Search Results for: workplace

New report identifies the ten key trends set to transform US commercial property

by • News, Property

Navel gazingAccording to a new report from Deloitte, the recent upturn in the US commercial real estate sector is set to continue unabated into next year. Which is great news but according to the property consultancy, the market that emerges from the ashes of the downturn will be very different to the one from which they were formed. Deloitte’s 15th annual Commercial Real Estate Outlook report has identified what it considers the top ten trends that will reshape the emerging market based on a mixture of original research, subjective insights and the firm’s experience with clients. These trends are dominated by structural and financial issues and the only nods towards external socio-economic factors are mentions for the aging workforce within the market (so much for the transformational potential of GenY) and increases in single family households (can’t see the link with commercial property).

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More law firms introducing flexible working, but progress remains slow

by • Flexible working, Legal news, Workplace

SisyphusWhen it comes to the adoption of flexible working, law firms have proved to be one of the more intransigent sectors in the UK. But there are signs of change with news that more firms in Scotland are embracing new working practices. A survey of 3,400 solicitors carried out by the Law Society of Scotland found an increasing number were making use of flexible working. The research shows that while the majority of respondents (77 percent) continue to work full time, two thirds are now allowed to work away from their main place of work although take-up remains sluggish with only a quarter doing so at least once a week. In marked contrast to other professions, around two thirds of respondents did not access emails and work files while away from the office.

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IT managers yet to accept the whole challenge presented to them by BYOD

by • Comment, Technology

hands with smartphones and tablet pcHow exactly does an employee’s convenience trump an organisation’s need for control? That’s the debate corporations are facing when it comes to managing the ‘Bring Your Own Device’ trend. BYOD allows employees to use their personal mobile products for business. In 2012, IBM decided a majority of their workforce could use their own phones and tablets for work purposes, but the company had high concerns about security, according to a report in the MIT Technology Review. They needed to quickly find solutions to the problem instead of fighting the inevitable. So given the inevitability of BYOD and the lack of control that accompanies it, what is the upside for businesses and how does an IT department ready itself for the BYOD challenge?

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‘Beleaguered’ UK workforce is poorly motivated and unproductive

by • Flexible working, News, Workplace

UK workers are lacking motivation and job satisfaction, with over half either feeling neutral or unhappy about going to work most days, only one in four very satisfied with their jobs and 20 per cent who dread going to work. According to a new report, ‘The Forgotten Workforce’ a series of blows to UK workers, including cuts to their working hours, increasingly inconsistent working patterns, pay freezes, and introduction of zero hours – coupled with little or no investment in technology to support employees – has led to a UK workforce lacking morale and disengaged from the business. An efficient business needs an efficient workforce. If this cycle continues, businesses will face increasingly poor productivity and the UK economic recovery will suffer warns the report. (more…)

Video: What Stephen Fry can teach us about Cloud computing for business

by • Technology

Not one of our usual cutesy attempt to find the links between the thoughts of Aldous Huxley, Baloo or the Arctic Monkeys and some workplace issue or other but a completely straight exploration by technophile Stephen Fry of the enduringly nascent and misunderstood technology still indistinguishable from magic that is Cloud computing. The national treasure and renowned smart-arse looks at the development of the principles behind the Cloud in an historical context and applies them to business thinking for those of us who struggle once the serious technical explanations begin. Most of us, in other words.

What the endless debate about HS2 can teach us about how we work

by • Comment, Flexible working, Technology

A man working on a train

A man working on a train

One of the most fascinating aspects of the debate about whether the UK should spend £50 billion (or whatever you think it might be) on the new HS2 rail network, is the way in which it has formed a touchstone for a discussion about how we work. But people on both sides of this debate can have things either spectacularly or misguidedly wrong. On one side, the people behind the scheme, including the Government, used the jaw-dropping assumption that nobody worked on trains as the foundation of a business case. That was the familiar sight of large organisations working their relentless way towards a number they wanted, regardless of inconvenient facts. This idea has now been so widely discredited and mocked that it has been dropped completely from the latest business case, tellingly the sixth in just three years. And yet on the other side, we have people arguing that we should travel less and use videoconferencing as an alternative to face to face meetings, which can be almost as problematic.

