Search Results for: productivity

March 15, 2018

What the Chancellor’s Spring Statement means for the employment landscape

It may only have lasted 26 minutes, but chancellor Philip Hammond’s inaugural Spring Statement included a number of very encouraging points. Critics were quick to criticise Philip Hammond’s first Spring Statement. But that is perhaps simply the nature of politics. If an impartial party carefully dissects the 26-minute speech, there are undoubtedly many positives to take away. Yes, growth projections still lag slightly behind those highlighted in March 2016. However, it must be accepted that pre-Brexit forecasts are a different story altogether. On 24 June 2016, very few people would have predicted the growth story that was told in the House of Commons today – one of continued economic development with further growth on the horizon. This story is therefore an extremely encouraging one, and a welcome narrative amidst the doom and gloom that so often dominates the media headlines and political debates.

March 15, 2018

Smart cities could give people back 125 hours each year, claims new Intel study

by Mark Eltringham • Cities, News, Technology

An Intel-sponsored study by Juniper Research estimates that smart cities have the potential to “give back” around 125 hours to every resident every year. The study also ranks the top 20 smart cities worldwide across four key areas: mobility, health care, public safety and productivity, and reveals how these cities deliver positive outcomes for increased time savings and productivity, increases in health and overall quality of life, and a safer environment. The study found that Chicago, London, New York, San Francisco and Singapore (pictured), are the world’s leading cities integrating IoT technologies and connected services. These cities stand out because of their cohesive efforts to connect city municipalities, businesses and their citizens to address a growing need to improve “livability” – specifically around mobility (San Francisco and Singapore), public safety (Chicago, New York and Singapore), health care (London and Singapore), and productivity (Chicago, London and Singapore) – as they transition to a smarter, more connected environment.

March 14, 2018

Four UK cities ranked in Europe’s top ten most attractive locations for businesses and employees

by Mark Eltringham • Cities, News

London has been ranked as Europe’s most attractive city for businesses and employees for second year running according to Colliers International’s latest European Cities of Influence report, which reviews and ranks cities based on their occupier attractiveness, availability of talent, and quality of life factors alongside economic output and productivity; Paris, Madrid, Moscow and Birmingham making up the rest of the top five. The report claims that the UK remains a highly desirable destination for capital and occupiers, largely driven by its ‘magnetism as a centre of diverse high-quality service sector talent’, which is in turn is helping to drive economic output and productivity. Other UK cities which score in the top 10 include Birmingham (5th), Edinburgh (7th) and Manchester (10th).

March 12, 2018

Schools aren’t doing enough to prepare children for collaborative working life

by Neil Franklin • Flexible working, News

New research from the organisers of UC EXPO claims that just 44 percent of British people believe that the current school curriculum does enough to provide students with the collaboration skills they need for modern working life. According to the study of 2,000 respondents carried out in February of this year, 70 percent of the UK workforce already believes that collaboration is very important in the work environment. But just over half (51 percent) either never collaborated or collaborated infrequently in school, and 37 percent stated that collaboration wasn’t an important focus of their education.

March 5, 2018

About time we simply accepted that coworking and flexible working are the new normal

by Sarah King • Comment, Coworking, Flexible working, Workplace design

Ask someone to list innovative companies which have become notable disruptors in their market and they invariably respond with two names – Uber and Airbnb. That is because both brands are positioned squarely and successfully at the retail consumer: for people who use a taxi or take an occasional short break in a foreign city, they have become the automatic default options. But there is another equally successful business targeting the corporate space, aimed particularly at small businesses and millennial tech start-ups: WeWork. Just like Uber and Airbnb, it is less than a decade old. In that time, WeWork’s ambition of being the world’s leading coworking company has been realised. Championing itself as a disruption revolutionary, it has succeeded more prosaically by ‘creating environments that increase productivity, innovation, and collaboration,’ according to its website. WeWork’s model involves renting office space cheaply via long-term lease contracts. Small units are then re-rented at higher rates to start up companies which are happy to pay a premium because they need very little space.

March 5, 2018

Automation will lead to greater inequality rather than job losses

by Neil Franklin • AI, News, Technology

The total level of wages associated with jobs that have the technical potential to be automated in the UK is £290 billion per year, which represents 33 percent of all wages and earnings from labour in the economy, according to a new report published by IPPR for the IPPR Commission on Economic Justice. The report further claims that low-wage jobs have more potential to be automated than high-wage jobs and so it’s not just automation’s impact on the number of jobs that need to be considered but the impact on inequality. If automation leads to lower average wages or working hours, or loss of jobs in aggregate, a significant amount of national income could be transferred from wages to profits. And while increased automation of activities will replace some workers and labour earnings, employment and wages will rise in other areas of the labour market due to higher output and productivity, offsetting some of the original £290 billion lost but increasing pay inequality.

