Search Results for: office

September 16, 2014

The culture of presenteeism is not all just fun and games

by Mark Eltringham • Comment, Flexible working, Workplace, Workplace design

Ten or so years ago an office seating manufacturer commissioned me to prepare a report on the games industry. The idea was to target a market the company had decided was primed to hear their message about ergonomics and the deleterious effects of long hours spent sitting and peering at a screen. Not only would this develop a new market for the business, it would also showcase a new product they had launched specifically to target a younger and hipper audience, even one that was overwhelmingly male. All of the elements of a successful campaign appeared to be there – the right product, a sedentary workforce that often worked around the clock to hit deadlines in an industry that epitomised youthful cool and was willing to spend money to prove it.

September 15, 2014

How we travel to work has enormous impact on wellbeing, claims new research

by Mark Eltringham • Environment, News

Part of London’s planned cycling infrastructure around Parliament Square

New research has further highlighted the important role that the mode of transport we choose to get work has on our physical and psychological wellbeing. Walking or cycling to work is better for people’s mental health than driving to work, according to the research by health economists at the University of East Anglia and the Centre for Diet and Activity Research (CEDAR). The report ‘Does active commuting improve psychological wellbeing?’ was published today in the journal Preventive Medicine and draws on 18 years of data from 18,000 people. It follows on the heels of two other reports published last month in the British Medical Journal and Science Direct which make related claims about the careful choices we should make about how we get to work.

September 12, 2014

Rate of UK commercial property activity slows to weakest for 15 months

by Sara Bean • Facilities management, News, Property

The UK commercial property sector grew for the 24th consecutive month in August, but at its weakest rate since May 2013. According to the latest Total Commercial Development Activity Index from Savills, which monitors the overall performance of the UK commercial property sector, the rate fell from +27.7% to +11.9% in August, the weakest expansion in 15 months. Commercial work continued to rise in the private and public sectors however, and despite growth slowing substantially in both cases, commercial developers in the UK remained optimistic. Anecdotal evidence linked this to positive expectations of increased public sector activity and client interest in new projects. Although solid overall, the growth of refurbishment activity in August was the least pronounced since May 2013 and following 17 successive months of growth, panellists reported stagnation in office fit-out activity as well. More →

September 10, 2014

The latest issue of Insight is now available to view online

by Sara Bean • Facilities management, Newsletter, Property, Workplace design

In the latest edition of the Workplace Insight newsletter available to view online; Colin Watson argues the urban environment is an increasingly important part of the ‘virtual’ workplace; Nigel Sikora describes how we’re learning to strike a better balance between distraction and privacy, between noise and quiet; and Justin Miller bemoans a lack of balance in the way the media wants to expose ‘waste’ in public sector purchasing. In news, why London offers the best returns on office refurbishment of any city in the world; the publication of two reports from the UK’s National Audit Office alleging poor management and a low priority given to the country’s public sector procurement function and we report on a discussion document by the BIM2050 Group on the digital future of the built environment. We also include a link to the new issue of Work&Place, the journal we publish in partnership with Occupiers Journal.

September 9, 2014

Report claims workplace fails to support employees with musculoskeletal disorders

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

When determining what constitutes a well-designed office, it’s easy to overlook the overriding need to ensure a workplace is designed first and foremost to be inclusive. Given the fact that musculoskeletal disorders remain the largest single cause of days of work lost due to sickness absence, it’s worrying to discover that many organisations fail to meet the needs of those dealing with such conditions. The new report ‘Self-management of chronic musculoskeletal disorders and employment’ from the Fit for Work UK Coalition and The Work Foundation found that despite sufferers’ efforts to remain at work, many are forced to ‘self-manage’ their condition without adequate support; with for instance an employee being forced to partake in a hot desk policy when they required their own, fixed workspace. As the report states, this lack of help is ‘all the more perverse’ when you take into consideration the role that work can play in helping to contribute to mental and physical wellbeing. More →

September 8, 2014

Two new reports highlight major public sector procurement failings

by Mark Eltringham • Facilities management, News, Public Sector

A newly published review from the UK’s National Audit Office claim that the poor management of the country’s public sector procurement function means that fraud is widespread to the tune of tens of billions of pounds. The review found that a lack of oversight and a belief that some contracts are too important to fail open the doors to fraud. A separate NAO report also claims that the function is given a low priority and too often is more interested in just getting deals signed and out of the way than thinking about how contracts function in practice. The review into the level of fraud and overcharging in Government outsourced contracts which was carried out in the wake of the high profile of the cases of ‘bad practice’ by G4S and Serco claims that the public purse may be exposed by as much as £40 billion. Five government contracts are already under investigation by police or the Serious Fraud Office, according to the report and more will follow.

