Search Results for: opportunities

September 18, 2015

What Robert Frost can teach us about the changing workplace

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

The great Twentieth Century American poet Robert Frost is arguably best known these days for two quotations that have – usually in bastardised versions – entered into common usage. The first is the final verse of his poem The Road Not Taken, and especially the final three lines: “Two roads diverged in a wood, and I /I took the one less traveled by, / And that has made all the difference.” The second is a quotation: “The brain is a wonderful organ; it starts working the moment you get up in the morning and does not stop until you get into the office”; which should be pinned up in every reception area and is usually rendered as something like ‘when you get to work, don’t leave your brain at the door.’ Both come to mind when you read something like the report entitled ‘Next Generation Working Life’ from Ericsson’s Networked Society Lab.

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September 16, 2015

Employees exhausted by a culture of continuous change at work ⁰

by Sara Bean • News, Workplace

A culture of continuous change may be standard practice within larger organisations, but it can have a negative effect on employees, a new report claims. The seven-country Liquid Change Survey of senior executives at large corporations, commissioned by Ketchum Change, found that some leaders are unaware of the effects of so-called change fatigue, despite their employees struggle to keep up. Among partners and board-level executives, only 28 percent think change fatigue is highly prevalent. The survey suggests that to succeed in an environment of continuous change, a more collaborative approach must replace the old top-downmodel. Outlining a clear strategy and goals (43 percent) and engaging with leaders across the organization to co-create the new environment (41 percent) were cited as the most effective ways to get leaders to believe in and actively lead through change.

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September 14, 2015

Staff already dreading the advent of Gen Z at work, claims report ⁰

by Mark Eltringham • Wellbeing, Workplace

If, like us, you’ve grown tired of the endless media focus on Generation Y and its often unfair portrayal based on a clump of stereotypes, then brace yourself. Generation Z, defined as people currently under the age of 19, is now entering the workforce and, according to a new study commissioned by Ricoh Europe, the three demographics it will join at work are dreading it. Nearly two thirds (63 percent) of Baby Boomer, Generation X and Generation Y employees surveyed in in Europe, Middle East and Asia say they expect workplace tensions to increase with the arrival of a fourth generation and half (52 percent) say their employers are already failing to meet the needs of different generations in the workplace. More positively, there was almost universal agreement (89 percent) amongst the 3,300 respondents that a diverse workforce is an asset to a business.

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September 11, 2015

London’s allure for Millennials is less than it was, claims report ⁰

by Mark Eltringham • Flexible working, News, Workplace

The allure of London for Generation Y appears to be fading, according to a new report from Lloyds Commercial Banking. According to the study of 200 Millennials and 400 SMEs, the most talked about Generation appears increasingly happy to work for a small firm, wherever they are located. The survey claims that relocating to London is not on the agenda for half (51 percent) of Millennials, who would be happy to move anywhere for the right job. Over a third (35 percent) don’t want to move away from home, while less than a tenth (eight percent) insist they will only work in the capital – which the report claims is good news for SMEs located outside of London (assuming they want to employ Millennials in the first place, obviously). According to the report, location ranked seventh on the list of factors that would attract Millennials to a business.

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September 2, 2015

We need to do more than pay lip service to workplace wellbeing ⁰

by Ann Clarke • Case studies, Comment, Wellbeing, Workplace design

Too many companies continue to talk about employees as their ‘greatest asset’ yet their fine words are not always not borne out in their behaviour, be that through working culture, remuneration or environment. With more and more investors using employee wellness and engagement as a barometer for the health, stability and culture of the business – the concept of workplace wellbeing is finally garnering the attention it deserves. Our workplace behaviours, cultures and environments are not keeping us fit, well, productive, happy or profitable. Finally businesses are accepting their moral responsibility to take better care of their people. So what affects employee productivity, creativity and happiness and how can changes to the workplace promote the best financial and moral outcomes for businesses and employees alike?

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August 27, 2015

People are surprisingly ignorant of basic technological terms ⁰

by Mark Eltringham • News, Technology

One of the assumptions we might make about people in our increasingly digital world is that everybody has a pretty good grasp of what some of the more basic technological ideas actually mean. That cosy assumption is challenged by a new study from IT firm Daisy Group which claims that a fifth of the UK population don’t know what WiFi is, three quarters have no idea what is meant by VoIP, nearly half (43 percent) don’t know what The Cloud is and a similar number (44 percent) are baffled by the term ‘fibre broadband’. Even business owners and managers, for whom a basic grasp of this kind of stuff would seem essential, are at a disadvantage. Nearly a third (29 percent) of 1,100 surveyed couldn’t define fibre broadband (29 percent), a quarter (26 percent) hadn’t the foggiest about The Cloud and pretty much everybody is left cold by data centres.

