Search Results for: workplace

August 18, 2015

Car sharing and longer commutes are the keys to workforce mobility ⁰

by Mark Eltringham • Cities, Flexible working, News

The Government should introduce new policies to incentivise people to car share and travel further afield to find work. Those are two of the key finding of a new report, On The Move, from the think tank Policy Exchange which sets out ways to improve the mobility of the British workforce. Making it easier for people to commute twenty minutes further afield would put them in touch with at least one additional major urban area and potentially 10,000 more job opportunities, according to the report. Additionally, it suggests that drivers who offer fellow commuters a lift should be given a tax break. The authors claim that in a third of local authorities that make up the eight city regions no major employment sites (defined as having 5,000 or more jobs) are within a twenty minute commute by public transport and 80 percent of these Local Authorities have an unemployment rate above the national average.

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August 17, 2015

What Edward T Hall (and Jerry Seinfeld) can teach us about stress and design

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

Work-related stress is the biggest cause of working days lost in the UK. According to the HSE’s most recent statistics, around 11.3 million days were lost to it in 2013/14, the most significant cause of absenteeism. The reasons for this are clear in the minds of many: the demands made on us by employers are increasingly intolerable, our own time is being eroded by work, we spend too much time at work, we’re under excessive pressure to perform and as a result we’re all either knackered, unfulfilled, stressed, depressed or anxious. Or guzzling a noxious cocktail of all of them. But there is another factor that has come into play over the last few years. As workstation sizes have contracted in response to new technologies and new space planning models, people have been forced closer to their colleagues, meaning that not only has their time been eroded, so has their space.

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August 15, 2015

Sit-stand desks, co-working revolution, FM self-image and more ⁰

by Sara Bean • Events, Facilities management, Newsletter, Technology, Workplace

In this week’s issue; why UK employers need to step-up the adoption of sit-stand desks; a worldwide upsurge reported for flexible working environments and left-handed staff experience practical problems at work. Sara Bean says efforts to increase the number of women in senior executive positions shouldn’t overlook the discrimination faced by older female job applicants; and Mark Eltringham applauds Stud Terkel’s insights on the working lives of ordinary Americans and argues FM is not alone in thinking that it doesn’t shout loudly enough to make itself heard. Research shows the key to restoring productivity growth is to shift job-creation towards higher-productivity sectors and a new study finds only one in ten workers attempt to keep their devices and data secure. Check out our new events page, subscribe for free quarterly issues of Work&Place and weekly news here, You can follow us on Twitter and join our LinkedIn Group to discuss these and other stories.

August 14, 2015

Apathy, laxity and ineptitude continue to dog data security issues ⁰

by Mark Eltringham • Flexible working, News, Technology

How firms must hanker for the days when the issue of corporate data security could usually be addressed simply by asking what somebody had in their bag when they left the building or were fired. Amongst other things, the practice of Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) means that the ways for data to leak out of the organisation are now numerous, if not generally malicious. A new cluster of reports has emerged that highlight how carelessness, indifference, cultural ineptitude and the complexities of unmanaged, privately owned technology make it increasingly difficult for firms to maintain the security of their data. While some of the sources of this leakage are generally well known, a couple that are not generally acknowledged is the apathy of employees when it comes to keeping work files safe and secure and the lax attitude of employers when breaches occur.

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August 14, 2015

Far from being on board, older women still face recruitment bias ⁰

by Sara Bean • Comment, News, Workplace

The news that the Davies review has met its 25 per cent target for female representation on boards, and is now considering setting a target that a quarter of executives at FTSE 100 companies should be female, has been met with approval by the Institute of Directors, which said it was right that the focus is on increasing the number of women in senior executive positions. But what about those further down the salary scale, where many older women struggle to even get a job interview? A recent study carried out by Anglia Ruskin University’s Lord Ashcroft International Business School shows that older jobseekers face widespread discrimination in the UK, with older female applicants more likely to experience bias than men. The study found no significant link between a company having a HR department or providing commitments to equal opportunities, and the level of discrimination it displayed.

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August 13, 2015

Left-handed employees face practical problems at work suggests research ⁰

by Sara Bean • Facilities management, News, Wellbeing, Workplace design

The days of forcing left handed children to write with their right hand may be long over but according to new research launched today to mark the UK’s ‘National Left-Handers Day’, a large proportion of UK employees experience problems at work because they are left-handed. According to a survey by CV-Library 12 percent of the working population is left-handed, which equates to over 4.5 million staff. Of those, 1 in 5 (over 852,000 people) face practical problems at work including conducting simple tasks, such as having to use right-handed scissors that don’t cut, to persevering with entire workstations being laid out incorrectly, making them difficult and uncomfortable to use. Yet the majority of UK employers (96.7 percent) don’t ask new employees if they are left-handed and only a quarter of businesses (25.4 percent) provide left-handed staff with specialist office equipment and stationery.

