Search Results for: office

January 20, 2019

The changing shape of the insurance workplace

by Mark Eltringham • News, Workplace design

HOK’s WorkPlace group has released The New Insurance Workplace (registration required), a report which sets out to examine the forces reshaping the insurance industry and how workplace design can position these companies for success. The report’s concludes that insurance firms take pride in their conservative approach to risk management and traditional business models. They also have high-performance cultures that demand strong results. Yet changing regulations, emerging technologies and increasingly obsolete work processes have left many legacy players with underutilised, outdated office and retail space that hinders their ability to meet the fast-changing expectations of customers.

January 18, 2019

Employers must take better action to avoid sick building syndrome

by Steve Loughney • Company news, Facilities management, Workplace design

Sick building syndrome is a collective term to describe when occupants of a specific building suffer from a related illness. Problems can either be localised to a specific room or more widespread throughout a building. The symptoms can manifest as headaches, blocked or runny noses, skin irritations, sore eyes or tiredness and difficulties with concentration. A number of building-related factors are linked to the condition with ageing offices and factories acting as magnets for sick building syndrome. Studies have shown that headaches and respiratory problems among office workers were directly related to the use of air conditioning and inadequate ventilation. Room temperature, light and noise, humidity, carbon dioxide, chemical contaminants (volatile organic compounds – VOCs), air quality and naturally occurring poisons can all inflame symptoms for sufferers requiring more precise control over environmental factors in the workplace. Making sure buildings are healthy for their occupants is a challenge. More →

January 18, 2019

Working environment, not time of the year has most negative effect on staff wellbeing

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

Half of employees say that their working environment has a negative effect on their mental health (51 percent) and wellbeing (49 percent) and two-thirds (67 percent) say that they only ‘sometimes, rarely or never’ feel valued at work. The research by Peldon Rose shows that two-thirds of employees (64 percent) currently have poor or below average mental wellbeing and that the majority (56 percent) claim increasing workloads, followed by a lack of time to focus on wellbeing and exercise (46 percent) are the leading causes of their stress. While half of employees think introducing exercise facilities will help them to better tackle their workplace stress (50 percent) – less than a fifth of workplaces (16 percent) currently provide these facilities, something employers should consider when looking to boost the morale of their workforce.

January 17, 2019

Flexible working employees find it difficult to detach from work

by Neil Franklin • Flexible working, News

New findings from health and wellbeing provider, BHSF, suggest that home workers struggle to switch off, and this could be negatively affecting their work/life balance. Flexible working provides huge benefits for employees – it means they can avoid lengthy and stressful commutes, work at times that fit them and their families, and focus clearly without other distractions. However, all these positives may be lost if employees continually work beyond their contracted hours, warn the study’s authors. Prolonged working outside of hours can seriously affect employees’ ability to stay fresh and mentally alert.

January 15, 2019

Overstretched UK employees are disengaged and unproductive at work

by Sara Bean • News, Wellbeing

New research has found that over 2 million UK workers think about quitting their job every day and this figure was significantly higher amongst younger workers, aged 18-24, with 12 percent of those surveyed stating they think about this daily. The research by CABA, a charity supporting the wellbeing of chartered accountants and their families, also highlighted that 38 percent of employees regularly encountered stressful situations at work. Women were most likely to feel this way, with 41 percent revealing they deal with stressful circumstances at least once a week. Comparatively, only 34 percent of male employees admitted to encountering such situations on at least a weekly basis. Many factors were cited as contributing to employees feeling stressed, including unrealistic expectations and unmanageable workloads. Regardless of how it manifests itself within the working environment it can have a negative impact on employee wellbeing, with over 1 in 10 (12 percent) missing at least 52 family events or personal commitments each year.

January 15, 2019

Surface Design Show 2019 Preview

by Neil Franklin • News, Workplace design

Surface Design Show hosts over 150 exhibitors highlighting the very best in exterior and interior surface design from 5 – 7 February. Taking place at London’s Business Design Centre, the show provides a platform for architects, designers and specifiers to explore interior and exterior surface materials, lighting design, development and innovation. Visitors will uncover thousands of new materials from the latest technological advances in building materials to innovative workplace surfaces and everything in between.

