Search Results for: mental health

October 31, 2018

Conversations may be more productive when held in the great outdoors

Conversations are more responsive in natural environments such as parks and gardens than indoors, finds new research by the University of Manchester and Cardiff University. The researchers recorded conversations between three- and four-year-old children and their parents while they explored a city park and the park’s indoor education centre and found that the conversations in the park were more responsive and connected compared to those recorded indoors. The study ‘Responding to nature: Natural environments improve parent-child communication’ is published in the Journal of Environmental Psychology.

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October 26, 2018

Stressed UK bosses admit they put wellbeing behind demands of the job

by Sara Bean • News, Wellbeing, Workplace

Almost half of UK bosses admit they’ve felt forced to compromise their own health and wellbeing as a result of pressure at work, new research from Vistage has claimed. According to the study, 40 percent of business leaders say the demands of work have caused stress in their personal lives, while nearly a third say they frequently have to work through illness rather than taking the time they need to recover. While a quarter of business leaders say they’ve sought outside help to strike a better balance between their work and personal life, many more are choosing to suffer on in silence while their health and relationships suffer. (more…)

October 23, 2018

Technical, social and legal challenges to deployment of wearables in buildings

by Sara Bean • AI, Facilities management, News, Property, Technology

While there is substantial potential for the deployment of wearables there are also significant technical, social and legal challenges. This is the conclusion of the latest white paper from BSRIA, ‘Wearables & wellbeing in buildings – the story so far’ which found little evidence of any practical solutions linking wearables to HVAC or building systems in general that were already in operation, apart from in “niche areas” such as wearable security fobs. A wearable is a device or an item of clothing which can be worn by a human, or possibly be carried as an implant, which has a degree of “intelligence” built into it and can potentially communicate with the Internet of Things (IoT), either directly or indirectly, for example via a Bluetooth connection to a smart phone. (more…)

October 18, 2018

Majority of UK workers sit at their desk between four and nine hours a day

by Sara Bean • Facilities management, Flexible working, News, Wellbeing, Workplace

The majority (81 percent) of UK office workers spend between four and nine hours each day sitting at their desk, equating to an average of 67 sedentary days per person each year, claims a new survey from Fellowes. Nearly half (45 percent) of office workers polled said they sat at their desk for between six and nine hours daily with 36 percent claiming they spent four to six hours seated. On top of this, a huge 64 percent claimed their office environment also had a negative impact on their health.

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October 16, 2018

BIFM announces winners of its annual awards

by Mark Eltringham • Facilities management, News

Now in their 18th and final year before the Institute changes its name, the BIFM Awards set out to ‘celebrate the profession’s finest, honouring those whose outstanding work has driven innovation and achieved exceptional results in the organisations where they work, benchmarking excellence and inspiring others’. Thirteen winners were announced from 46 finalists at a ceremony held last night in London. The occasion also celebrated the work of a further nine finalists whose initiatives were highly commended by the judges.

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October 15, 2018

BSRIA publishes list of new and upcoming legislation and guidance for buildings

by Mark Eltringham • Architecture, Facilities management, News, Property

The Building Services Research and Information Association (BSRIA) has published a list of the most up to date legislation and guidance that affects the design, construction and management of buildings. While a couple are relevant primarily for domestic buildings, the emphasis is very much on commercial property and will be of interest to a range of professionals. BSRIA members also have access to a legislation service on building and building services legislation and relevant guidance. (more…)

October 15, 2018

Lack of flexible working means people miss major life events

by Neil Franklin • Flexible working, News, Wellbeing

A new survey claims that 67 percent of employees have missed major life events due to a lack of flexible working within their organisation. The survey conducted by Liberty Mind, was commissioned to explore the impacts on employees who do not have the opportunity of flexible working. From those surveyed it was found that 40 percent had missed hospital or health-related appointments due to a lack of flexible working, while 15 percent had missed moving house, 10 percent had missed a child’s school activity and 8 percent had missed a family funeral.

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October 10, 2018

The Genesis of ideation and the places we go to have our best ideas ⁰

by Giuseppe Boscherini • Facilities management, Features, Technology, Work&Place, Workplace design

Because collaboration, creativity and innovation are increasingly perceived as key objectives and differentiators of performance, the genesis and mechanisms behind ideation and creativity are an an integral part of both business and personal development. As a consequence, there is growing interest in the way the physical attributes of work settings may influence or even trigger creative behaviour. The cliché of the shower as one of these favourite places comes to mind and yet experience does show that the idea of seeking a setting, a “zone” if you will, for a specific purpose is intuitively right. This needn’t be a retreat or cocoon, as is often assumed, but can also be a crowded, busy, noisy place, which might explain why so often the most animated work conversations move out of the office shop into the coffee shop. Equally, highlight events or special meetings tend to be held in a “venue’, often dressed for the occasion.

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October 2, 2018

How to measure the impact of biophilia on individual performance

by Julia Ayuso Sanchez • Features, Wellbeing, Workplace design

The improvement in well-being and performance in the workplace are economic and social critical factors since the loss of productivity for companies means a cost of up to US$ 550,000 million per year. Numerous studies affirm that biophilic design, defined as a response to the inherent need of human beings to be in contact with nature, in the workplace improves productivity and user well-being. As Lord Kelvin said, if you cannot measure it, you cannot improve it, so the challenge that arises is how to objectify and quantify rigorously the features that improve productivity and wellbeing in spaces designed with biophilia in mind. From this, it is necessary to go a step further and objectify the design criteria serving as an operator for performance and wellbeing in design practice.

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September 28, 2018

Change of mindset can transform workplace performance says Smart Summit

by Sara Bean • Events, Facilities management, News, Wellbeing, Workplace, Workplace design

Changing mindsets and the workplace through co-creative leadership was the theme of the latest Quora Smartworking Summit which took place this week at ExCeL London. Hosted by Quora’s Managing Director John Blackwell, the event featured a distinguished group of senior leaders who discussed under Chatham House rules, how they have helped change their organisation’s mindsets using leadership styles aimed at achieving successful work performance transformations.

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September 21, 2018

When workplace strategy builds bridges between people and place

by Chris Kane • Features, Technology, Workplace, Workplace design

The world of work is changing rapidly and profoundly in a way that we haven’t seen since the time of the industrial revolution. Yet even as we stand at a momentous, game-changing inflexion point, the 21st century workplace strategy sector is still dithering about whether to join in the revolution. They are like the industrial mill owners of 19th century England who adopted a ‘make do and mend’ approach to business and failed to invest in new technology only to be forced out of business by foreign competitors who had invested in radical new, state of the art technology.Today the technological game changer is digital technology rather than weaving technology, but the effect is the same. Unless the workplace strategy sector embraces change and builds bridges between the ‘people’ side of the business and the ‘place’ side with other workplace specialists, their industry will become as dead as a dodo.

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August 30, 2018

Larger businesses far more stressful to work for than smaller firms

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

We reported yesterday that younger job seekers who favour corporates could be missing out on greater opportunities within smaller organisations, and now new research suggests that despite margins often being tighter and tensions or losses often being felt more keenly in smaller businesses, the level of occupational stress workers feel directly correlates to the size of the company they are in. Micro businesses employing a maximum of four members of staff were less likely than those in businesses of any other size to feel work-related stress, with 45 percent of employees reporting this to the Perkbox 2018 UK Workplace Stress Report. This figure increases to 57 percent for small businesses (5 – 50 staff) and again to 62 percent for small to medium sized organisations (51 – 500 employees). Finally, workers at larger sized businesses – those with more than 500 members of staff – report the greatest instances of staff experiencing workplace stress (65 percent).