Search Results for: workplace

February 1, 2019

Millennial headlines, eternal workplace truths, the pathologisation of sitting and some other stuff

by Mark Eltringham • Facilities management, Features, Technology, Wellbeing, Workplace design

The New York Times asked an interesting question this week. “Why Are Young People Pretending to Love Work?” it demanded, begging the immediate response ‘for the same reason everybody else does’. If only that pat, facetious response were enough to satisfy the actual questions concealed by the typically misleading headline. What the article actually wants to know is why some members of one particular tribe of young people have a toxic relationship with work. And that tribe (of course) is made up of the diverse, attractive, urbanite, coffee-fixated, stock image Millennials working for the world’s tech giants. Interesting in so far as it goes, but this tribe is not homogeneous to begin with and does not represent the world’s ‘young people’. It’s beyond time we stopped working on the basis that it does. Change the headlines.

(more…)

February 1, 2019

Employee experience of the workplace does not match employer rhetoric, claims report

by Mark Eltringham • News, Workplace

A new report (registration needed), based on a survey of UK employers and employees, claims to reveal a significant and increasing gap between employees’ experience of being employed and what employers believe this experience to be. Barnett Waddingham’s four research papers claims that while the majority of employers (61 percent) believe the levels of wellbeing in their organisation to be high, only 19 percent of the employees surveyed report high wellbeing. According to the authors, this suggests employers do not sufficiently know or understand the needs of their people.

(more…)

February 1, 2019

Employees call for more user-friendly workplace technology

by Neil Franklin • News, Technology

A new report claims that because workplace technology is perceived as less intuitive and intelligent than consumer technology lags behind. The survey commissioned by The Workforce Institute at Kronos Incorporated conducted with UK-based Coleman Parkes Research, asked more than 2,800 hourly and salaried employees across a variety of industries in Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Mexico, New Zealand, the UK and US to explore the impact existing and emerging technologies have on the employee experience.

(more…)

January 30, 2019

Talkin’ about my generation: Harnessing the power of the multigenerational workplace

by John Hackston • Comment, Workplace

A child born in the west today has a 50 percent chance of living to be at least 105. This is of course a good thing – most people welcome the idea of a longer, healthier life – but it does mean that many of us will need to work longer as pension funds shrink and retirement ages increase. This has led to a new reality for business, the rise of the multigenerational workforce. Organisations that recognise that they can draw on talent from all ages and life stages will have a competitive advantage over those with a more traditional outlook. However, this new model can also present challenges – something that all businesses should consider. (more…)

January 25, 2019

The state of the workplace right now? Everywhere and nowhere, baby ⁰

by Paul Carder • Comment, Facilities management, Features, Premium Content, Property, Workplace design

My trade is to ask questions about the workplace then make sense of the answers. That has been a particular challenge with the question, ‘what are offices today?’ What seems clear is that the various actors in the workplace ecosystem look at offices through very different eyes. Urban planning and development professionals still view offices as a distinct category of real estate and most real estate professionals view offices in terms of the delivery of floor space. Some things have changed,however. For some time, the hybrid economy of serviced offices has turned the product into a service. But, in many cases this has simply made the leasing of space simpler and more flexible.

(more…)

January 24, 2019

Australian designers are fundamentally reshaping workplaces around the world

by Bronte Turner • Comment, Workplace design

Earlier this year, the QS World University Rankings revealed that the University of Melbourne, the University of Sydney and the University of New South Wales are better places to study architecture and the built environment than some Ivy League universities. The Asia-Pacific region accounted for eight of the top 20 architecture schools from the region. As a result, there’s an incredible pool of talent coming from Australia and entering the global market.

(more…)

January 23, 2019

Film series sets out to solve the workplace wellbeing puzzle

by Mark Eltringham • News, Wellbeing

Recent research by the British Safety Council identified significant levels of uncertainty in the UK about workplace wellbeing. Its report Not just free fruit: wellbeing at work, found that employee wellbeing is often ignored or misunderstood, with employers unsure how to define it or how to improve staff wellbeing, what priority to give it and how to measure the effectiveness of wellbeing interventions and programmes.

(more…)

January 20, 2019

The changing shape of the insurance workplace

by Mark Eltringham • News, Workplace design

HOK’s WorkPlace group has released The New Insurance Workplace (registration required), a report which sets out to examine the forces reshaping the insurance industry and how workplace design can position these companies for success. The report’s concludes that insurance firms take pride in their conservative approach to risk management and traditional business models. They also have high-performance cultures that demand strong results. Yet changing regulations, emerging technologies and increasingly obsolete work processes have left many legacy players with underutilised, outdated office and retail space that hinders their ability to meet the fast-changing expectations of customers.

(more…)

January 20, 2019

Shortlist for Business Book Awards features more on workplace and wellbeing than ever before

by Neil Franklin • News, Wellbeing, Workplace

This year’s shortlist for the Business Booko Awards features more books than ever on wellbeing and happiness in the workplace as well as career self-development, company culture and business ethics. A record number of women authors have also made the shortlist. (more…)

January 20, 2019

Nomura and Adidas named among healthiest workplaces in Britain

by Neil Franklin • Company news, Wellbeing

Nomura International Plc, Adidas UK and Wellness International Ltd have been named, by Vitality’s Britain’s Healthiest Workplace study, as the healthiest workplaces in Britain. The bank, sports apparel company and leading health and wellbeing provider were awarded first place in the large, medium and small-sized company divisions, respectively, at the awards that took place at BAFTA in London. This is the sixth year in a row that Adidas UK have earned first place in their category, the fourth time Nomura have picked up the award, and the first time Wellness International Ltd has entered since the survey began in 2012.

(more…)

January 16, 2019

The workplace continues to provide people with important relationships

by Neil Franklin • News, Wellbeing

Three-quarters of workers have turned professional relationships into lifelong friendships according to a new study from Business telecommunications provider 4Com, which looked into Britons attitudes towards their co-workers to reveal just how willing the nation is to create meaningful friendships and relationships with those they spend so much time with day-to-day. While a quarter of workers admit to not making lifelong friends with a work colleague, three quarters have taken their professional relationships to the next level and developed friendships with a co-worker.

(more…)

January 15, 2019

Workplace productivity plummets during January

by Neil Franklin • News, Workplace

Around a quarter (26 percent) of British workers believe that January is their least productive month with the nation still recovering from the Christmas period, according to a new report from Hitachi Capital Invoice Finance. The report also claims that December is the second least productive month (14 percent) whist 32 percent surveyed suggested that they’re equally unproductive across the entire year. Residents of the Welsh capital Cardiff were found to be the least productive in January (34 percent) closely followed by Southampton (31 percent) and Sheffield (30 percent).