Search Results for: retention

February 25, 2015

Leading role for property sector in promoting ‘green infrastructure’ says UK-GBC

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

The property industry can play a leading role in protecting and enhancing national features and biodiversity. That is according to a new report by the UK Green Building Council Task Group which presents the business case for “green infrastructure”, the term used to describe natural and semi-natural features ranging from street trees and roof gardens to parks and woodland. Demystifying Green Infrastructure finds that introducing green infrastructure into the built environment offers a range of business opportunities, including an increase in the value of land and property, as well as social and environmental benefits. Aimed primarily at developers and occupiers, the report also identifies risks from failing to incorporate adequate green infrastructure into projects, such as delays in planning, increased costs and reputational damage.

January 28, 2015

Employers over-estimate levels of staff happiness and engagement

by Sara Bean • News, Wellbeing, Workplace

Nearly half (46%) of employers believe their company is a great place to work compared with less than a third (31%) of staff, and UK staff have alarmingly low energy levels, a new survey has revealed. The data from MetLife’s UK Employee Benefits Trends Survey shows how highly employers rate recruitment and retention. Forty percent of UK companies say they will be affected by talent shortages over the next year and their key benefits challenges are retaining (41%) and hiring talent (37%). However, the greatest recruitment and retention challenge is the gap between employer and employee views. Although 32 percent of employees say they are loyal to their employer – just 22 percent believe their employer is loyal to them. In contrast 39 percent of employers’ believe their employees are loyal and 40 percent believe they are loyal to employees.

January 21, 2015

Unhappy Gen Y talent will move on this year, if you fail to keep them engaged

by Julia Lindsay • Comment, Flexible working, Workplace

The January Blues can be a major headache for employers, as it tends to be a time when staff consider moving on. In fact, more than a third of UK workers are already planning to change jobs at some point in 2015.[1] Factors including low motivational levels and the feeling of a need to take action combine to provide favourable conditions for job movement among employees. Keeping Generation Y talent is a particular area of concern for management, with a recent study revealing over half of these employees will expect to have moved on from their current employer within two years.[2] The fact is that Gen Y employees are simply not prepared to stay in jobs that make them unhappy.

January 15, 2015

Employers and fathers increasingly keen on shared parental leave

by Mark Eltringham • Flexible working, Legal news, News, Workplace

Over three quarters of employers welcome shared parental leave despite concerns about its complexity and implementation and many are considering adapting their policies in light of new legislation set to be introduced in April, according to a report from Workingmums.co.uk. The survey of over 400 employers found that 81 percent welcomed shared parental leave, with 19 percent saying they would find it difficult to implement. The report coincides with new data from the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills which found that more than half of Britons (53 percent) believe that childcare should be divided equally between mothers and fathers with men more likely than women to back shared parenting with 56 per cent in favour, compared to 50 per cent of women.

January 12, 2015

Lack of flexible working options is distorting the job market for women

by Mark Eltringham • Flexible working, News, Workplace

UK employers and their female employees are missing out on a range of opportunities because of their failure to implement better flexible working arrangements, according to a report from The Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR). The report examined flexible working across Europe and found that while significant progress had been made in the UK, nearly two thirds (64 percent) of working women are unable to vary their working hours and a quarter (25 percent) claim it is difficult to take one or two hours from their day at short notice. The report claims the pent up demand for such working arrangements restricts employment opportunities for women compared to men, means more women are working in jobs below their skill level and creates the conditions for extensive underemployment.

December 4, 2014

Why doesn’t the HR dept have more of a role in workplace design?

by Steve Brewer • Comment, Facilities management, Workplace, Workplace design

To design a great workplace you need to have an intimate understanding of the culture of the organisation. Culture is a result of the values of the organisation; the way people live those values and the relationships that they hold internally and externally with their marketplace and customers. The look and feel of the organisation needs to reflect the culture, just as a brand of a company reflects the product or service they provide. A good HR department will be able to distil the company culture and FM can bring it to life. We can all name examples of superb HR departments that actively engage with FM on workplace design. However, they are more the exception than the rule. If workplace design is really going to contribute to an increase in business performance then HR and FM need to work together to engage and integrate both the hard (FM) and soft (HR) services of the organisation.

December 3, 2014

HR managers appreciate importance of IT, but don’t work with IT people

by Mark Eltringham • Flexible working, News, Technology, Workplace

Research sponsored by Sungard Availability Services claims that while almost two thirds (63 percent) of the UK’s senior HR managers believe a closer alignment with their organisation’s Chief Information Officer will be vital in realising their department’s ideas, only 12 per cent currently work very closely with the IT crowd. The findings of the report show that 97 percent of HR professionals believe the CIO is very capable in supporting business growth through technology including enabling mobile and flexible working (58 percent), creating new ways to communicate with employees (64 percent) and driving efficiencies (66 percent) Nevertheless, the HR department profess to be big supporters of technology within the enterprise – with over two thirds (68 percent) stating that if the CIO was not sitting on the board within their organisation, then they should be.

