Search Results for: productivity

We should measure wellbeing and security if we want to create Good Work, claims the RSA

We should measure wellbeing and security if we want to create Good Work, claims the RSA

Job security, workplace mental health, and how well-supported workers feel by their employer, should be monitored annually by the government, a report led by the RSA and the Carnegie UK Trust recommends. The need to better monitor quality of work in the UK was called for in RSA chief executive Matthew Taylor’s 2017 employment review for the Prime Minister. The UK Government subsequently committed to delivering on this proposal; and Measuring Good Work now sets out a roadmap for how the ambition can be achieved. The report highlights that employment has a major impact on people’s wellbeing and quality of life, arguing that since the 2008 financial crisis, despite record employment, the overall figure on the number of people in work fails to account for issues like worker pay; whether employees feel they are trapped in a job below their skillset; are working too few or too many hours; or are facing excessive workplace pressure.

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Creating a productive workplace for people is all about context

Creating a productive workplace for people is all about context

commercial property innovationThe quest for a proper understanding of the links between the places we work, the things with which we fill them and our wellbeing and productivity has been ongoing for a very long time. It predates our current thinking on productive workplace design and the facilities management discipline as we now know it by decades and has its roots in the design of early landmark offices such as Frank Lloyd Wright’s Larkin building and research such as that carried out at the Hawthorne Works in Chicago in the late 1920s. Yet the constantly evolving nature of work means that we are forever tantalised by an idea that we can never fully grasp and makes established ideas seem like revelations.

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Firms need to distinguish between job and organisation when it comes to employee engagement

Firms need to distinguish between job and organisation when it comes to employee engagement

Organisations need to distinguish between employee engagement with a job and engagement with the organisation if they are to improve the employee experience and their overall competitive advantage, a new research paper claims. Published by the Institute for Employment Studies (IES), the paper claims to highlight how traditional, one-dimensional views of engagement fail to make a distinction between job and organisational engagement, viewing employee engagement as a single concept. However, employees can be highly engaged with the organisation but have low levels of job engagement, or vice versa. The research paper, Bridging the gap: an evidence-based approach to employee engagement, suggests that this lack of understanding about what engagement really is and how it influences organisational success can lead to inefficient and ineffective strategies to improve employee engagement.

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Quality coffee tops the list as the most important office feature

Quality coffee tops the list as the most important office feature

Quality coffee tops the list for the most important office featureThe quality of the coffee is the most important feature for office occupants, with two thirds of workers saying a decent flat white or cappuccino is an essential for a productive and engaged workforce.  Research by coworking developer Areaworks also found that being closer to the outdoors, and the ability to work from a balcony or roof terrace was an important factor for 64 percent. Hanging chairs, bean bags and flexible spaces are a must for most, as half of office workers want to ditch fixed desks in favour of casual seating and hot desking, making it a top five most favoured feature. the office gimmicks failed to feature on most people’s workplace bucket list. The installation of office gimmicks such as fireman’s poles and ball pits all failed to feature on most people’s workplace list, but slides did make the list, while the majority (66 percent) included a fridge complete with beer and prosecco among their choice items.

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Cash is key motivator for UK workers and it is leading to high levels of disengagement

Cash is key motivator for UK workers and it is leading to high levels of disengagement

Cash is key motivator for UK workers and it is leading to high levels of disengagement

UK workers are more motivated by cash than their European counter-parts, a new survey has claimed, with over half (62 percent) saying their pay check is the reason they come to work. According to the research from ADP, this compares to an average of 49 percent across other European countries. The study, which surveyed over 2,000 workers across France, Germany, Italy, Netherlands and the UK, also shows that non-financial drivers lead to higher engagement levels and greater satisfaction on pay day. UK employees were also the least likely to claim they come to work because they love what they do, with only 13 percent of UK workers saying this is the case, compared to 26 percent in the Netherlands. Worryingly, UK workers are also the most likely to feel like quitting, with 19 percent thinking this every week or more, and 9 percent going as far to think about it most days. This is drastically higher than all other countries, averaging 11 percent and 6 percent respectively.

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A round up of some of the best recent workplace content from around the web

A round up of some of the best recent workplace content from around the web

All the workstyles we have ever loved

Open plan v private offices déjà vu

Britain’s productivity crisis in eight charts

Investors discount office buildings with high WeWork occupancies

Perceptions of pay fairness

Agile humans, and therefore organisations. Just a dream?