March 1, 2018

Standing desks may not be the wellbeing panacea we’ve been led to believe

by Mark Eltringham • News, Wellbeing, Workplace design

Regular readers will know that we’ve been banging this particular drum for some time (see below), but new research confirms that sitting may not actually be the ‘new smoking’ and standing desks may not be the panacea we’ve been led to believe. A new study published in the journal Ergonomics confirms that standing at a workstation for prolonged periods of computer work can lead to ‘discomfort and deteriorating mental reactiveness’ which in turn can lead to a range of health problems and reduced productivity. As usual, the nuances and limitations of this research have been ignored in the reporting of the study so that now standing desks are seen as a problem when instead they’re a good potential solution as part of a workplace culture that encourages people to move and shift posture more frequently.

February 23, 2018

Diversity shown to help drive business performance but discrimination is still widespread

by Sara Bean • News, Workplace

The economic cost of workplace discrimination to the UK Economy is £127 billion a year, claims new research. Of the £127 billion, £123 billion is due to gender discrimination, £2.6 billion as a result of discrimination against ethnic minorities and £2 billion due to discrimination as a result of sexual orientation. These are the claims of a new report commissioned by INvolve, a membership organisation that champions holistic diversity and inclusion in the workplace, and Cebr, an economics consultancy which analysed over 500 workplaces uncovered a significant positive correlation between diversity and financial performance.

February 22, 2018

The UK needs a new approach to low pay, equality and flexible working

by Neil Franklin • News, Workplace

A new research paper from the Institute for Employment Studies (IES) claims to identify areas where employers and policymakers should act to reinvigorate their pay and rewards practices to improve employee engagement and productivity. According to the IES, with the likely intensification of current recruitment shortages, skills gaps and the fall in living standards as the UK leaves the European Union, the paper argues that both employers and policymakers should act on three key areas – low pay, gender pay and total rewards – to help halt the relative decline of the UK’s already below-par productivity performance.

February 21, 2018

Cities must harness potential of new technology to keep themselves moving

by Neil Franklin • AI, Cities, News

The UK Government needs to develop a new transport strategy based on local partnerships to keep up with technological advances in areas such as self-driving cars, claims a new report. Rethinking Urban Mobility has been published by engineering company Arup, in collaboration with the London Transport Museum, law firm Gowling WLG and transport company Thales. The report coincides with the publication of a similar study from the World Economic Forum which claims that autonomous and shared vehicles, digitalisation and decentralisation of energy systems require new approaches to mobility.

February 20, 2018

Built environment needs to address the talent gap to make the digital transition says WEF

by Sara Bean • AI, Architecture, Facilities management, News, Technology, Workplace

The construction industry needs new talent and skills to help in the adoption of new technologies to meet the challenges of digital transformation. It must also become more diverse, including increasing the percentage of women in the industry. These are the recommendations of a new report from the World Economic Forum, developed in collaboration with The Boston Consulting Group (BCG), Shaping the Future of Construction: An Action Plan to solve the Industry’s Talent Gap. The report argues that the Infrastructure and Urban Development (IU) industry has failed to innovate as quickly as other sectors, resulting in stagnating productivity and negative effects on the economy, society and the environment. An ongoing industry-wide shortage of qualified workers is among the key reasons for this issue. It has undermined project management and execution, adversely affecting cost, timelines and quality. It also has impeded the adoption of new digital technologies, such as building information modelling (BIM), automated equipment and cloud-based collaboration tools, which could improve productivity. The report provides twelve key actions which needs to be implemented to close the structural talent gap of the construction industry.

February 16, 2018

Pearls of elemental wisdom about workplace design and management

by Mark Eltringham • Comment, Facilities management, Workplace design

The greatest conundrum in the endless debate about whether the workplace affects people’s wellbeing and productivity is that it’s still going on at all. We’ve known for decades that people are affected in profound and meaningful ways by their surroundings and the culture in which they work. We know which factors are most important and which work in the absence of others. We know how these factors have shifted in response to changing working cultures and technological advances. And we know which are glib distractions from the real deal.