Search Results for: people management

October 3, 2018

First impressions count when it comes to office reception areas

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

Two out of every five people (40 percent) claim their perception of a company or brand has been negatively affected by their experience in the corporate lobby or reception area. Of 2,000 US and UK office workers surveyed in Proxyclick’s annual ‘Office Worker Bugbears’ survey, over 70 per cent (71.48 percent) cited unfriendly receptionists, followed by over half (53.78 percent) naming a lacklustre welcome as top reasons for their bad experience. ‘The Integrated Visitor Experience’, a white paper which explores integrated building, security and workplace management technologies, claims that visitors can feel a culture the moment they walk through the door to an office. Gregory Blondeau, Founder of Proxyclick, said: “Not five to ten years ago, the visitor experience did not really exist, the basic process simply covered how someone is received in a building or premises and how they’re able to move around. Today, the rise of smart buildings, developments in automation, open application programming interface standards and cloud technology, have changed the game.” Click the link to download the ‘Integrated Visitor Experience’ white paper.

September 28, 2018

The horrors and harmonies of workplace hierarchy

by Monica Parker • Comment, Technology, Workplace design

I am a child of the seventies, and one of my favourite shows when I was just a tyke was The Jeffersons. For those not familiar with The Jeffersons, it was about a black family in New York City who had, through ambition and entrepreneurship, ‘made it to the top’. George Jefferson, the patriarch, was a bolshie character. Hijinks usually ensued. But what stuck with me about that show was the catchy theme song, Movin’ On Up. The lyrics were ‘I’m movin’ on up, to the upper east side, to a deluxe apartment in the sky… I finally got a piece of the pie.’ Growing up in suburbia, this was probably the first time that I learned the idea of a penthouse, and the notion that the higher up the building, the more important you were. It wasn’t until I was about age eight that I realised the word wasn’t ‘high-archy’, but ‘hierarchy.’

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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 24, 2018

It is not particularly easy to change human behaviour by design

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

Many of the techniques employed by modern illusionists rely on a thorough grounding in the research of psychologists. They’re not alone in standing on the shoulders of academics to bend people to their will. Many of our beliefs about the workings of our society and workplaces and their design are based on this sort of manipulation. It’s telling that the growth of consumerism in the 20th Century, especially after the War when we first began to move from a needs based economy to one fuelled by desire, was driven by the ideas of Sigmund Freud’s nephew. Edward Bernays became the ‘father of PR’ by popularising his uncle’s theories in the US then applying them to mould the subconscious desires of the American masses. He did this not just in the name of commerce but also in that of politics because he believed that society was becoming increasingly irrational, immoral and dangerous.

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September 18, 2018

Half of all workplace tasks will be performed by machines within seven years

by Neil Franklin • News, Technology

The world is going through a workplace revolution that will bring a seismic shift in the way humans work alongside machines and algorithms, according to new research by the World Economic Forum. By 2025 more than half of all current workplace tasks will be performed by machines as opposed to 29 percent today. Such a transformation will have a profound effect on the global labour force, however in terms of overall numbers of new jobs the outlook is positive, with 133 million new jobs expected to be created by 2022 compared to 75 million that will be displaced. The research, published in The Future of Jobs 2018, is an attempt to understand the potential of new technologies to disrupt and create jobs. It is also seeks to provide guidance on how to improve the quality and productivity of the current work being done by humans and how to prepare people for emerging roles.

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September 18, 2018

Report finds negative impact of gender and age on confidence of managers

by Sara Bean • News, Wellbeing, Workplace

A fifth (20 percent) of female managers admit they would rather be managed by a male colleague and unsurprisingly given that opinion, the same proportion worry their gender hinders people’s confidence in them. The data, commissioned by AVADO also revealed that age played a part in management attitudes, with 68 percent of young leaders (20-24) saying they felt their age hindered colleague’s confidence in them as a manager. However, when asked about who they perceive to make the better managers, respondents said it would be the person who was most qualified to do the job (44 percent. By contrast almost half of men (48 percent) said that they were very confident in their management skills, compared to 30 percent of women.