January 14, 2019

Corporations must harness prop tech to adapt to new ways of work

by Neil Franklin • News, Technology

The world of work will continue to evolve in 2019, and corporations must find ways to adapt their office real estate. That is the conclusion of a new piece of research by flexible workplace provider Abintra. Published in a new report, the study highlights how corporations are struggling to manage office space efficiently as the trend towards agile and flexible working gathers momentum. The publication explores methods for responding through office space utilisation techniques, including the latest tech options.

January 9, 2019

Podcast: embracing the punk spirit and the elemental workplace

by Mike Petrusky • Facilities management, Features, Workplace design

Neil Usher is an experienced senior property, workplace, facilities and change management leader who is currently an executive consultant for Unispace and workessence. He is also the author of “The Elemental Workplace” in which he describes “the 12 elements for creating a fantastic workplace for everyone”. In this new podcast, I ask Neil about the latest trends in the workplace and finds out his opinions on the open office debate, the impact of technology, and the importance of workplace experience. Neil argues that workplace is now being taken seriously as a contributor to performance and is a significant part of our organization’s culture, so we must establish “laws of workplace” that we can use as a foundation to build on in our practice. We discuss the origins of the punk rock music scene and agree that we must bring “the spirit of punk” to our work by being fearless about trying new things in our roles as workplace leaders.

January 7, 2019

What Leonardo da Vinci can teach us about the six hour working day ⁰

by Mark Eltringham • Comment, Flexible working, Technology, Wellbeing

The latest idea to grip the sometimes limited imagination of the world’s workplace chatterers is that of the six hour working day or the four day working week. This has its original roots in a Swedish experiment designed to limit the hours people work in an attempt to improve their work-life balance and possibly even increase their productivity. Now a growing number of firms are looking to introduce a nominal four day working week or restrict the use of emails outside of office hours. These are always commendable goals and you can see the logic. We know people find it increasingly hard to switch off, we know that this is bad for them and we know that long hours don’t necessarily equate to greater productivity.

January 4, 2019

Why new technology can still make employees happier, healthier and more efficient

by Elaine Rossall • AI, Comment, Flexible working, Lighting, Technology, Wellbeing

For many years, we became used to new technology being treated with excitement. Essentially, people thought technology made their lives better. More recently this consensus has been tested. On a very practical level, there is growing concern about the impact of everyday technology. ‘Screen-time’ has become a byword for anxiety and disengagement from the real world. Meanwhile, there is trepidation about the impact of future technology, such as the automation of jobs. Whilst caution is needed, there is a danger that we are forgetting the many benefits technology can bring. As an example, look to the workplace. Already, offices are gaining hugely from technology that benefits employee wellness and productivity. However, we have only just begun to feel its impact. A ‘fast’ office may sound like an oxymoron. A building isn’t going to win a 100-metre race. Yet fast offices, which allow employees to control their immediate environment, are becoming increasingly common.

December 21, 2018

The ten most read stories on Workplace Insight for 2018

by Mark Eltringham • Facilities management, Features, Property, Technology, Workplace, Workplace design

We can’t help but feel that the world caught up with us a bit during 2018. We’ve been talking about the intersection of people, place and tech since we started up five years ago. Of course, we weren’t even the first to do this. As we’ve always acknowledged, we’re standing on the shoulders of the giants who first recognised what was happening a quarter of a century ago. Many of the ‘trends’ with which we are presented are nothing more than the crystallisation of ideas first expressed by people in the 20th Century. They seldom get their due.

December 21, 2018

Are open plan workspaces truly evil or is this just fake news?

by Dr Caroline M. Burns • Features, Workplace design

A recently published paper describing the results of an academic study by Ethan S. Bernstein and Stephen Turban[1], both of Harvard, has become another unwarranted casualty of the debate within our industry and in the mainstream media on ‘open plan’ offices versus anything else. The researchers conducted two controlled studies in different organisations before and after a workplace refurbishment from dedicated cubicles to dedicated open plan (benching) neighbourhoods, and concluded that face to face interaction reduced significantly, while email and other digital communications increased in the new environment.