January 8, 2019
Record take up in Northern Ireland office market amid concerns over future investment
The Northern Ireland office market had a record year in 2018, with a 100 percent increase in take-up, according to the latest figures from CBRE. The Northern Ireland (NI) office sector enjoyed its most successful year on record with 885,023 sq ft of take-up reported across 84 transactions, more than double that achieved last year. Notable office deals completed in 2018 included the PwC move to Merchant Square, Northern Ireland Civil Service at 9 Lanyon Place, Allstate at Mays Meadow, TLT at River House and Baker McKenzie at City Quays 2, which is part of Belfast’s City Quays mixed-use regeneration project. However, according to CBRE’s Real Estate Outlook report, the office market in NI is hampered by a severe lack of investment deals in the face of ongoing local, national and international political uncertainty. This means that while the real estate market in Northern Ireland generally has performed well in 2018, the investment sector experienced a decrease in activity as a resulting knock-on effect of the current political situation locally at Stormont as well as ongoing Brexit negotiations.
Over half of workers (53 percent) believe that getting the right people with the right skills will be the biggest issue faced by their workplace in the year ahead. This is according to research published by Acas today, which commissioned YouGov to find out what UK employees identified as the most important workplace issues in the year ahead. The other two top issues identified were technological change (36 percent) and productivity (36 percent). Other issues identified by participants in the poll included fit and healthy staff (18 percent) and Equality and Fairness (17 percent). Acas Chief Exec, Susan Clews, said: “Employees feel that getting workers with the right skills is a key concern in the year ahead. This could be attributed to uncertainty around our relationship with the EU at the moment or general concerns around skills shortages.
Technology is in the process of transforming almost every aspect of society, with change happening at an “accelerating rate,” and this is being made possible due of simultaneous rapid advances in several key areas of technology. This is according to a new White Paper on 
January 8, 2019
From nudge tech to listening tools, Gartner makes some workplace predictions for 2019
by Brian Kropp • AI, Comment, Technology, Workplace
Last year we saw businesses reporting their gender pay gap, General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) taking effect, speculation on how Brexit will impact jobs and further impact on how technology is changing the way we work. Looking forward to the year ahead, Gartner has pulled together a fresh set of workplace predictions for the coming year. This includes the demise of employee surveys as the adoption of sophisticated listening tools accelerates; precious little progress in closing the gender pay gap, but the evolution of discrepancies in pay scales between new hires and existing employees; the rise and rise of the #MeToo movement, which could lead to more senior executives being ousted in 2019 than in 2018; and new technologies designed to nudge workers into action.
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