Search Results for: productivity

July 29, 2015

City firms adopt more flexible working, but it starts from the top

by Mark Eltringham • Cities, Flexible working, News

Employers in the City of London are increasingly open to the idea of flexible working, claims a study of 1,000 workers by recruitment firm Astbury Marsden. According to the study, a third of men working in the City (34 percent) say they now have some flexibility over the hours they work, whether through flexi-time, working a certain number of hours annually or compressed hours. This is up from 28 percent last year. Meanwhile a smaller proportion of female City workers (30 percent) claim they now have the option of flexible working, up from 23 percent in 2014. The research indicates that although women in the City are more likely than men to work part-time or term-time hours or job-share, with over a quarter being able to do so (26 percent), almost one in five men (18 percent) say they also have this option available to them.

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July 21, 2015

Neocon highlights four of the world’s most important office design trends

by Neil Franklin • Comment, Events, Workplace design

We live in the Global Village, Marshall McLuhan’s idea from 1962 of an electronically contracted world in which attitudes, cultures and our political, business and legislative framework begin to pull together. Yet each nation is shaped by little differences. That is why the comedy programme The Office found an audience on both sides of the pond, but one that needed Wernham Hogg in Slough to become Dunder Mifflin in Scranton, Pennsylvania for it to work for the local audience. The central idea of the show has a universal appeal but needs a local voice. And what is true for The Office with a big O is also true for the office with a small o. This was the takeaway conclusion of a series of events staged in London and Manchester last week by Milliken and Humanscale. The touchstone for these events was a debate about the main conclusions of of June’s Neocon.

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July 20, 2015

Government urged to reinstate zero carbon buildings pledge

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

More than 200 businesses from the construction, property and renewable energy industries have written to the Chancellor to reconsider the Government’s decision last week to abandon plans to introduce zero carbon buildings. In an open letter to the Chancellor, senior leaders from 246 organisations warn that the policy U-turn has “undermined industry confidence in Government” and will “curtail investment in British innovation and manufacturing”. In the Chancellor’s productivity plan “Fixing the foundations”, George Osborne unexpectedly axed the policy designed to ensure that all new homes built from 2016 meet zero carbon standards – together with a sister policy that applied to all new non-residential buildings such as offices, schools and hospitals from 2019.

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July 20, 2015

Majority of women do not feel they are discriminated against at work

by Mark Eltringham • Flexible working, News, Workplace

The overwhelming majority of women do not feel they face discrimination at work, according to a new report based on data from 170,000 UK workers. However, the study from the Great Place to Work Institute does identify a number of challenges that women face at work. The report – Women at work. Is it still a man’s world? – highlights the need for employers to pay closer attention to the specific differences between men and women’s experiences at work, rather than just focusing on overall results. The authors suggest that ‘this will help to identify and address any inequalities such as making pay and promotions more transparent and ensuring policies and practices are gender and age relevant’. The study makes clear that it is the combination of age and gender that presents the greatest challenges, especially in ensuring diversity in senior roles.

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July 17, 2015

Quarter of workers want flexible contracts when they reach retirement age

by Sara Bean • Flexible working, Legal news, News, Workplace

A quarter (28 percent) of UK workers expect their employer to create a part-time or flexible role for them once they reach the state pension age, according to new research from Aegon. Workers in healthcare (40 percent) administrative (31 percent) and engineering and manufacturing sectors (32 percent) are most likely to expect their employer to create a flexible role for them, while those in the creative arts and design sector (32 percent) are more likely to become self-employed and start up their own business. Nearly two thirds (61 percent) are planning to carry on working if they haven’t saved enough by the time they hit their target retirement age; with more than one in three (36 percent) planning to continue working in their current role until they have enough saved; while one in ten (9 percent) expect to become self-employed.

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July 16, 2015

Forget flexible working, what most workers would prefer is more money

by Neil Franklin • Flexible working, News, Workplace

Flexible working, wellbeing and praise may grab all the headlines when it comes to ways of raising productivity but if you really want to get more out of staff, the number one motivator remains the one that hits them where it really matters – in their pockets. According to a study of the attitudes of 1,000 office workers from office space search engine Office Genie, around half (49 percent) chose pay rises and more than a third (36 percent) chose other financial incentives when asked to select the top three ways their employers could improve their productivity. Nine percent specifically mention company shares. The third most popular measure overall was flexible working, cited by 22 percent of workers in their top three, followed by praising good work (20 percent) and encouraging people to get a good night’s sleep, again listed by a fifth of staff.