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Many UK facilities managers still failing to see the magic of BIM, claims report

by • Facilities management, News, Technology

Zim Sala BimAccording to a new survey from the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors, the UK’s facilities managers are simply not ‘getting’ what Building Information Modelling is all about and how it can be applied. The latest research into the acronym replete debate about the role of BIM found that more than a third of facilities management professionals are unfamiliar with building information modelling and its uses. RICS is calling on facilities managers to increase their general awareness of the potential of the technology. The survey was carried out on behalf of RICS by the crudely monikered and government funded BIM4FM initiative and found that of the nearly two thirds (65 percent) of respondents who were aware of BIM, nearly all (62 percent) believed it would help them in their roles.

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‘Them and us’ mentality rife, as third of staff report low levels of trust in senior managers

by • News, Workplace

Level of trust in senior managers not as high as they believeA counterproductive “them and us” mentality is being bred in too many of the UK’s workplaces, as more than one in three employees report that their level of trust in senior managers is weak (34%), According to the latest research by the CIPD, while an overwhelming majority report that they trust in their colleagues and line managers to some or a great extent (92% and 80% respectively), trust ratings increase with an employee’s seniority, with senior managers much more likely to report strong trust between employees and senior management than non-managerial workers. Creating a better level of trust isn’t difficult however, with the majority of employees pointing to simple and effective practices such as ‘approachable’, ‘competent’  and ‘consistent leaders’ who ‘act with honesty and integrity’ and ‘lead by example’. (more…)

Global urbanisation trends present UK cities with new opportunities

by • Comment, Environment, Property, Technology

Country_Mouse1There is a great deal of talk about the growing urbanisation of the world right now, and its effects on societies, economies and individuals. The numbers of people involved are daunting, especially in the developing world.  As a  result, many countries are currently experiencing the sort of upheaval we in Britain experienced nearly 300 years ago, and they are doing so in a very compressed time span compared to the 150 years it took in Britain. But the changing nature of cities is also apparent in the UK where it is having an effect not only in the country’s only megacity but in regional centres too.  For places such as Manchester, Birmingham, Bristol and Glasgow the challenges presented by a new generation of initiatives focussed on urbanisation can be profound and mark an opportunity to shift at least some of the UK’s economic focus away from London.

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Latest Insight newsletter is now available to view online

by • News, Newsletter

RICS Award Winner - 1 Angel SquareIn the latest issue of the Insight newsletter; despite predictions of “epic policy failure” following Yahoo’s ban on employees working at home, its gamble has paid off; why the most demonised symbol of corporate alienation – the cubicle – is back on the scene; and as the economy recovers, employers must find new and improved ways to attract and retain employees. Simon Heath sees a clear disconnect between what happens inside the designer or architect’s MacBook and its effect on the physical spaces in which we interact; John Sacks says the Germans prove that long hours and productivity are often two completely different things; and Pam Loch wonders if employers are dangerously unaware about the nature and extent of sexual harassment in their workplace.

Only culture change will prevent the sexual harassment of people at work

by • Comment, Legal news, Workplace

Culture change needed to tackle sexual harassment of both men and women at work

Are we dangerously unaware of or perhaps even becoming dismissive about the nature and extent of sexual harassment in the workplace today? A recent survey, commissioned by a firm of solicitors, has thrown up some statistics which point to significant levels of harassment being experienced by both men and women at work. In the poll of 1,579 working people 60 per cent of women and 40 per cent of men reported that they had experienced “inappropriate” behaviour with much of it classed as persistent, degrading and embarrassing. The behaviour that most people complained about involved some degree of unwanted physical contact but also included colleagues watching pornography in the workplace.

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The Great Gatsby and the rehabilitation of the office cubicle

The Great Gatsby and the rehabilitation of the office cubicle

by • Comment, Furniture, Workplace design

The finest closing sentence of any novel in my opinion is that in The Great Gatsby. “So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.”  It is a reference to the futility of our attempts to escape the past, even as we look to the future, dreaming of how “tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther”. F Scott Fitzgerald was referring to people when he wrote it, and Jay Gatsby in particular, but it’s a passage that resonates in a number of ways, especially in those areas of our lives that deal most intimately with what it means to be human. And one of these is self-evidently the workplace, where any articular attempt to define the ideal office for a particular time, including the future, is complicated by the fact that we must always meet the needs of the beasts that inhabit it. Regardless of the tools we have at our disposal with which to work more effectively, or just plain ‘more’ we remain fundamentally the same animals we were thousands of years ago.

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