Search Results for: performance

February 15, 2016

UK commercial buildings emit far more carbon than they were designed to ⁰

by Mark Eltringham • Architecture, Environment, Facilities management, News

Commercial buildings in the UK may be producing an average of 3.8 times more carbon than the estimate presented at their design stage, according to research from InnovateUK. The study examined six years of data from Innovate UK’s Building Performance Evaluation (BPE) Programme. It found that only one of the 48 buildings studied produced the amount of carbon specified by its design. In some cases, total emissions were 10 times the rate calculated for Part L compliance. ‘Building Performance Evaluation Programme: Findings From Non-Domestic Projects’, identifies complex energy controls and building management systems (BMS) as significant factors in poor levels of carbon emissions, suggesting that they should be simplified. Although two-thirds of the buildings studied employed renewable energy, a significant proportion of these experienced problems that had a negative impact on their energy consumption and carbon emissions.

February 15, 2016

Employers must meet productivity challenges of paying Living Wage ⁰

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

A quarter of private sector employees will be directly affected by the implementation of the new National Living Wage, (NLW) over double the proportion of public sector employees. The research, conducted by the Social Market Foundation in partnership with Adecco Group UK & Ireland, warns these employers will need to overcome significant productivity challenges in order to cope with the cost. The NLW cut-off at age 25 means businesses will be faced with potential discrepancies in wages across their younger workforce. While almost a fifth (18 percent) of employees who will benefit from the NLW are younger workers surprisingly, workers aged 50 or over will make up a third. Part-time workers make up around half of the workforce in severely affected workplaces. The research also found that the workplaces severely affected by new National Living Wage tend to have low-skilled employees and are much less likely to offer in-work training.

February 11, 2016

New chair of Women on Boards to review FTSE 350 representation ⁰

by Sara Bean • Legal news, News, Public Sector, Workplace

The government has appointed a new chair to carry on the work of Lord Davies’s Women on Boards Review which was set up in February 2011 to determine the obstacles preventing more women from reaching senior executive positions. The Chair of GlaxoSmithKline, and former Chair of RBS and Sainsbury’s, Sir Philip Hampton, has been appointed to lead the review of representation at FTSE 350 companies. Dame Helen Alexander, Chair of UBM, will take on the role of Deputy Chair to the review. The new review will continue on from Davies’s voluntary business led initiative, which saw female representation on boards in the FTSE 100 rise from 12.5 percent to beyond the target of 25 percent. The next phase of the review will focus on one of the key recommendations from Lord Davies’s report, building a pipeline for female executives and emerging non-executive directors to improve representation at the executive layer of companies.

February 9, 2016

Report reveals huge surge in use of flexible working worldwide ⁰

by Mark Eltringham • Flexible working, News, Technology

Three quarters of companies worldwide have now introduced flexible working to enable employees to vary their hours and work from home or on the move according to one of the largest global surveys of its kind conducted with 8,000 employers and employees across three continents. The Flexible: friend or foe? survey was commissioned by Vodafone and took place between September and October 2015. The countries surveyed were Germany, Hong Kong, India, Italy, Netherlands, Singapore, South Africa, Spain, the UK and the USA. A total of 8,000 employers and employees were interviewed online. The rapid adoption of high-speed mobile data services, fixed-line broadband and cloud services is playing an integral role in this workplace revolution: 61 percent of respondents now use their home broadband service to access work applications and 24 percent use a mobile data connection via their smartphone, tablet or laptop with a broadband dongle.

January 27, 2016

Employers embrace workplace engagement, but find it hard to measure ⁰

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

Businesses may appreciate the benefits of workplace engagement, but quantifying these remains a challenge. According to new research of European employers by Oracle, 93 percent acknowledge employee engagement is strategically important to their company and a majority say it positively impacts collaboration (65 percent), helps boost business performance (61 percent), and contributes to improved customer service (60 percent). Yet nearly two thirds (31 percent) say it’s difficult to measure the return of investment on their wider business, and 30 percent say boardroom decision-makers cannot easily understand its impact. And despite the availability of advanced analytics to measure engagement, the report also claims that current processes are not being optimised to drive engagement, as 68 per cent of businesses still rely on standard staff surveys to gauge engagement levels, with only 37 percent using more sophisticated methods.

January 26, 2016

Could a sexy office help you seduce clients back to your place? ⁰

by Darren Bilsborough • Comment, Facilities management, Workplace design

I am not suggesting that a cool or sexy office is all you need to drive business outcomes. Nor am I going to suggest that all you need to do to grow a successful business is to invest in a fully loaded, bells and whistles, technology laden, productivity enabling office environment. Not that all of those things won’t help, they very well could be the things that prove to be difference makers. What I will suggest however, is that in most instances a business’s success relies almost exclusively upon the satisfaction of their customer base. Any deliberations associated with office space should, therefore, in some way consider their needs and desires. No doubt these considerations will be highly dependent on the type of business you are in and whether the model it embraces is business-to-business or business-to-consumer, but when contemplating the needs of your clients, you should at least ask yourself the following 4 simple questions.