September 8, 2014

Overdevelopment leads to bad building design, claim Carbuncle Cup judges

by Mark Eltringham • Architecture, News, Property

Building Design magazine has announced this year’s winners of its annual Carbuncle Cup competition, which aims to name and shame the UK’s ‘unforgivably bad’ buildings. As well as identifying problems with specific buildings, the judges also raised concerns about the catalysts for poor buildings, especially overdevelopment. The judges this year included Owen Luder, former president of the Royal Institute of British Architects, and Prince Charles’s architectural adviser, Hank Dittmar. While the main prize went to Tesco’s ‘inept, lumpen, arrogant and oppressive’ new supermarket in Woolwich in South East London, and the runners up prize went to the 50 storey residential Vauxhall Tower at St George’s Wharf, the most nominated building following the call for entries earlier this year was the Walkie Talkie skyscraper in London. However this office building was deemed ineligible because it is yet to complete. It now looks a shoe-in for next year’s prize however.

September 5, 2014

Workplace design is increasingly interwoven with the dynamics of the city

by Colin Watson • Comment, Facilities management, Workplace design

The Workplace Strategy Summit, held near my adopted home town of Reading in June attracted some of the world’s most renowned experts on workplace design and management. As is the case these days, much of the talk focussed on urbanisation, both in its own right and in terms of its influence on the design of work and workplaces. One speaker, Andrew Laing of Aecom argued convincingly that the city is just as much a part of the modern workplace as the traditional office. ‘As we explore the future of work and place, we are beginning to see a shift towards an urban scale in how we frame the workplace problem,’ he said. ‘Our starting point is perhaps no longer the office but the city at large. And what we mean by the city may not be the bricks and mortar urbanism of the twentieth century, but a bricks and mortar urbanism imbued with digital information and connectivity: a powerful combination of the physical and digital.’

September 4, 2014

The myths and the memes of public sector purchasing waste

by Justin Miller • Comment, Facilities management, Public Sector, Workplace design

There has always been a certain degree of skepticism within the UK’s business community about the way the public sector goes about buying goods and services. Some of it is justified but some is unfair. The efforts of successive governments to address the problem demonstrates that there is always a will to improve things. So while a recent BBC Panorama documentary highlighted claims from one report that the NHS loses billions each year thanks to a range of errors and fraud in its procurement processes, we might also ask whether an equivalent private sector organisation with an annual budget of £109 billion would not also be open to a wide range of eye-wateringly expensive failures and inefficiencies. Unfortunately there is a tendency in the media to want to expose ‘waste’ in public sector purchasing, which can politicise what are perfectly reasonable decisions, when you examine them.

August 28, 2014

Third-place workspaces as well as flexible hours are key to success, says workplace provider

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

As the summer holidays draw to an end, many working parents will be appreciative of the benefits of flexible working. Now new research from Regus has highlighted the long-term benefits of agile working in helping employers to attract and retain staff. Prospective employees are increasingly demanding some form of flexi-working deal, while nine out of ten employers report that offering flexible working options – including flexi-location as well as flexi-hours – is proving a highly effective way of improving staff morale and helping them to achieve a better work-life balance. While the workplace provider is understandably in favour of the flexi-location concept, as a provider of ‘third-place’ workspaces, for instance at railway stations, this kind of multi-location working is undoubtably growing in popularity More →

August 27, 2014

Lack of regional commercial property could hamper UK growth

by Sara Bean • News, Property

Although construction is on an upward trend, the development of commercial property lags behind, and the situation is particularly challenging in the West Midlands. According to JLL and Glenigan’s inaugural Commercial Construction Index, total construction starts by value, year end Q2 of 2014 were 15 per cent down compared to Q2 of 2013 at £2.03 billion. Graham Taylor, director of JLL’s Birmingham Buildings & Construction team, explained that the volume of commercial property being started has not risen substantially since the recession. Birmingham, Leeds and Manchester are already experiencing a shortage of Grade A office space – with much of the shortfall due to a drop in construction activity compared to the early to mid 2000’s. He said: “Rising corporate confidence means that many companies are looking to upgrade their workplaces. The corporate world is increasingly recognising that well-designed modern offices can be a key driver of productivity and staff retention, two major strategic concerns.”

August 21, 2014

Hotels allocating more public space to meet the needs of business travellers

by Mark Eltringham • Flexible working, News, Workplace design

Presenteeism isn’t restricted to the workplace. Growing demand from business travellers means hotels are increasing the amount of working and meeting space they provide in their facilities in cities across Europe and the rest of the world. Three quarters of British employees work while staying in a hotel according to the survey carried out by the Fraunhofer Institute on behalf of hotel business solutions firm HRS. Only Italians spend more time working in hotels (76 percent), followed the UK (75 percent), Poland and Switzerland (50 percent respectively), Germany (46 percent), China (45 percent), Russia (43 percent), Austria (42 percent) and France (25 percent). The firm has also identified a number of hotels around the world which it believes offers exemplars of the new working spaces available.