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July 15, 2015

One in five Brits distrustful of adopting wearable technology at work

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

Almost a fifth (18 percent) of European employees already have access to some form of wearable technology, but British workers are most worried about the privacy implications. According to research by ADP wearables such as augmented reality headsets, biometric identification and holographic video conferencing tools will create opportunity for businesses to improve productivity, connectivity and security. Yet more than half (52 percent) of employees are concerned about the amount of personal data employers can access via wearable technology, with attitudes towards privacy varying between countries. While as many as 60 percent of German employees express reservations, only 36 percent of Dutch employees feel this way. Overall, UK workers are the most hesitant, with as many as one in five (20 percent) saying that they would not use wearables at all, compared to 10 percent in France, and 8 percent in Germany and the Netherlands.

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July 13, 2015

Free Wi-Fi for agile workers is not quite as free as you’d like to think

by Mark Eltringham • Flexible working, News, Technology

One of the underlying drivers of agile working is supposedly the availability of ubiquitous free Wi-Fi. Yet according to new research, free Internet access may cost quite a bit more than firms might think. The study from Rethink Technology Research, Enterprise Apps Tech and iPass claims that North American and European business travellers spent at least £855 million in connectivity charges while on the road last year. The report, based on data from around 78 million business trips, includes the costs of 3G and 4G roaming data and paid Wi-FI connections that would have been cheaper of paid for in advance. The report is particularly critical of the practice of offering business users free Wi-FI with deliberately slow connection speeds to encourage them to pay for faster connections. It also highlights the well publicised problems of data security.

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July 9, 2015

Many employers discourage home working, unless it is out of hours

by Sara Bean • Comment, Flexible working, News, Wellbeing, Workplace

A combination of tube and rail strikes causing travel disruption in London today, means many businesses will accede to requests to work from home. Yet a large number of UK employers are still reluctant to encourage home working. According to a recent report by Redcentric, despite the fact that that just under a third of UK office workers reported an increase in productivity when working outside of the workplace, 48 percent of respondents claimed that their employers didn’t allow them to work remotely, with 23 percent saying that their business simply didn’t like them doing it, for reasons such as data privacy and loss of productivity. Yet research by PMI Health Group shows nearly a third of staff feel pressured to routinely check and send emails from home, which suggests that employers tacitly encourage home-working, as long as it is on their terms.

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July 7, 2015

‘World’s healthiest workplace’ is unveiled in Melbourne

by Mark Eltringham • Architecture, Case studies, Environment, Wellbeing, Workplace design

For some time now, the most talked about workplace issue has been wellbeing. Where once firms sought ways of using office design to solve a productivity puzzle, they are now increasingly concerned with the mental, psychological and physical health of employees. This is the case for most organisations but doubly so for those whose business is directly related to those issues, such as Melbourne based health insurance firm Medibank. The firm, Australia’s largest health insurer has moved to a new headquarters building in the Docklands district of the city and took the opportunity to create a space which it claims should be hardwired with the proactive principles of personal wellbeing and health with which its business is associated. The building has been designed by Hassell to meet these principles and includes a facility with outdoor sporting facilities, an edible garden and other green spaces.

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July 6, 2015

Humans will remain at the heart of the emerging digital workplace

by Maciej Markowski • Comment, Flexible working, Technology, Workplace design

The speed of technological development over the last 30 years has been pretty mind blowing. Of course, some technologies came and went, for instance you would struggle finding fax machines in your office nowadays or people using Pagers to contact one another. It’s no wonder that in the early nineties futurologists predicted the death of the office. Technology was shaping the way we worked and was leading us away from office buildings towards a digital workplace. Yet videoconferencing hasn’t destroyed the need for business travel. Team meetings haven’t been abandoned because of messaging services like Yammer, Slack, Lync and Webex. We still do a lot of business face to face over coffee in a meeting room. Although technological advances have greatly improved the way we connect and do business, companies still appear to value human interaction.

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July 3, 2015

One in five Americans would change jobs for better work-life balance

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

More than half of US and Canadian employees report feeling overworked and burnt out (53 percent), yet the overwhelming majority (86 percent) say they are still happy at work. According to the inaugural Staples Advantage Workplace Index employees are working longer days, with about a quarter of them regularly working after the standard workday is done. A key motivator is to advance in the organization, with nearly two-thirds of respondents seeing themselves as managers in the next five years. Though employees are largely conditioned to working longer hours, about one in five do expect to change jobs in the next twelve months. Steps employers can take to improve happiness levels include; adding more office perks, improving office technology and providing a better office design. Alongside this, with employees working longer days and on weekends, the biggest request is for employers to provide more flexibility. (more…)