Search Results for: working lives

Universal application of open plan has led to global privacy crisis, claims report

by • Flexible working, News, Workplace design

open planA major new report from office furniture maker Steelcase claims that the universal provision of open plan offices means that organisations are facing an unprecedented privacy crisis with their employees. The claim is based on international research carried out by market researchers IPSOS and the Workspace Futures Team of Steelcase which found that a remarkable 85 percent of people are dissatisfied with their working environment and cannot concentrate. Nearly a third (31 percent) now routinely leave the office to get work done in private. The authors of the report claim that this does not mean a reversal of the decades long shift away from cellular offices but rather a move to create offices that offer a range of work settings to give people a choice of where and how to work. More than 10,000 workers across 14 countries were questioned about their office environments and working patterns.

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CIPD publishes manifesto on how next Government could shape future of work

by • Flexible working, News, Workplace

CIPD manifesto on how next Government should shape the future of workA sustainable recovery and successful future economic performance depends on future governments adopting policies that address fundamental skills and productivity issues, as well as looking at other agendas which will actively shape the future of work. This is according to the CIPD ‘Manifesto for Work,’ published today, which calls on the UK’s political parties to focus on the key issues facing employers and the workforce in the run up to the General Election 2015. Amongst a set of proposals, the HR body is calling on the Government to take a “good practice” approach to employment regulation and policy by supporting the creation of a Workplace Commission, with the aim of helping employers raise standards of people management. CIPD chief executive Peter Cheese, says a better focus and understanding of the changing nature of work, the requirements and needs of the workforce, and the changing workplace will be needed to meet the future challenges. (more…)

Information overload is a big problem for ‘infobese’ UK workers

by • Flexible working, Technology, Workplace

Information overloadWe all know –or should – that we have a real problem with information. We are not only deluged with the stuff, we appear increasingly willing to wallow in it voluntarily, even when we know it’s bad for us. The full extent of the challenge we face managing information is laid bare in a new report from Microsoft called ‘Defying Digital Distraction’.  The study is based on a survey carried out by YouGov which found that 55 per cent of 2,000 British office staff experience some form of information overload at work. A similar proportion feel they are distracted by information, just under half (43 per cent) experience stress as a result, a third (34 per cent) feel overwhelmed by it and 28 per cent believe it affects their personal wellbeing. The report is fronted by Dave Coplin, the Chief Envisioning Officer of Microsoft UK who we interviewed last year and coincides with the publication of Dave’s new book called The Rise of the Humans: how to outsmart the digital deluge.

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The business of workplace design and management; new issue of Insight is now available

by • Comment, News, Newsletter, Workplace design

Flexible workingIn the latest Insight newsletter, available to view online; Mark Eltringham lists just seven of the ways in which flexible working may have actually made our lives more rigid; expectations for rising rents as demand for commercial property reaches the highest level since before the financial crisis; ‘Walkie Talkie’ skyscraper signs up two new tenants; and the BCO names London and the South East’s best recently refurbished examples of workplace design. The idea that staff find greater job satisfaction when they work in environmentally friendly surroundings is challenged by a new study; while another report claims that wearable technology could be a boast to productivity; and the CIPD warns that rigid organisational hierarchies hamper the development of management and leadership skills within the workplace. To automatically receive our weekly newsletter, simply add your email address to the box on the home page.

A rail network carrying people on blurred lines into the future of work

by • Comment, Flexible working, Technology, Workplace design

Office Group PaddingtonThe UK rail industry has a somewhat ambiguous relationship with the idea of remote working. While the business case for the controversial HS2 rail line was until recently predicated on the remarkable assumption that people don’t work on trains (now replaced by another set of assumptions to get to the numbers it needs for politicians to go along with it all), the number of journeys people make on trains has been increasing steadily for some time, regardless of the potential for technology to make many of those journeys unnecessary. So while we’re already into uncharted territory in our ability to forecast the impact of new technology and working practices on the need for physical presence, the train and the rail network  does offer us a touchstone for thinking about it. And what we find in that respect is a blurring of the lines between several worlds, as we do in pretty much every aspect of our lives.

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When worlds collide: a preview of the Salone Internationale del Mobile in Milan

by • Comment, Events, Furniture, Workplace design

S285 deskDon’t even think about going to Milan for a break at this time of year – you probably won’t get a hotel room. Every year the Salone Internationale del Mobile (International Furniture Fair) and Milan Design Week ensure that hotels are full despite room rates soaring for the duration of this world class exhibition. Salone is the show to attend if you want to know what’s going on in the world of furniture design. Along with Orgatec, Neocon, CIFF, Clerkenwell Design Week and the Stockholm Furniture Fair, Salone makes up the Grand Tour of furniture and design shows around the world. These shows not only provide an international showcase the very latest in furniture design, each also offers its own unique insight into the way we work and live. And they do so on a massive scale. In the case of Milan, this means extending the show beyond the halls of the central Rho fairgrounds to use locations around the whole city, when it takes place next week.