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September 17, 2018

Flexible working legislation has failed to change anything

by Mark Eltringham • Flexible working, News

Legislation giving employees the right to request flexible working has failed to increase take-up, new research from the University of Manchester shows. The research, presented at the British Sociological Association conference in Belfast last week, has found that there has been no significant overall increase in the number of employees working flexibly since the legislation came into effect in 2014.

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September 13, 2018

Majority of staff refuse to admit tiredness is affecting their performance at work

by Sara Bean • News, Wellbeing, Workplace

Almost half of employees regularly turn up to their job feeling too tired to work but according to a new survey the majority (86 percent) are not able to speak openly with their line manager about how tiredness is impacting on performance. The research from Westfield Health has found over one in ten (11 percent) of UK workers have purposefully taken a nap at work, and over a third (34 percent) say their mental wellbeing is reduced due to tiredness and fatigue. Fatigue, which is defined as extreme tiredness resulting from mental or physical exertion or illness, is stretching beyond work for UK employees, with 55 percent saying it is affecting them at home too. Almost half (46 percent) said they regularly turn up to their jobs feeling too tired to work, and more than a third (37 percent) say they tend to be more forgetful and make errors as a result of tiredness. This is a worrying concern when it comes to the built environment, particularly construction.

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September 13, 2018

Working long and hard? It may do more harm than good for your productivity and wellbeing

by Argyro Avgoustaki and Hans TW Frankort • Features, Flexible working, Wellbeing

Nearly half of people in the EU work in their free time to meet work demands, and a third often or always work at high speed, according to recent estimates. If you are one of them, have you ever wondered whether all the effort is really worth it? Employees who invest more effort in their work report higher levels of stress and fatigue, along with lower job satisfaction. But they also report receiving less recognition and fewer growth opportunities. And they experience less job security. So increased work effort not only predicts reduced wellbeing, it even predicts inferior career-related outcomes.

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September 12, 2018

Employees more productive when they understand the company goals

by Sara Bean • News, Workplace

Being made to feel you’re making a positive contribution to your organisation is an important motivator, but a new study suggests over half of employees believe they would be more productive if they knew how their work fitted into overall company objectives. According to the research from Asana this lack of transparency means a third of UK employees believe their business suffers from a lack of direction, with employees complaining that they do not know what their company stands for and are completely unclear of the company’s long term and short-term goals. This unsurprisingly is having a direct impact on employee motivation, with and framed within the context of the UK’s productivity conundrum. A lack of clarity of company goals across businesses is not the sole reason that the UK is experiencing a productivity conundrum, but there is a clear disconnect between strategic goals and the jobs being executed on a day to day basis.

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September 6, 2018

Gig economy growing but employers should continue to cultivate in-house talent

by Sara Bean • Flexible working, News, Workplace

The number of “gig economy” professionals working in organisations is growing and this trend is expected to continue, a survey by Korn Ferry has claimed. More than half (60 percent) of HR professionals say that compared to three years ago, gig workers now make up a larger percentage of their professional workforce, and 42 percent say they plan on hiring more contingent workers in the future. The reasons, according to the survey, include cost savings, access to high-calibre talent and ease of managing gig economy professionals. Despite the fact that many gig professionals work remotely, 67 percent of the HR professionals surveyed say they are confident they know what the gig professionals are doing on a day-to-day basis, and 42 percent say these contingent employees are easier to manage than full-time employees. However, according to Jeanne MacDonald, president of Global Talent Solutions for Korn Ferry’s RPO and Professional Search Business, organisations should proceed cautiously and ensure they continue to cultivate in-house talent.

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September 3, 2018

Workplace wellness programmes may be a waste of time and money, study concludes

by Neil Franklin • News, Wellbeing

The $8 billion dollar wellness industry in the US may not be achieving very much, according to a new analysis from academics at Chicago University and the University of Illinois published by the National Bureau of Economic Research. While the researchers concede that the difficulties of measuring the impact of such programmes depends very much on the characteristics of the people who enter them voluntarily, their study of 5,000 people found that the effects of a wellness programme were non-existent to negligible across a range of metrics.