January 26, 2016

Unethical employment practices drive ‘Gen S’ professionals away ⁰

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

Over half of ‘Gen S’ workers would refuse to work for employers who have a record of using slave labour, generating high levels of pollution, employing unsafe working conditions, poor environmental performance, questionable investments and unethical practices. According to the Institute of Environmental Management & Assessment’s (IEMA) annual Practitioner Survey these people see environmental roles as the career change of choice, with 42 percent of professionals who now work in these roles considering themselves “career changers”. Those entering the profession come from a variety of backgrounds including finance, operations, marketing and communications and R&D. Gen S workers are typically people in their mid-thirties, above average in their qualifications with 45 percent having a Master’s degree or doctorate, looking for more than just a career and earning money, but actively seeking a career which is primarily “ethical” in nature.

January 26, 2016

2015 was a record year for commercial property investment ⁰

by Sara Bean • Facilities management, News, Property

At £64.3bn, investment in UK commercial property reached a new annual record last year, 4 percent above 2014, according to new research published by Lambert Smith Hampton. This performance was bolstered by a strong end to the year, with investment between October and December reaching £15.7bn, 23 percent higher than in the previous quarter. Investment in London reached £26.9bn, 4 percent higher than in the previous year. According to the report asset management will be vitally important in 2016, as rental income will be the main driver of performance, and as such, pro-active asset management initiatives, such as investment in office refurbishments in areas with few vacancies, are likely to offer the best prospects for investors. Explained Ezra Nahome, CEO of Lambert Smith Hampton: “This means that knowing your market, almost at a building-by-building level, and understanding the dynamics of each locality, will be more important than ever.”

January 18, 2016

Firms demanding more data about workplaces…and they’re about to get it ⁰

by Mark Eltringham • News, Property, Technology, Workplace design

Companies are increasingly focussed on generating workplace data as they seek to make better decisions about the ways their real estate supports their key organisational objectives. That is one of the key findings of the latest European Occupier Survey from property consultants CBRE (login required). The good news (or bad news, depending on your point of view) is they’re about to get it in spades, according to another study from researchers International Data Corporation which found that there will be a huge surge in the availability of Big Data infrastructure in EMEA countries over the next four years. The acquisition of data about buildings and their inhabitants remains a troublesome issue, especially when executives do things like introduce sensors to monitor working patterns of employees without their knowledge, as bosses at The Telegraph found in a very public way recently.

January 14, 2016

Demand for offices in Paris to remain strong in the coming months ⁰

by Sara Bean • Facilities management, News, Property

Competition for office space and investment assets in Paris remains strong, on the back of healthy economic growth, with GDP in the country expected to grow by 1.1 percent this year, and a further 1.4 percent in 2016, after three years of subdued growth. Following a relatively weak performance in the first quarter of 2015, office leasing in Île-de-France recovered in the third quarter, with annual take-up forecast to again exceed 2 million sq m. Though demand remains high, rents have been left unaffected, further increasing the desirability of the market. Limited development will continue to restrict occupier activity – the development pipeline for the next two years has reduced, with much of the new stock likely to be pre-leased before completion. Heena Kerai, International Research Analyst at Knight Frank, commented: “Occupier and investor confidence will remain positive and despite stock limitations, we can expect both markets to put in a strong performance in the coming quarters.”

January 11, 2016

Cranes dot Birmingham skyline as city hits 13 year development high ⁰

by Neil Franklin • Architecture, Cities, News, Property

Birmingham’s development upturn looks set to continue this year, as the latest Deloitte Birmingham Crane Survey shows office construction at the highest level for 13 years. The report also showcases the significant increase in hotel, leisure and retail developments in the city, reflecting both the rise in investor interest in regional cities and the year-on-year growth of visitor numbers attracted to the UK’s second city. The report, first launched by the Deloitte Real Estate team in the Midlands in 2000, shows 969,000 sq ft of office space under construction, with hotel construction three times higher than the 10 year average. Office take-up has shown a particular resurgence. Q1 to Q3 of 2015 reached 732,000 sq ft, its highest level since 2008. The Colmore Row district remains very attractive to investors, whilst more peripheral locations have become more established and are generating serious interest.

January 8, 2016

The six things all people need from their workplace ⁰

by Jane Kendall-Bush • Comment, Facilities management, Knowledge, Workplace design

Whether we like it or not, we all have to work for some, or more usually, most of our adult life. During this time, many of us will work in an office, which is a place that has changed immensely – not only in the last ten years or so, but almost entirely since the start of the twentieth century. The management structure and style of companies, the tools available to the workforce, and the places within the office buildings have been changing and evolving. There has been a shift from hierarchical management structures to a more diverse and organic model. The tools of work have changed from the humble typewritten letter and Bakelite telephone to 24/7 access to emails though laptops and smart phones. And finally the workplace itself has evolved from one with enclosed offices for the senior managers, or a sea of cubicles to workplaces that encourage creativity and collaboration.