Search Results for: people

April 2, 2014

When worlds collide: a preview of the Salone Internationale del Mobile in Milan

by Justin Miller • Comment, Events, Furniture, Workplace design

Don’t even think about going to Milan for a break at this time of year – you probably won’t get a hotel room. Every year the Salone Internationale del Mobile (International Furniture Fair) and Milan Design Week ensure that hotels are full despite room rates soaring for the duration of this world class exhibition. Salone is the show to attend if you want to know what’s going on in the world of furniture design. Along with Orgatec, Neocon, CIFF, Clerkenwell Design Week and the Stockholm Furniture Fair, Salone makes up the Grand Tour of furniture and design shows around the world. These shows not only provide an international showcase the very latest in furniture design, each also offers its own unique insight into the way we work and live. And they do so on a massive scale. In the case of Milan, this means extending the show beyond the halls of the central Rho fairgrounds to use locations around the whole city, when it takes place next week.

April 2, 2014

New consortium aims to standardise technology to drive Internet of Things

by Mark Eltringham • Facilities management, News, Technology

The development of the much talked-about Internet of Things has been boosted with the announcement that AT&T, Cisco, GE, IBM and Intel have come together to form a group called the Industrial Internet Consortium (IIC) which will aim to standardise the way certain technologies function and so drive the uptake of the Internet of Things. The group has the apparent backing of the White House which has also announced that it will invest $100 million in research into the way physical objects can be linked to the internet, which is the fundamental principle of the Internet of Things. The IIC will be outlining its own plans in the near future to establish a common, global framework for the development of inter-connected digital and physical worlds and so sped up the adoption of an idea that promises to transform many aspects of our lives but which has not moved quickly enough, according to many commentators.

April 1, 2014

Average office temperatures set too high say environmental experts

by Sara Bean • Environment, Facilities management, News, Workplace

The publication this week of the report Climate Change 2014: Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability by the UN’s science panel that argues that the world is “ill-prepared” for risks from a changing climate, but that opportunities to respond to such risks still exist, proves more than ever that the built environment can play a vital role in helping to curb global warming. The most obvious place to start is by turning down the temperature of the office, which according to researchers from Lancaster University’s DEMAND Research Centre, has become warmer in recent years. As reported by Clickgreen, the researchers from Lancaster University say the average office temperature of 22 degrees C is way too high, and by simply turning down the thermostat and asking occupants to don another layer could do much to address global warming. More →

March 31, 2014

HR has the most ‘can’t do’ attitude in the workplace finds poll

by Sara Bean • News, Workplace

Human resources people are obstructive and most likely to reject reasonable requests in the workplace, finds a new poll. Almost 18 per cent of individuals polled by conference call provider Powwownow voted the HR department as the most difficult to work with; almost double that of Finance/Accounting, the next most maligned department.Why some members of staff are so uncooperative was interpreted by respondents as due to illusions of grandeur (68%), attempts to retain power and hold others back (67%) and confusion/lack of training/lack of confidence (40%). Unhelpfulness does not go unpunished it seems as the majority of respondents (53%) thought that unproductive or obstructive employees are more prone to bullying in the workplace. Those who encounter such unhelpfulness admitted to being driven to consider screaming out of sheer frustration (40%) or even seek new employment (36%) rather than speaking with their superior (30%) about an obstructive colleague. More →

March 31, 2014

Consultation opens on changes to construction project safety

by Sara Bean • Facilities management, News, Property

A consultation on changes to the way safety on building projects is managed has opened today. The ten week consultation is being carried out by the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) on proposals to replace the Construction (Design and Management) Regulations 2007 (CDM 2007). These currently apply to all construction work in the UK, and cover construction, alteration, fitting-out, commissioning, renovation, repair, upkeep, redecoration or other maintenance, decommissioning, demolition or dismantling. Key changes being proposed include the replacement of the CDM co-ordinator role with a principal designer role within the project team; introducing a duty on information, instruction, training and supervision to replace the duty to assess competence; removal of the domestic client exemption and transfer of these limited duties to the contractor/designer; and the replacement of the ACoP with tailored guidance. More →