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New consortium aims to standardise technology to drive Internet of Things

by • Facilities management, News, Technology

Internet of THingsThe development of the much talked-about Internet of Things has been boosted with the announcement that AT&T, Cisco, GE, IBM and Intel have come together to form a group called the Industrial Internet Consortium (IIC) which will  aim to standardise the way certain technologies function and so drive the uptake of the Internet of Things. The group has the apparent backing of the White House which has also announced that it will invest $100 million in research into the way physical objects can be linked to the internet, which is the fundamental principle of the Internet of Things.   The IIC will be outlining its own plans in the  near future to establish a common, global framework for the development of inter-connected digital and physical worlds and so sped up the adoption of an idea that promises to transform many aspects of our lives but which has not moved quickly enough, according to many commentators.

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Happiness and wellbeing more important to people than economy

by • News, Workplace

International Happiness DayWhatever their opinion on yesterday’s Budget, the vast majority of Britons think levels of happiness and wellbeing matter more than the size of the economy. In a YouGov poll commissioned to mark today’s United Nation’s International Day of Happiness, a majority (87%) of UK adults were found to prefer the “greatest overall happiness and wellbeing”, rather than the “greatest overall wealth” (8%), for the society they live in. And despite the Conservative Party’s much lampooned attempts to appeal to working class people who they presume enjoy bingo and beer, this majority was found to be broadly consistent across all regions, age groups and social classes. LSE economist and co-founder of Action for Happiness, Lord Richard Laya says the results show that more priority should be given to mental health and wellbeing. (more…)

Could personality profiling help create a more productive office environment?

by • Facilities management, News, Workplace, Workplace design

Could personality profiling you create the ideal office environment

 

Creating the most productive working space to help get the best from your people is an ongoing battle. What suits some doesn’t suit others. So if there was some way of assessing up front how people like to work and the environment that would make them their most productive, engaged and committed – before you rearrange the furniture, fittings and layout – would you leap at the chance of finding out? One approach could be personality profiling. If you could climb inside the minds of your current and future employees and assess how they best like to work, their personality and how this then drives them to be more productive in certain working environments than others – who wouldn’t want to have a delve around? Or are we in danger of pandering to personality stereotypes? (more…)

Why do we bother going to work? Good question.

by • Comment, Facilities management, Flexible working, Workplace

CommutingWhile the UK Government continues to explore new ways of getting people back to work more quickly following (or even during) illness, there are a number of counterpart questions that they continue to fastidiously ignore, one of which is ‘why bother?’. We might all ask ourselves that from time to time, whether petulantly or as a pressure-relieving alternative to ramming a co-worker’s head through a window or a laptop in a dumpster. But there are also reasons to raise the question coldly, rationally and with full awareness of all the facts, not least when it comes to assessing the increasing cost of going to work in the first place. Put simply, for many people it makes little or no financial sense to go to work.

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Don’t be caught by surprise by the hidden costs of commercial property

by • Comment, Facilities management, Knowledge, Property

 

let-signAccording to Colliers International’s recent Global Investor Sentiment Report, 2014 will see an increase in commercial property investor confidence, with 74 per cent of UK based investors saying they were more likely to risk investing across all property sectors, although offices remain the most popular category to invest in. Yet despite this vote of confidence, it seems strange to report that the real costs involved in property acquisition and maintenance, are frequently overlooked by the purchasers. It appears that businesses often have a patchy knowledge of the range of costs involved in owning or leasing commercial real estate, which is surprising when you consider that a company’s biggest single investment next to its workforce is commercial property.

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The future belongs to those who leave themselves choices of how to deal with it

by • Comment, Facilities management, Flexible working, Technology, Workplace

unknown-futureEverybody likes to talk and read about the future. It’s one of the reasons we see so many reports about what the ‘office of the future’ will look like. Often these attempts at workplace prognosis are overwhelmingly  rooted in the present which might betray either a degree of timidity or lack of awareness of just how far along their standard list of trends we really are. Even when such reports appear to be bang on the money, they tend to disregard one of the most important factors we need to consider when trying to get a handle on the future, which is the need to leave ourselves choices. This is important because not only will the future be stranger than we think, but stranger than we can imagine, to paraphrase J B S Haldane.

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