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August 13, 2015

Take-up of sit-stand desks still lagging in UK, but change is coming fast ⁰

by Mark Eltringham • Furniture, News, Wellbeing, Workplace design

The number of UK employers offering staff sit-stand workstations remains sluggish, despite rapidly growing awareness of their benefits, according to a new study from office furniture firm Kinnarps. Compared to the near universal provision of sit-stand desks in Scandinavia, and in spite of the fact that UK buyers now universally acknowledge what they can do to improve employee wellbeing, the UK market has yet to fully adopt workstations that encourage more active working. Based on a study of 132 senior decision makers, facilities managers, designers and HR managers, 98 percent of respondents say they can see the attraction of introducing sit-stand working, citing improved health (73 percent), increased productivity (11 percent) and attracting and retaining talent (5 percent), among the principal benefits. Yet only 8 percent say that such workstations are ‘widely available’ in their workplaces.

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August 11, 2015

The key to the productivity puzzle may be to give people better jobs ⁰

by Mark Eltringham • Knowledge, News, Workplace

Ever since the UK started to emerge from the economic downturn there has been a great deal of brow beating about the so-called productivity puzzle. Although the UK economy grew between 2012 and 2014, productivity fell by 1.15 percent. In addition, the UK has a productivity gap of between 23 and 32 per cent between it and comparable economies such as Germany, France and the Netherlands. When considering the reasons for this, most of the time a finger has been pointed at some old favourites such as working practices, a lack of engagement or – according to this feature published in HR Magazine this week – individual behaviour. Now a new report from the Institute for Public Policy research (IPPR) claims that the problems are far more complex than people typically assume and that one of the major factors is the jobs people are offered.

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August 11, 2015

Regional differentiations as job pay gap accelerates worldwide ⁰

by Sara Bean • News, Workplace

Since 2008 the pay gap between lower level employees and senior managers has widened in every region across the world, a global survey has found. The pay gap between lower level workers (comprising skilled manual, clerical, supervisor or graduate entry jobs) and senior managers (heads of departments or equivalent) is now on the rise in as twice as many countries as it is falling (42 to 21). The latest research from global management consultancy Hay Group reveals however that Europe has the smallest gap, with an average increase in the pay gap of only 2.2 percent since 2008. This has been fuelled in part by the use of communal pay cuts to avoid redundancies, whereas US firms prefer to cut jobs and urge remaining senior managers to expand their job roles. The research underlines how a large job pay gap can lead to discontent and disengagement among the workforce.

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August 10, 2015

London is leading the way in the global coworking revolution ⁰

by Mark Eltringham • Flexible working, News, Property, Workplace design

Changing attitudes amongst occupiers towards office space and the explosion in the numbers of freelance workers and microbusinesses are driving an upsurge in coworking and other flexible working environments worldwide. That is the key conclusion of a new report from DTZ which claims that the number of dedicated flexible working locations worldwide is likely to hit 50,000 over the next three years, with parts of London leading the way. We reported recently how coworking pioneer WeWork has already announced its plans to dominate London’s commercial property scene in the same way it already does Manhattan’s. Now, the How You Work report from DTZ suggests that this is the shape of things to come for many cities, with London leading the way alongside a tranche of global tech and creative centres such as New York, Berlin and Shanghai.

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August 9, 2015

Govt £118bn pipeline, Change leadership, Take a real holiday and more ⁰

by Sara Bean • Facilities management, Newsletter, Public Sector, Work&Place, Workplace, Workplace design

In this week’s issue; Lee Parsons argues the impact of office relocation can no longer be solely measured in tangible terms; Mark Eltringham questions people’s reluctance to simply go on holiday and explores the complex links that exist between our surroundings and how we think and act. The Government lists around £118 billion of publicly funded building projects over the next five years; and flexible working is the main driver in the growth of Cloud data services. Ergonomics experts focus on the much discussed topics of sedentary working; the Work Foundation presses employers to support the health of older workers; and from the latest edition of Work&Place Rebecca Booth explains one of the biggest obstacles to successful change leadership is “change fatigue.” Subscribe for free quarterly issues of Work&Place and weekly news here, follow us on Twitter and join our LinkedIn Group to discuss these and other stories.

August 6, 2015

Government publishes details of £118 bn pipeline of construction projects ⁰

by Mark Eltringham • Facilities management, Knowledge, News, Property, Public Sector

The UK Government, in conjunction with construction industry data specialist Barbour ABI, has published a full detailed list of around £118 billion of publicly funded building projects scheduled for the next five years. You can find the pipeline as a spreadsheet here, with the data broken down by sector and including some basic data for each project. The Government has also introduced a dedicated website with details of the projects with updates to the raw data available via both the central government website and at data.gov.uk. The government construction pipeline is now updated twice a year which the Government claims will ‘extend its reach beyond the major construction spending departments and improve the integrity of the data’ and demonstrate its commitment ‘to continuous engagement with industry and government clients on current use and future improvements’.