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August 18, 2015

Car sharing and longer commutes are the keys to workforce mobility ⁰

by Mark Eltringham • Cities, Flexible working, News

The Government should introduce new policies to incentivise people to car share and travel further afield to find work. Those are two of the key finding of a new report, On The Move, from the think tank Policy Exchange which sets out ways to improve the mobility of the British workforce. Making it easier for people to commute twenty minutes further afield would put them in touch with at least one additional major urban area and potentially 10,000 more job opportunities, according to the report. Additionally, it suggests that drivers who offer fellow commuters a lift should be given a tax break. The authors claim that in a third of local authorities that make up the eight city regions no major employment sites (defined as having 5,000 or more jobs) are within a twenty minute commute by public transport and 80 percent of these Local Authorities have an unemployment rate above the national average.

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August 17, 2015

What Edward T Hall (and Jerry Seinfeld) can teach us about stress and design

by Mark Eltringham • Comment, Facilities management, Workplace, Workplace design

Work-related stress is the biggest cause of working days lost in the UK. According to the HSE’s most recent statistics, around 11.3 million days were lost to it in 2013/14, the most significant cause of absenteeism. The reasons for this are clear in the minds of many: the demands made on us by employers are increasingly intolerable, our own time is being eroded by work, we spend too much time at work, we’re under excessive pressure to perform and as a result we’re all either knackered, unfulfilled, stressed, depressed or anxious. Or guzzling a noxious cocktail of all of them. But there is another factor that has come into play over the last few years. As workstation sizes have contracted in response to new technologies and new space planning models, people have been forced closer to their colleagues, meaning that not only has their time been eroded, so has their space.

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August 14, 2015

Far from being on board, older women still face recruitment bias ⁰

by Sara Bean • Comment, News, Workplace

The news that the Davies review has met its 25 per cent target for female representation on boards, and is now considering setting a target that a quarter of executives at FTSE 100 companies should be female, has been met with approval by the Institute of Directors, which said it was right that the focus is on increasing the number of women in senior executive positions. But what about those further down the salary scale, where many older women struggle to even get a job interview? A recent study carried out by Anglia Ruskin University’s Lord Ashcroft International Business School shows that older jobseekers face widespread discrimination in the UK, with older female applicants more likely to experience bias than men. The study found no significant link between a company having a HR department or providing commitments to equal opportunities, and the level of discrimination it displayed.

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August 5, 2015

Special edition of Ergonomics in Design focuses on sedentary work ⁰

by Mark Eltringham • News, Wellbeing, Workplace design

The Human Factors and Ergonomics Society (HFES) has published a special edition of its in-house journal dedicated to the much discussed topics of sedentary working and the need for us to get out of our seats. You’ll have to pay for it however, although individual sections are available for a one off cost. HFES claims to be the world’s largest scientific association for human factors and ergonomics professionals, with more than 4,800 members worldwide. The July issue of their journal Ergonomics in Design looks at the range of ailments associated with sedentary working, including obesity, heart disease and diabetes, weighs up what can be done to change the way people work, as well as the benefits and possible downsides to the most commonly suggested solutions, including sit-stand workstations, alternative seating designs and – God help us – treadmill desks.

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August 4, 2015

Employers must support older workers with chronic ill health ⁰

by Sara Bean • Legal news, News, Wellbeing, Workplace

As a recent profile in the Guardian Magazine of workers in their 70s, 80s and 90s illustrated, people who work well into old age are still viewed as remarkable. Yet by 2020, a third of the UK’s workforce will be more than 50 years old. Following the scrapping of the Default Retirement Age, more than 1.4m people in the UK are working after state retirement age, of whom around 300,000 are aged over 70. Now the Health at Work Policy Unit of Lancaster University’s Work Foundation has issued a White Paper, ‘Living Long, Working Well: Supporting older workers with health conditions to remain active at work’, which warns that 42 per cent of over 50s have often manageable chronic illnesses that – if left unsupported by employers, could undermine their productivity, increase their absence from work or even force them out of work altogether.

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July 29, 2015

City firms adopt more flexible working, but it starts from the top

by Mark Eltringham • Cities, Flexible working, News

Employers in the City of London are increasingly open to the idea of flexible working, claims a study of 1,000 workers by recruitment firm Astbury Marsden. According to the study, a third of men working in the City (34 percent) say they now have some flexibility over the hours they work, whether through flexi-time, working a certain number of hours annually or compressed hours. This is up from 28 percent last year. Meanwhile a smaller proportion of female City workers (30 percent) claim they now have the option of flexible working, up from 23 percent in 2014. The research indicates that although women in the City are more likely than men to work part-time or term-time hours or job-share, with over a quarter being able to do so (26 percent), almost one in five men (18 percent) say they also have this option available to them.