boards; falling from sixth to eighth place among 12 leading economies since 2011.

May 5, 2016

Facilities management is about great service, not trying to do everything

by Simon Heath • Comment, Facilities management

An article in The Guardian newspaper once sought to lift the veil on the extent to which Serco is entangled in the running of infrastructure in the UK and overseas. One of the questions posed was: Is there any limit to the fields they work in? Serco’s response was: “We operate in a range of markets and geographies, which means we are well placed to bring a wide range of experiences and knowledge to help customers with the challenges that they face.” Now, that’s the sort of phrase that will be familiar to anyone who has visited the website of a service provider or has written a bid in response to a tender for a contract. It is the way that providers wish to sell themselves. We can do more. We can do everything. We can do it anywhere. And if we can’t, we’ll get someone else to do it in one of our uniforms in the hope you won’t notice. We’ll save money. We’ll do it for less. We’ll do it with fewer people.

April 23, 2016

Latest Work&Place + Performance management + Design and people ⁰

by Sara Bean • Facilities management, Flexible working, Newsletter, Property, Work&Place, Workplace

This week’s Newsletter features the latest issue of Work&Place, which presents a truly global perspective on the forces redefining our relationship with work. In news, the Government extends the One Public Sector Estate scheme and London’s commercial property sector is unaffected by the Brexit jitters. The three day working week is the ideal scenario for the over 40s; current performance management practices discount the digital workplace; and employees spend too much time checking work emails at home. Mark Eltringham says design what you like but don’t discount the impact of adding human beings to the mix; how people have been writing guides to good ergonomics at least since the early seventeenth Century; and that Charles Eames came to have mixed feelings towards his most famous chair. Download our Insight Briefing, produced in partnership with Connection, on the boundless office; visit our new events page, follow us on Twitter and join our LinkedIn Group to discuss these and other stories.

April 20, 2016

Traditional performance management fails to match new digital workplace ⁰

by Sara Bean • News, Technology, Workplace

Performance management plays a key role in helping organisations measure how effectively their employees are contributing to business objectives. Yet despite 94 percent of workforce leaders in a global survey believing performance management improves business performance, only 39 percent of them think their current practices help to achieve their organisation’s business objectives. This isn’t just the employers’ view, within the workforce, 89 percent of people believe their performance would significantly improve if changes were made. The main reason for this credibility gap is the impact digital technologies are having on the nature of both work and the workforce. In the Accenture Strategy report, Is Performance Management Performing? – 92 percent of respondents report that work is faster, more networked and collaborative, and demands ever-evolving skills. This means that organisations need to innovate to keep pace.

April 5, 2016

Scientific management and the enduring love of the open plan office

by Mark Eltringham • Comment, Furniture, Technology, Workplace design

There are many reasons why organisations like open plan offices. When it comes to making the business case for them however, firms prefer to talk about some more than others. So while they prefer to focus on the argument in terms of how openness can foster better lines of communication, collaboration, teamwork and team spirit, they talk rather less about the fact that the open plan is a lot cheaper than its alternatives and how they like it because it allows them to keep an eye on what people are doing. In theory, a great deal more of this surveillance now happens electronically so the need for physical presence should be less pressing, but the residual desire to see with one’s own eyes what people are doing remains. This is the instinct that constrains the uptake of flexible working and also means that there is a hierarchical divide in who gets to decide where they work.