March 28, 2014

Google’s new Amsterdam office exposes Tech’s youthful obsessions

by Mark Eltringham • Comment, Technology, Workplace design

All images © Alan Jensen and D/Dock

Back in the 1990s, when Frank Duffy was one of the august handful of people popularising notions of a changing approach to office design, he categorised four models of the workplace that he foresaw would come to reflect the work done in them, namely the den, cell, hive and club. Back then, the word ‘club’ conjured up images of gentleman’s clubs and Duffy himself described it in his 1997 book The New Office as ‘essentially an ingenious early 19^th Century device to allow the kind of people who are now called networkers to share as supportive an environment as possible’, illustrating his point with an old coloured engraving of upright gents sitting around in a neo-classical, Victorian, smoke-filled room reading newspapers, sipping port and chewing the fat. Nowadays, the word club would appear to suggest something more along the lines of a youth club, as the latest pubescent design of a Google office shows us. More →

March 27, 2014

Design of the Year shortlist contrasts what is practical with what is possible

by Simon Heath • Architecture, Comment, Workplace design

A great many of us pay architecture and design very little attention until it’s too late and we’re confronted with the workings of a mind that doesn’t consider whether just because we could really means we should. The kind of mind that designs a building that melts cars on the street or one with wind turbines that are so noisy they can’t be turned on. And so this week sees the announcement of nominees for the Design Museum Designs of The Year awards. It’s a studiedly eclectic list. In amongst the Lego calendars and texting fire alarms we also find a mobile gaming app designed to be used over many centuries (it is impossible to finish it in your lifetime, natch) that, it says here, “questions the inevitability of death, the meaning of legacy and the nature of progress”. I’ve searched for signs that this might be satire without success. However, we’ll focus our consideration on the nominations for designs for the built environment. More →

March 26, 2014

The enduring need to put a bit more of the M into facilities management

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

Shutterstock’s new offices, Empire State Building

It may well be a statement of the obvious, but it’s worth reminding ourselves sometimes that the term facilities management consists of two words. There is often a bit too much emphasis on the facilities and a bit too little on the management and sometimes we look for design and product solutions to problems that would be better managed in some way. You can put this down to a number of things but to some extent at least it’s down the idea that when you are determined to use a hammer, every job looks like a nail. Obviously the media takes some of the blame for this mindset because it often earns income from businesses who want to sell their stuff to solve particular problems rather than focus on the idea that many of them can be addressed either as a management issue or in combination with products and design.

March 25, 2014

Robotic managers likely to lack empathy and forget ethics, claims CMI report

by Mark Eltringham • Workplace

A new report into the judgements of managers has concluded that they are significantly more prone to responding in a ‘robotic’ way to moral questions than the general population, relying on handed-down rules rather than their own ethical standards. The report, Managers and their Moral DNA, was commissioned by the Chartered Management Institute (CMI) in conjunction with personality testing website Moral DNA. It found that nearly three quarters of managers (74 percent) lack empathy and do not fully consider the moral consequences when they take decisions, which is 28 percent higher than the general population. The report also claims that managers are 4 percent more compliant with rules and 5 percent less caring in their ethical decision-making at work than in their personal lives, a figure that tallies with other results from the Moral DNA database according to the report’s authors.

March 25, 2014

Employers welcome an age-diverse workforce, but need to be prepared

by Sara Bean • Flexible working, News, Workplace

A recent report by the UKCES that predicted that the workplace of the future will see four generations of employees working side by side is being welcomed, rather than feared by employers, but they need to begin planning for the future now, or risk a skills shortage and being at a competitive disadvantage. The revelation that by 2030 four-generation or “4G” workplaces – will become increasingly common as people delay retiring, even into their 80s, prompted UKCES Commissioner Toby Peyton-Jones to ask whether this emerging multi-generational workplace would spell stress and culture clashes or create positive tension leading to innovation. Now a new study, Managing an age-diverse workforce, from the CIPD, shows that employers and employees see clear benefits from an increasingly age diverse workforce but need to do more to take full advantage. More →

March 21, 2014

Why work should be a key focus in improving our happiness

by Jessica Pryce-Jones • Comment, Flexible working, Workplace

The iOpener Institute for People & Performance is an official partner of the UN International Day of Happiness, which took place this week. Here, iOpener’s Joint CEOs Jessica Pryce-Jones & Julia Lindsay explain why work should be a key focus of improving happiness. The UN International Day of Happiness is designed to recognize that ‘progress’ is about increasing human happiness and wellbeing as well as growing the economy. The UN’s focus this year is on ‘reclaiming happiness’. The origins of the day lie in the July 2011 UN General Assembly resolution which recognized happiness as a fundamental human goal. In April 2012 the first ever UN conference on Happiness took place. On the back of this, they designated 20th March as an annual worldwide focus on celebrating and growing happiness. More →