Search Results for: workplace

JSA launches latest league table of European office furniture companies

by • Company news, Furniture

EU FlagAs the world gets smaller and the communications revolution continues apace, one relatively unnoticed casualty is the design individuality of offices. Time was when you could walk into an office and the furniture would tell you whether you were in Paris, Frankfurt, New York, Milan, Moscow or London. The colours, shapes, materials, construction and image of the furniture were all very local, almost parochial. Who could fail to be struck by the muddy oranges and greens of a French office? Or the inevitable mahogany or teak real wood veneers used in the UK? The panels, worksurfaces and storage units which made up US cubicles were rarely seen outside North America and the massive, dark wood desks and cabinets in Central European deliberately overawed visitors and staff alike.

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Recruitment rates rise, but employers should be careful who they hire

by • Knowledge, News, Workplace

Recruitment rates rise, but employers should be careful who they hire

There is mixed news on the recruitment front, with the latest Recruitment and Employment Confederation (REC) and KPMG report on jobs hinting a positive turn, with permanent placements accelerating, the rate of demand for permanent staff remaining solid and average starting salaries continuing to rise. However, according to a new global report, employers are urged to be cautious about who they hire, because more than half of employers in each of the ten largest world economies say that a bad hire has negatively impacted their business, pointing to a significant loss in revenue or productivity or challenges with employee morale and client relations.

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Office rental sector benefits from office to home exemption

by • Facilities management, News, Property

Office rental sector benefits from office to home exemption says RICS

The office rental sector has benefited from the prospect of reduced supply, stemming from the recent announcement by the government to relax the need for permission to change use from commercial to residential, according to RICS’ property and construction experts. Although the first quarter results of the 2013 RICS UK Commercial Market Survey reveals how the retail side of the commercial market continues to suffer, other areas of the commercial property market – such as office and industrial space have seen demand for premises strengthen slightly with no major increases in empty floor space and rising levels of tenant demand for office premises. (more…)

The biggest challenge is building flexibility into an office design

by • Comment, Facilities management, Workplace design

Flexible pencilThe design of offices and the furniture that fills them matters because of what they tell us about how we work, how organisations function and even what is happening in the economy. If you want to know what’s going on, take a look at the places we work and the things with which we surround ourselves and how they change over time. Because the way we work changes so quickly, buildings need to have flexibility built into them so that they meet our needs today but anticipate what we will need tomorrow.In his book How Buildings Learn, Stewart Brand outlines the process whereby buildings evolve over time to meet the changing needs of their occupants.

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UK authorities win exemptions from offices to homes planning changes

by • News, Property

Empty officeFollowing our report in February that the majority of  London’s boroughs had applied to be exempt from plans to relax planning laws on the conversion of offices into homes, the government has today exempted most of central London and some UK regions from the new rules. Local authorities were asked to apply for exemptions earlier in the year and now cover areas within the jurisdiction of 17 local authorities including the City of London, Camden, Islington, Hackney, Tower Hamlets, Southwark, Lambeth, Wandsworth, Westminster, Newham and Kensington and Chelsea. Nationwide, exemptions have been granted for parts of central Manchester, the Vale of the White Horse, Stevenage, Ashford in Kent, Sevenoaks and East Hampshire.

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Large organisations are unprepared for new generation of executives

by • Knowledge, News, Workplace

Handing over keysIt’s not just Manchester United who need to worry about the succession process following the departure of an aging white male. According to a new report from Cass Business School and recruitment consultants Ogders Berndtson, firms are largely unprepared for the changes in business practice that will come as their babyboomer executives are supplanted by their Generation X and Y descendants.  The report – After The Baby Boomers – argues that over half of organisations are unprepared for the changes. The report interviewed executives from 100 large organisations, making it most relevant for the sorts of blue-chip firms who are led primarily by 50-something accountants in the first place.

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Planning consent given for Tower Bridge Business Complex

by • News, Property

london aerialWorkspace Group has announced that it has received planning consent for the mixed–use redevelopment of its property at the Tower Bridge Business Complex in South East London. The final development will offer 270,000 sq ft of existing business space and 60,000 sq ft of new business accommodation as well as 800 new residential units and a public park.  Jamie Hopkins, chief executive officer said: “There is strong demand for tailored business space in the area and it is our firm intention to increase the number of jobs on site in order to benefit the local community.  The development also provides a significant boost to both the capital value and rental income of the site.”

Over 90 percent of UK staff afflicted with bad case of presenteeism

by • Knowledge, News, Workplace

Clocking inWe’ve always known that many of us have a tendency to come into work when ill even though we would  be better off staying at home, but the problem of people turfing up in the office when they should be in bed or a GP’s queue is worsening according to a new report from insurance company Canada Life. Knocking into a cocked hat all the various surveys which detail the UK’s ‘working days lost’ due to stress?snow/The World Cup/hangovers and idleness, the survey claims that as many as 93 per cent of UK employees have hauled their diseased carcass into the workplace when they really shouldn’t, threatening their own health and the wellbeing of those around them.

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Office design goes to the movies. Part 9: BladeRunner

Office design goes to the movies. Part 9: BladeRunner

by • Comment, Workplace design

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Ridley Scott was one of the pioneers of a film aesthetic that mashes the past with the future, the grime and the gleam. It was a pioneering idea at the time but it’s familiar now. We now accept that the future looks a lot like the past and that goes for the office design in this scene. BladeRunner is also a film about dreams. The dreamy setting here is a telling  contrast to the dirt and sleaze in the City below and the scene in the office in which Deckard (Harrison Ford) interviews the classic femme fatale Rachel (Sean Young) also supports the unresolved notion that Deckard may be a replicant himself. Clearly the workplace smoking ban had been repealed by this time, but then where would a femme fatale be without a cigarette? Even if she is an android.

Seven thoughts on the UK facilities management association merger

by • Comment, Facilities management

New broomWith breathless excitement a press release announces the proposed merger of all of the UK’s major facilities management and support services trade associations, or rather notes that they: “have agreed to the concept of forming one single and united body to represent facilities management and support services.” With a sense of crushing inevitability the first step has been to form a steering group to address how these and other organisations could come together into this single body to meet the needs of the industry and the professionals that work within it. With this in mind, I proffer a few pieces of advice in the form of seven thoughts for those involved in these discussions.

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BIM provides opportunities for the built environment finds report

by • Architecture, Facilities management, Knowledge, News, Public Sector

BIM provides built environment with opportunities for growth

Building Information Modelling (BIM) will raise productivity, provide better buildings, faster and cheaper and represents opportunities for the built environment to become a powerful international player. This is according to a major new report, Growth through BIM produced by Richard Saxon, the UK Government’s BIM Ambassador for Growth who concludes: “No wonder it has been mandated as government policy“. The Built Environment sector, for the purposes of his report, is defined as Property, Construction and Facilities Management, which accounts for about 15 per cent of GDP, and which he describes as: “an enabling sector, facilitating the performance of most other sectors”. (more…)

What workers really want from their offices? The basics.

by • Facilities management, Technology, Workplace, Workplace design

The basicsSo what do people really want from their offices? It’s a question that has tasked the minds of researchers for many years. According to a recent survey from Overbury, the ideal office design seemed to be a Starbucks, but a new report from the British Council for Offices suggests that what people want isn’t actually that much. Top of the list of priorities for the 1,200 or so people surveyed were fast Wi-Fi, comfortable surroundings, a convenient location and a decent, if unspectacular, fit-out, although responses varied to a certain degree across age groups and sectors. Is that really too much to ask? And are the pool table and the slide absolutely necessary?

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