Search Results for: performance

July 22, 2016

The people centric urge to personalise space helps firms to engage employees ⁰

by Paul Goodchild • Case studies, Comment, Wellbeing, Workplace design

In America at least, the great symbol of corporate conformity is the office cubicle. Satirised in the Dilbert cartoons and a staple in any movie about the degrading aspects of modern working life, the cubicle provides a perfect shorthand way of portraying an individual crushed by the corporate jackboot. Yet what these things miss is the propensity of people to personalise their surroundings and claim a space as their own, even if only for the short time they may be there. This seems to be particularly the case when it comes to office design and so we were much taken with this blog which lists the most far out and quirky ways people in the US have found to personalise their cubicles. Of course the need and urge to personalise space are not limited to the US. We often find in the course of our own installations that the first thing people do when they occupy an office for the first time is to personalise their space.

July 20, 2016

We need to keep a more open mind about open plan office design

by Maciej Markowski • Comment, Facilities management, Workplace design

Most people will be aware that there has been an historic and enduring debate about whether open plan offices are a good or a bad thing. Past articles whether in the Guardian, Dezeen or across the pond in the Washington Post would typically suggest that they diminish productivity and foster a number of other workplace ills. However introducing open plan design principles into your office is almost certainly a good idea. You really just need to make sure that you provide your employees with a choice of settings that allows them to work somewhere that suits the task in hand whether it’s space for concentration or privacy for confidential conversations in order to make it work. It’s a complex and contentious issue so it’s worth asking where open plan works and where it really doesn’t. If you ask many employees working in open plan offices what is bothering them, they’ll probably tell you two things: that they cannot focus and they have no privacy.

July 13, 2016

Gensler publishes latest US and UK Workplace Surveys for 2016 ⁰

by Mark Eltringham • Architecture, Facilities management, Features, Flexible working, Workplace design

Gensler has announced the results of its Workplace Survey 2016 for both the UK and the US. Key claims of the UK report based on a study of 1,210 respondents include that the UK workforce seems to be divided into ‘haves and have-nots’, with mid and lower-tier workers confined to poor quality environments, 67 per cent of the workforce feel drained due to their office environment at the end of each day and that ‘innovators’ spend just 3.5 days of the working week in the office, highlighting the need for greater flexibility. Meanwhile, the key finding of the US study of 4,000 respondents is that a statistical link between the quality and functional make-up of the workplace and the level of innovation employees ascribe to their organisation, and found that a workplace that prioritises both individual and group work creates ‘an ecosystem of innovation’ across organisations and is a crucial predictor of how innovative an employee sees their company to be.

July 8, 2016

Overwhelming majority of employees putting in unpaid extra hours ⁰

by Neil Franklin • News, Wellbeing, Workplace

The overwhelming majority of UK employees (81 percent) are working beyond their contracted hours, claims a report from recruitment firm Morgan McKinley. Overall, 81 percent of people put in the extra hours with senior staff most likely to work more than 10 hours over their contracted hours (42 percent) each week compared to 21 percent of those who had just started working. The Morgan McKinley Working Hours survey of 2,600 professionals in sectors such as banking and finance, claims that 75 percent of employees felt obliged to work beyond their contracted hours, yet just 13 percent of respondents to the survey say they are paid for working extra hours. The study claims that only 32 percent of professionals believe that they are productive during the extra hours that they work. A third (34 percent) don’t take a lunch break of any kind, with Millennials (21 percent) being the largest group to have a working day without their lunch break.

July 5, 2016

LBGT inclusion in the workplace relies on FM and HR best practice ⁰

by Peter Holmes • Comment, Facilities management, Wellbeing, Workplace, Workplace design

Much has been written about the business case for diversity and inclusion with one overarching theme; people perform better when they can be themselves. This is especially true for lesbian, gay, bisexual and trans employees. Have you ever hesitated before talking about your partner to a colleague at work? Anticipated how they will react when they find out the person’s gender? Have you ever thought twice about going to the toilet in the office? Spent more time worrying about which facilities you’ll use than the looming deadline you have coming up? These are just a few examples of the thoughts that can consume the mental power of an LGBT person when you create a working environment which isn’t inclusive. According to last year’s Open For Business report, LGBT diversity and inclusion in the workplace impacts two key areas of productivity – business and individual performance, which rely on a focus on sound management and an inclusive workplace design.

June 30, 2016

Lack of leadership development undermines organisational agility ⁰

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

Employers are failing to address weaknesses in leadership development, and this is compromising their organisational agility, according to a report published by Orion Partners. The report, Agile HR: Mindset Not Methodology found that those questioned understood the importance of agility, with 67 percent of HR professionals describing it as “business critical.” Yet despite 59 percent agreeing that the people management practice that has the greatest impact on organisational agility is leadership development, none of the senior HR professionals polled rated their organisations as highly effective at building versatile leaders and 75 percent believed they were no more than moderately effective in this area. Attempts to make their companies more agile with the introduction of flexible working are not being focused correctly either, which the authors suggest is reaping the consequences of failing to sell the wider business benefits of effective HR management.