November 13, 2014

Workplace Week focuses on the office and individual productivity in all its forms

by Cathy Hayward • Events, Facilities management, Flexible working, Workplace, Workplace design

The holy grail of improving people’s productivity was the focus of this year’s Workplace Week, which took place last week from 3-7th November and raised more than £12,500 for Children in Need. The annual event organised by AWA and designed as a celebration of workplace innovation, included visits to 11 workplaces showcasing the latest techniques to get people performing at their very best, a day-long convention and a series of Fringe events. Andrew Mawson, who heads up AWA, opened the convention by setting the discussion in context. “We have maximised asset productivity by getting more people into buildings, and therefore working a building harder. But we need to focus on human productivity. If each organisation could make each person just 5 per cent more productive, that would have a major impact both on that organisation and the wider economy. In the knowledge economy we need to get the very best performance out of each and every brain on the payroll and to create the conditions that consciously support that.

November 7, 2014

Worldwide fall in levels of trust by employees in their workplace leaders

by Sara Bean • News, Workplace

They say a fish rots from the head, and with overwhelming evidence this week that workplaces are torn by backbiting, lying and bitching, a global analysis on workplace trust reveals a deterioration in the levels of trust employees have for their bosses. Interaction Associates annual workplace trust research, Building Workplace Trust 2014/15, found that more than half of the people surveyed gave their organisation low marks for trust and effective leadership. More than half of the 500 people surveyed at companies worldwide, give their organisation low-to-poor marks for trust and effective leadership. When asked to rate the statement “Employees have a high level of trust in management and the organisation”, just four out of ten agreed. The majority (58%) found their organisation lacking, and in fact, trust may be going from bad to worse at many organisations, as a quarter (26%) of those surveyed say they trust their boss less this year than in 2013.

November 5, 2014

Failure to adopt strategic facilities management costs UK £1bn annually

by Mark Eltringham • Facilities management, News, Public Sector

A new report from the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) claims that over a quarter of UK organisations are failing to adopt a strategic approach to facilities management. For those firms without this approach, the annual average cost is calculated by the report’s authors as £120,000, suggesting a total cost to the economy of nearly £1 billion. The claim is based on a study of around 700 organisations in both the public and private sector and across a range of organisational types and sizes. Around half of those with a ‘dedicated FM programme’ said that doing so had saved their organisation money, 59 per cent reported an increase in productivity, a fifth (21 percent)reported a drop in absenteeism and nearly half (49 percent) claimed it had made them more attractive to customers. The best results were recorded in the public sector with 70 per cent saying strategic facilities management had increased productivity and 71 percent claiming they had seen an increase in employee engagement.

October 13, 2014

Huge increase in Glasgow and Edinburgh office leasing activity, as demand grows

by Sara Bean • Facilities management, News, Property

Glasgow and Edinburgh have both seen more than 80 per cent growth in office leasing activity in the past year. A comparison of Scotland’s two major cities to other major cities on the continent at a recent JLL Research Seminar revealed that leasing activity in Glasgow increased by more than 120 per cent between July 2013 and June 2014, in comparison to the same period from 2012-2013. The increase in leasing activity placed Glasgow at the top of the list of forty comparable European cities. Edinburgh is fourth in the list with an increase in activity of around 80 per cent. The office markets of Edinburgh and Glasgow are expected to see continued high levels of occupier demand, an increase in investment activity and a strong performance from business parks. However, Edinburgh’s weakness is a lack of scale, and Glasgow’s is flat population growth; and though leasing markets in both cities are showing very strong recovery, vacancy rates are falling and Grade A space remains scarce. More →

October 6, 2014

We’ve long had ‘overwhelming evidence’ for the link between office design and productivity

by Mark Eltringham • Comment, Facilities management, Workplace, Workplace design

Perhaps the most widely reported news from the world of workplace over the last couple of weeks has been the analysis from the World Green Building Council that links office design with productivity and wellness. And the two words from the report that have featured most commonly in the associated stories’ headlines have been ‘overwhelming evidence’. While this has been repeated as if it’s some kind of revelation, the truth is that we have had compelling and overwhelming evidence for many years, and barely a year goes past without some study or other making the same point in no uncertain terms. Each report merely serves to raise a more interesting question; given the sheer body of work linking the workplace with productivity (and happiness and motivation and so on), why does the argument still need to be made?