Search Results for: people

March 31, 2015

SMEs provide the key to encouraging more women onto boards

by Aki Stamatis • Comment, Workplace, Workplace design

Research from the Government, released last week, found that women now accounted for 23.5 percent of FTSE100 board members, up from 12.5 per cent in 2011. The target is 25 per cent by the end of this year, meaning that another 17 women need to be appointed. However the research showed that small companies are less diverse at the top, with woman accounting for 18 percent of directors of FTSE250 boards. As Chairman of a company which employs 220 people, I believe that unleashing the potential of women in the business is an excellent way to grow and develop organisations. The female perspective is very powerful in every issue within a business. It adds enormous value to clients, can often save money by offering a different way of doing things and creates a better working environment.

March 31, 2015

Time to move on from the anachronistic display screen equipment regulations

by Mark Eltringham • Comment, Legal news, Wellbeing, Workplace design

Not much of a guide to milking a Fresian

Not much of a guide to milking a Friesian

The European Display Screen Equipment Regulations were introduced in 1992 as a way of improving the posture and wellbeing of people working on computers in the office. That’s a long time ago. Too long, in fact. Here’s a list of thing that have happened since then – 1. The Internet. Actually, we can stop there. Any piece of workplace legislation that predates the Internet almost certainly won’t be fit for purpose, not least one that is based on how we should work with computers. Yet there it all is on the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) website. It’s all so hopelessly out of date, it’s like starting a farm using an Altamira cave painting as your guide. At the most straightforward level, you can take an image from one of the published guides such as this (below) and play a little game of spot the anachronism.

March 30, 2015

Driverless cars will transform the UK economy by 2030, claims report

by Mark Eltringham • Flexible working, News, Technology, Workplace design

A new study from the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT) and KPMG claims that the development of connected and autonomous vehicles will help generate 320,000 jobs in the UK and deliver huge benefits to society and the economy. The first ever comprehensive analysis of the opportunities provided by the new technology claims that by 2030 driverless cars will deliver a £51 billion boost to the UK economy, reduce congestion and carbon emissions and cut serious road traffic accidents by more than 25,000. By that time all new cars will incorporate some form of connectivity, according to the report’s authors. It also predicts that the UK will be a global leader in the production of this next generation of vehicles, with the support of Government including financial backing. The study was presented at last week’s SMMT conference in London.

March 30, 2015

Gamification remains a mystery to employees and unused by many firms

by Mark Eltringham • News, Wellbeing, Workplace

Although it’s currently one of the most talked about workplace ideas, gamification remains a mystery to many workers and even HR professionals keen on the idea are probably not doing much about it. Those are two of the findings of a report from consultancy Penna based on interviews with 2,000 HR directors and employees. The study set out to explore how well senior HR professionals understood gamification, its uses and their perception of the barriers to adoption. Researchers also asked employees about their level of ‘everyday engagement’ with gamification and whether they recognise it as a concept. Over half (52 percent) of HR directors claim to be ‘massively interested’ in the idea although 44 percent also agreed that their organisation was ‘not at all interested’. Remarkably the survey also found that 89 percent of employees don’t even know what it is.

March 27, 2015

MIPIM demonstrated how property industry is moving with the times

by Anna King • Comment, Property, Workplace design

In its 26th year, the colossus conference that is MIPIM was back in full flow. With 93 countries were present, 4, 500 investors and 22, 000 registered delegates there were numerous developments presenting opportunities around the world. And crucially, there were more people apparently buying than selling, meaning that strong investment activity will follow. A dumbfounding prediction from property agent Cushman & Wakefield, that global real estate investment could rise 11% to 1.2 trillion euros – an indication of just how much healthier the market is. However, the renewed positivity isn’t simply a return to the ‘good times’, it is apparent that the pain the recession brought in 2008 hasn’t been forgotten and we are seeing a revised formula for property that includes sustainability, collaboration and – crucially – people.

March 25, 2015

Wellbeing continues to improve despite static pay levels, claims ONS

by Mark Eltringham • Environment, News, Wellbeing, Workplace

The overall wellbeing of the UK population continues to improve despite ongoing concerns about pay levels and job security, according to a new report published today by the Office for National Statistics. The latest analysis includes an assessment of changes in national wellbeing for the first time and finds that year on year 33 percent of indicators had improved, 42 percent showed no overall change, 21 percent were not assessed and 5 percent deteriorated. The proportion of people in the UK giving the highest ratings for each aspect of personal wellbeing measured by the report increased significantly in the financial year ending 2014. The report defines wellbeing as a measure of “how we are doing as individuals, as communities and as a nation, and how sustainable this is for the future” based on 41 metrics.