June 29, 2016

Higher productivity levels reported by staff with flexible hours ⁰

by Sara Bean • Flexible working, News, Workplace

Measuring productivity is hardly an exact science, but there are ways that individuals can analyse their working habits and come up with ways of improving their performance. According to research by Conference Genie we all have times where we’re very productive and others where we struggle to get any work done. The data gathered in the study of 2,000 UK employees who work from home or in an office, can be split into age, gender, region and industry sector and shows that over half of UK office/home workers say they sometimes waste time at work, and a further 15 percent say they often waste time at work. It seems that the older generation is most productive. Eighteen to 24 year old’s gave themselves the lowest productivity rating and 55+ the highest. And in a further indication of the benefits of agile working a third of those who gave themselves a productivity rating of 4/5 say that their employer offers them flexible hours.

June 27, 2016

Best tall buildings in the world, regional awards winners announced ⁰

by Mark Eltringham • Architecture, Environment, News, Property

The Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat (CTBUH) has announced the winners of its annual Tall Building Awards for 2016. The Awards are, judged by a panel of experts, primarily drawn from the property and architecture sectors. The CTBUH claims its awards provide ‘a more comprehensive and sophisticated view of these important structures, while advocating for improvements in every aspect of performance, including those that have the greatest positive impact on the individuals who use these buildings and the cities they inhabit.’ The best tall buildings have been announced for each of four regions: Americas, Asia & Australasia, Europe and Middle East & Africa. While the winners in the Middle East and US were both residential projects, the winners in Asia and Europe were both primarily office based or mixed use projects; the Shanghai Tower in Shanghai and The White Walls mixed-use building in Nicosia, Cyprus.

June 20, 2016

What happens when you take transparent office design to extremes ⁰

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

A rigid and unswerving adherence to a principle is rarely a good thing in the long run. This is perhaps doubly so when it comes to office design because the end result is often something that overlooks what offices are really for; namely giving human beings a place to go to be with one another. So, when you take a design dogma to extremes that ignore the human being that should be your core concern, you end up getting something like the office with no chairs, because ‘sitting is the new smoking’. Or you get the office made completely of glass because ‘transparency generates trust’. While it’s true that the Dutch firm MRVDV responsible for the refit of the building in Hong Kong has included some genuinely successful features, not least in the use of natural light and the environmental performance of the building, the interior itself is clearly the end product of meetings in which nobody felt comfortable telling everybody to knock it off.

June 17, 2016

Women’s long hours working linked to alarming increases in serious illness ⁰

by Mark Eltringham • Flexible working, Knowledge, Wellbeing, Workplace

Women who put in long hours for the sake of their careers may pay a heavy price including life-threatening illnesses, such as heart disease and cancer. Work weeks that averaged 60 hours or more over three decades appear to triple the risk of diabetes, cancer, heart trouble and arthritis for women, according to new research from Ohio State University and published in The Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine. The risk begins to climb when women put in more than 40 hours and takes a decidedly bad turn above 50 hours, researchers found. Men with tough work schedules appeared to fare much better, found researchers who analysed data from interviews with almost 7,500 people who were part of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth. More scheduling flexibility and on-the-job health coaching, screening and support could go a long way toward reducing the chances employees become sick or die as a result of chronic conditions, according to the report.

June 17, 2016

Poor office acoustic design biggest issue for workers, but bosses aren’t listening ⁰

by Sara Bean • Facilities management, Flexible working, Wellbeing, Workplace

Open-plan offices are meant to encourage collaboration and contribute to a collegial workplace culture, but they also come with serious drawbacks like noise and distraction. New research claims that more than half of employees said poor office acoustic design reduces their satisfaction at work. Many feel compelled to solve the problem on their own, blocking out distraction through visits to break out spaces, taking walks outside, or listening to white noise and music on headsets or headphones. The survey of more than 600 executives and 600 employees by Oxford Economics and Plantronics set out to understand what works for employees—and what doesn’t—about open-plan layouts, and to test for disconnects between workers and their managers. The results show that threats to productivity and worker peace of mind are bigger issues than most executives realise, and most do not have the technology or strategies in place to deal with the problems.

June 14, 2016

UK leads the world in serviced offices and demand is set to rise ⁰

by Sara Bean • Facilities management, Flexible working, News, Property

The UK is the leading global serviced office sector, with the largest and most mature market, accounting for over a third (36 percent) of the worldwide serviced office footprint, according to a new report commissioned by serviced office group Office Space in Town. The UK serviced office market has grown by 31 percent since 2008, and it is projected to increase in value significantly by 2025, to £62 billion on conservative projections and £126bn on more optimistic forecasts. There are three key drivers behind its rise: increasing numbers of growth businesses, expansion of key sectors that use serviced offices and the trend towards more flexible working. There are sound economic and business behavioural reasons to believe this growth in demand for serviced offices will continue over the next decade. This, in part, will come from growth in small firms and business start-ups, which comprise a large share of current serviced office users.