Excessive hours and intense work is (sic) bad for your career

Workplace wellness programmes may be a waste of time and money, study concludes

Workplace wellness programmes may be a waste of time and money, study concludes

workplace wellnessThe $8 billion dollar wellness industry in the US may not be achieving very much, according to a new analysis from academics at Chicago University and the University of Illinois published by the National Bureau of Economic Research. While the researchers concede that the difficulties of measuring the impact of such programmes depends very much on the characteristics of the people who enter them voluntarily, their study of 5,000 people found that the effects of a wellness programme were non-existent to negligible across a range of metrics.

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Employers urged to err on the side of caution when the staff commute counts as work

Employers urged to err on the side of caution when the staff commute counts as work

A call for employers to pay staff for the time they spend emailing while commuting has opened up the debate on what constitutes working time for employees. Researchers from the University of the West of England who found that commuters used free Wi-Fi provision on their journey to and from work to ‘catch up’ with work emails, have argued this supported the argument that the commute be counted as work. Until now, there has been little research to evaluate the impact free Wi-Fi provision has had in the UK, despite government encouragement for companies to provide access on transport networks. Traditionally, the government has been more concerned about the benefits of free Wi-Fi for business travellers, but the research team believe that the impact on commuters may be more important. When the researchers looked to Scandinavia to see how commuting time could be measured differently, they found that in Norway some commuters are able to count travel time as part of their working day.

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Larger businesses far more stressful to work for than smaller firms

Larger businesses far more stressful to work for than smaller firms

Larger businesses far more stressful to work for than smaller firmsWe reported yesterday that younger job seekers who favour corporates could be missing out on greater opportunities within smaller organisations, and now new research suggests that despite margins often being tighter and tensions or losses often being felt more keenly in smaller businesses, the level of occupational stress workers feel directly correlates to the size of the company they are in. Micro businesses employing a maximum of four members of staff were less likely than those in businesses of any other size to feel work-related stress, with 45 percent of employees reporting this to the Perkbox 2018 UK Workplace Stress Report. This figure increases to 57 percent for small businesses (5 – 50 staff) and again to 62 percent for small to medium sized organisations (51 – 500 employees).  Finally, workers at larger sized businesses – those with more than 500 members of staff – report the greatest instances of staff experiencing workplace stress (65 percent).

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Senior managers unaware of high levels of employee mistrust

Senior managers unaware of high levels of employee mistrust

High levels of employee mistrust towards senior UK management warns reportThe new corporate governance code that comes into play early next year includes directives on how companies engage with their staff, but it is a voluntary code which will allow businesses to opt out if they wish. Now a new report suggests there is currently is a high level of mistrust towards senior UK managers, with just 16 percent trusting this group, according to the study. This is despite the fact that according to the research, carried out by Virtual College the majority (95 percent) of senior managers in UK businesses believe that their employees trust them. Employees rated their trust in different roles in the following order; co-workers – 57 percent, managers – 45 percent, team members – 42 percent and senior management – 16 percent. Trust in senior management was found to be considerably lower than trust in other positions such as middle management. The sectors that trusted senior management the least included; utilities (3 percent), legal (8 percent) and government services (8.7 percent).

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SMEs more likely to offer flexible working than larger businesses

SMEs more likely to offer flexible working than larger businesses

SMEs more likely to offer flexible working than larger businesses to reduce absenceMore SMEs than larger businesses offer flexible working as a way of reducing absences, research from industry body Group Risk Development (GRiD), suggests. The research showed that 35 percent of SMEs with up to 249 employees are actively using flexible working strategies to combat absence compared to just 23 percent of organisations with over 250 employees. Drilling down further into the detail, 38 percent of micro businesses with between 1 and 9 employees use flexible working as a means to reduce absence. Flexible working now means a lot more than allowing an employee to work from home when they are feeling under the weather, and following changes in the law in 2014, it is now an option for everyone with at least 26 weeks continuous employment to request it – not just those with children or carer responsibilities. It also includes part-time working, term-time working, job sharing, compressed hours and flexitime. A greater degree of flexibility can increase productivity and reduce burn out, particularly in stressful occupations.

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Employers who do not offer flexible working are the exception rather than rule

Employers who do not offer flexible working are the exception rather than rule

Employers who do not offer flexible working are the exception rather than ruleMost organisations already offer some sort of flexible working and over half of employees now ask to work flexibly, a new survey from XpertHR research has claimed. One in 12 organisations (8.1 percent) reported that all employees worked flexibly, with employers attributing the rise to a more supportive workplace culture and the impact of recent legal changes. The survey found that more than half (55.9 percent) had seen an increase in flexible working requests over the past two years. Three out of four believed that this was due to changes in workplace culture in recent years, attributable in part to a change in the law in 2014 that extended the right to request flexible working to all employees with at least 26 weeks’ service. Flexible working goes across the board, and includes part-time working, variable start and finish times, home-working and other options.

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