March 25, 2015

Report identifies the challenges and opportunities of workplace wellbeing

by Mark Eltringham • Briefing, News, Wellbeing, Workplace, Workplace design

Much of what has been called workplace strategy in recent years has been more about cutting costs than supporting people, often to the detriment of the latter. That is the central claim of a new report authored by Kate Lister and Tom Harnish of Global Workplace Analytics and sponsored by office furniture maker Knoll. The paper, What’s Good for People? Moving from Wellness to Well-Being, explores how better workplaces, processes and practices can improve workplace wellbeing, employee engagement and organisational performance. The study starts from the premise that people are dealing with unprecedented stresses and pressures in the workplace which now need to be addressed in the context of a recovering economy, the limits of an approach that focuses on doing more with less and an increasingly scant pool of human resources and talents.

March 24, 2015

Film: The Japanese workers who withdraw to live in Internet cafes

by Mark Eltringham • Comment, Flexible working, Technology

Japanese workers appear to manifest some of the most extreme reactions to the challenges of modern life. Often these are related to the uncertainties of work and the fracturing of time and space associated with contemporary working life. Two of the most common characteristics of the Japanese response appears to be isolation and exclusion. Recently, the Japanese Government investigated the phenomenon of banishment rooms which some firms are alleged to have used to exclude unwanted employees. There has also been a great deal of talk about hikikomori, those people who lock themselves away from the rest of the world, estimated to be up to 1 percent of the population. Now, a new film from Shiho Fukada tells the story of two Japanese men who have taken to living in Internet cafes as they seek to find their way in life.

March 24, 2015

Guidance published for SMEs on management and wellbeing of older workers

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

Since the the Default Retirement Age (DRA) was abolished in 2011, there’s been a growing awareness that the UK population is ageing at a rapid rate. One in six people in Britain are now over 65, with eight million workers aged 50 and over. But what is often overlooked is that the majority of older workers work for small and medium sized businesses. Of the 8 million workers who are 50 and over, 5.2 million work for businesses with less than 250 employees. Now in the first of its kind to specifically target smaller employers, new guidance published by Healthy Working Lives, part of NHS Health Scotland, aims to provide advice on hiring and managing older employees. Managing Healthy Ageing Workforces has been written by Dr Matt Flynn, Director of Newcastle University’s Centre for Research into the Older Workforce, and Kathleen Houston, Development Manager for Healthy Working Lives.

March 20, 2015

Happiness and wellbeing must be at the heart of the economy finds new report

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

To mark International Day of Happiness, a major new report has revealed that a country’s GDP fails to reflect levels of people’s happiness, which, it says, “are not easily reducible to monetary values”. Wellbeing and policy was commissioned by the Legatum Institute, which established the Commission on Wellbeing and Policy to advance the policy debate on social wellbeing and is chaired by the former head of the civil service Lord Gus O’Donnell. It finds there is growing recognition that the measures of a country’s progress need to include the wellbeing of its citizens. The report adds that with job satisfaction on a long-term downward trend in most advanced countries, and people ranking time spent with their manager as among their least happy moments in the day, there’s a lot more employers can be doing to address levels of wellbeing and happiness at work.

March 19, 2015

Office workers report difficulties with remote communications technology

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

Just as the adoption of digital communications technology is making the one-person per desk workstation model look outmoded, the design and layout of the typical conference room is no longer suitable for remote communications. That is one of the findings of a new survey by Steelcase which found that despite, or rather because of advances in technology, office workers are having difficulties when trying to communicate with work colleagues based elsewhere. The problem, which Steelcase has coined presence disparity can lead to an overall collaboration experience which is best described as unpleasant and taxing, with participants feeling strained physically, cognitively and emotionally. This isn’t helped by the fact that conference rooms, the most used spaces for videoconferencing, usually feature long rectangular tables designed for face to face meetings, not those to camera.

March 18, 2015

What the colonisation of new domains tells us about how we work

by Charles Marks • Architecture, Cities, Comment, Flexible working

Headlines about the world’s accelerating taste for skyscrapers tend to be dominated by the big numbers. This is a world in which size is important, but get behind the focus on height and you find some very interesting data about the rapid and significant changes in what these tall buildings are actually for and how this chimes with broader changes in the way we create and use workplace and shared spaces. According to the most recent annual report on the world’s skyscrapers from the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat, last year was a record breaker with 97 new skyscrapers completed globally. The devil here is in the detail. While the world’s tallest new building was One World Trade centre in New York, the overwhelming majority of new skyscrapers are to be found in Asia generally and China in particular.