Search Results for: people

August 14, 2013

Rise in number of temporary jobs as employment rates show modest increase

The latest employment figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) reveal that unemployment fell by just 4,000 in the three months to June. At 7.8 per cent, the overall rate remains unchanged since the previous quarter. The figures don’t reveal how many people are working on temporary, rather than full time contracts. According to TUC data, UK workers are increasingly taking involuntary temporary jobs, with almost half of the rise in employment since 2010 being in temporary work. Today’s ONS figures also show that wages grew by 1.1 per cent over the past year, which, when bonuses are included meant wages grew by 2.1 per cent, the highest annual growth since June 2011. But UK wages still lag behind those of EU workers. (more…)

August 8, 2013

The war against environmental cynicism puts an onus on suppliers to be honest

by Mark Eltringham • Comment, Environment, Furniture

Greenwash is one of those terms that has gone from needing an explanation to being in common usage in the space of a few years. The reason for that is quite simply that it is the perfect description of a particular form of marketing bullshit that we all recognise. However, while a degree of scepticism about what you hear from marketers is always healthy, but I fear the point has been reached where some people find it easy to dismiss real environmental claims as greenwash. The war against cynicism can partly be helped if more manufacturers and suppliers could get better at demonstrating the validity of their claims.

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August 1, 2013

Predicting the future of the office means looking at what is happening now

by Charles Marks • Comment, Facilities management, Furniture, Workplace, Workplace design

Futurology is notoriously a mug’s game. Especially when it comes to making predictions about technology. Just ask Ken Olson, the founder of DEC who in 1977 pronounced that ‘there is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home’. Or Bill Gates himself who once claimed that Microsoft ‘will never make a 32 bit operating system’. Most recently Steve Ballmer, a billionaire executive said in 2007 ‘there’s no chance that the iPhone is going to get any significant market share.’ But mone of these retrosepctively viewed dodgy predictions should make us blind to those that we know will certainly come true, especially those based on what we know is happening in the present.

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July 26, 2013

Report: How will the future affect us or can we effect the future?

by Sara Bean • Furniture, Knowledge, News

Workplace furniture specialist Kinnarps has published its Trend Report 2013, which is the culmination of detailed research across European markets and thought leaders, conducted in partnership with Stockholm based futurologists Kairos Future. The study distilled a broad overview of emerging and established trends, across Kinnarps’ European markets, to focus on eight key themes that will influence the workplace of the future. According to the report, big changes are already apparent in our society, but these will come to have an altogether greater impact on the way we evaluate our working environment. (more…)

July 26, 2013

FM must deliver better value to be perceived as strategic role

by Sara Bean • Facilities management, News

Clients and suppliers believe that the FM profession still has some way to go before it achieves the recognition given to other professions. According to Workplace Law’s second annual research study into leadership in facilities management (FM), 91 per cent of client organisations still feel that FM is seen as a supporting, rather than strategic, role – while the same number feel that FM will only achieve a higher ranking within an organisation’s hierarchy when it finds new ways to deliver value. FM suppliers strongly agree with the need to professionalise FM and attract more talent into the profession if FM is to continue as a separate discipline. (more…)

July 25, 2013

Show us the money. Increasing pressure for ROI on talent management initiatives

by Sara Bean • News, Workplace

Talent management is an integral part of the Human Resource role, but now HR professionals are being asked to provide some financial evidence. Four out of five (82%) of HR professionals are under increasing pressure to clearly demonstrate the financial return on investment of staff development a global study by Right Management has found. Although two thirds (65%) of UK-based senior HR executives believe that they are already highly effective at measuring the impact of their talent management initiatives, 85 per cent said that they are under rising pressure to demonstrate the outcome of these initiatives in monetary terms. (more…)

July 22, 2013

Active Building Design initiatives announced by New York Mayor

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

The Mayor of New York Michael Bloomburg has announced a series of initiatives to promote physical activity through the design of buildings and public spaces to encourage architects, planners and urban designers help combat obesity in the City. The Center for Active Design, a non-profit organization that promotes changes to the built environment to improve wellness is being created, and the Mayor has issued an Executive Order requiring City agencies use active design strategies when performing new construction and major renovation projects. Two pieces of legislation will promote stairway access in all buildings, with measures such as making stairways more visible to encourage use. (more…)

July 22, 2013

Firms turn to flexible working and BYOD to placate mobile workplace rebels

by Mark Eltringham • Flexible working, Knowledge, Technology

A new week and a new raft of surveys. Thankfully some of them throw up some rather interesting juxtapositions. Take the latest from Virgin Media which claims nearly half of UK office workers are now significantly free to choose how and where they work with over two thirds of organisations convinced that offering more technological choices and flexible working results in happier and more productive staff. Meanwhile, another survey from tech firm (what else?) VMware claims that over a third of UK employees would consider leaving their jobs if they couldn’t get their own way over using mobile devices at work.

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July 19, 2013

Keep up! new “megatrends” could have dramatic impacts on the world of work

by Sara Bean • Knowledge, News, Workplace

We are all aware to some extent or other of the ways in which work has changed significantly over the past few decades, but are employers sufficiently aware of, or prepared for, the future trends that will shape the way we work and the performance of our organisations and economies into the future? This is the question posed by HR body the CIPD in a major new discussion document Megatrends: The trends shaping work and working lives” as it launches a debate on the “megatrends” that are likely to shape the world of work, the workforce and the culture and organisation of workplaces over the next decade.

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July 19, 2013

Dual source lighting schemes illuminate the way ahead for office design

by Shane Cohen • Comment, Facilities management, Lighting, Workplace design

Too bright, too dull, too much glare – lighting (alongside air conditioning) is often one of the most contentious factors in a workplace. Office workers need illumination to read, write, type and interact. Yet many workplaces get it wrong and fail to consider the downsides of poor lighting, and as such staff will suffer from eye strain, headaches and postural problems, leading to sick days, not to mention lost productivity and mistakes. Eighty per cent of office workers experience at least one negative effect from poor quality lighting, according to researchers Bruskin Goldring, and 68 per cent of employees complain about the light in their offices, according to a study by the American Society of Interior Designers.

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July 18, 2013

Baltimore residents offered a “guns for laptops” exchange

by Sara Bean • Comment, News, Technology

Growing concerns regarding the incursion of connectivity devices into our everyday lives ignores the fact that many people have little or no access to these tools. Access to the Internet may have been ruled as a UN human right, but that doesn’t really help those who can’t afford devices that connect them to the web in the first place. So, while for most Europeans the recent story in the Baltimore Brew that locals could turn in their guns in exchange for a refurbished Dell laptop is pretty jaw-dropping, it’s a good example of the difficulty residents in a deprived area have in, as the organisers describe it, “bridging the digital divide.”

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