A big chunk of American workers have checked out from their jobs -- and are thinking about ending the relationship. That's troublesome for employers. Study after study shows that companies with engaged workforces outperform their competitors. Conversely, low morale saps the bottom line. If people don't like their jobs, they're less productive or quit. And replacing them is expensive. Fortunately, employers don't have to set aside two months' salary and get down on one knee to engage their workers. They simply need to change the way they interact with them -- and give them more control over their work environments.
Continuous Awareness
With the ability to order lunch, converse with team members, collaborate in real-time, and alter environmental conditions such as light, temperature, and sound, our digital devices are literally changing the physical environment around us at multiple scales. As the digital realm increasingly develops new spaces for us to escape, to consume, and to communicate, there will be questions raised concerning the relevance of our physical environments. This makes it both an exciting and challenging time to be an architect.
Workers’ plea on office design: ‘Focus on the basics’
Research conducted by the British Council for Offices (BCO) and real estate services provider Savills suggests that office workers are far from settled on the value of many workplace innovations introduced over the past decade.
The Workplace Of The Future: Brought To You By Art, Education, Travel, And Startups
The workplace of the future is always being created. Every day, companies are introducing new ideas, strategies, and technologies that change how and where we work. Each year, new graduates enter the workforce with bold ideas about their workstyle preferences and needs. New research is constantly emerging that points to new ways for us to work smarter, healthier, and more effectively. Collectively, these influences are reshaping workplaces and pushing them to a future state that never stops evolving.
For years, companies were caught up in the debate about open versus closed workplaces and their respective merits. Recognizing that this debate never led to a strategic solution, companies have been ramping up investment in research and employee engagement to better understand the types of work their office spaces need to support. Even more recently, organizations are beginning to look toward other industries like education, art, hospitality, and more for design ideas that can spur innovative cultures and enrich company offices.
Small businesses outpace larger firms in adoption of virtual working
Around two thirds (60 percent) of knowledge workers in small and medium sized businesses in the US, UK and Germany now use virtual working technology that is internet or cloud-based in their professional roles. This figure is higher than in companies with 500 or more employees (53 percent). These are the findings claimed by the Way We Work Study commissioned by unified comms firm Unify. Surveying 5,000 British, American and German knowledge workers, it explores people’s attitudes and expectations about their workplace. Knowledge workers at SMBs expect to see large changes in their jobs over the next five years. More than a third (38 percent) believe their roles will not exist after this period, and almost two-thirds (64 percent) thinking they will be substantially different. On the subject of trust, 76 percent of SMB knowledge workers feel they are listened to in their organisation, compared to 71 percent in larger companies.
Study: How Your Workplace Environment Affect Brain Function
A new study from the Florida State University suggests that inadequate amount of stimulation in the workplace and an unclean working environment can both affect the brain functions of employees on the long run. Previously, researchers have been debating whether dirty workplace or working in an unstimulating environment that took the biggest toll on brain health as people aged.
Why Managers And Staff Have Very Different Ideas About Open Offices
What makes an office worker happier than perks like free food, natural light, or even onsite day care? According to a new report by Oxford Economics and consumer electronics company Plantronics, one of the most important "perks" is the ability to focus.
The majority (68%) of the 1,200 employees and managers surveyed placed a distraction-free environment in their top three priorities for their workplace. There’s just one thing standing in the way of that ideal: the open office.
Why the Conventional Wisdom About Job-Hopping Millennials Is Wrong
Millennials are frequently derided as job-hopping slackers who prefer “gigs” to careers and don’t think about job security because they are happy moving from company to company. Based on hundreds of interviews colleagues and I have conducted with millennials, we’ve concluded that many of them want job security a lot more than people think they do. They saw the devastating effects of layoffs on people’s lives during the Great Recession and its aftermath, and are concerned about finding themselves in a similar situation. They want the chance to put down roots, to buy homes or cars or have long-term leases, to save for retirement, to plan ahead for the next few years, not just the next season. But many don’t think they can make those financial or personal commitments because they don’t believe they have job security.
Ability to focus, not perks, is top concern for office employees
A global survey of more than 1,200 senior executives and non-management employees found that employees want office designs to foster the ability to concentrate, more than any other factor. Amenities like free food, for instance, are far less important, the research shows.
Sensor technology can improve office design and create happier employees, says Haworth
Haworth white papers: sophisticated sensors could contribute to a healthier and happier workforce by tracking the way offices are used and adjusting them automatically, according to new research by US furniture giant Haworth. Used properly, the technology could turn offices into places that employees choose to be in for their overall wellbeing, says Haworth's Enabling the Organic Workspace: Emerging Technologies that Focus on People, Not Just Space white paper.
10 Design Ideas For The Perk Workers Actually Want: Quiet
Do expensive amenities like great food and game rooms really attract the best employees? That's been the conventional wisdom for the past decade. But more and more offices are rethinking what the most meaningful perks are—doing away with cafeterias for more vacation time, for example. While some argue that unlocking engagement from millennial workers lies in playground-like offices, CityLab highlights a new survey that says that it's peace and quiet that's the real key. Carried out by Oxford Economics (a spin-off organization of Oxford University), the results revealed that uninterrupted work time was at the top of most of the 1,200 respondents' wish lists. Meanwhile, none said that free food was the most important.
Is tech addiction making us far more stressed at work?
We are the distracted generations, wasting hours a day checking irrelevant emails and intrusive social media accounts. And this "always on" culture - exacerbated by the smartphone - is actually making us more stressed and less productive, according to some reports.
"Something like 40% of people wake up, and the first thing they do is check their email," says Professor Sir Cary Cooper of Manchester Business School, who has studied e-mail and workplace stress.
Younger and older workers share many of the same attitudes to the workplace
The behaviour and attitudes of young people in the workplace are very similar to those of older generations. We keep repeating this point but it’s always worth reminding ourselves given the prevailing narratives that obscure this truth. Indeed, so powerful is the narrative that even when a piece of research or a survey contradicts it, there is often an attempt to ignore the report’s own finding’s in favour of something that fits the meme. This happens more often than you think which is why it’s always worth going beyond the headlines to look at what lies beneath. This week, two reports have appeared which highlight just how much a younger generation of workers shares the same attitudes and challenges as other generations. According to the reports, this is true for issues such as presenteeism and the need for the company of colleagues and so suggest we don’t need to treat different age groups quite so differently as is often claimed.
What A Bug’s Life can teach us about building and workplace design
The link between scale, size and form is evident in the built environment. As Stephen Jay Gould points out, the principle espoused by the biologist J B S Haldane that “comparative anatomy is largely the story of the struggle to increase surface in proportion to volume” can be extended to buildings as well as animals.
How active offices are getting people moving
What do collaboration rooms, touchdown spaces, regeneration areas, greenery, and circadian lighting all have in common? They’re all part of what makes up the active workplace — office design with a focus on employee wellness.
Homeworking loses appeal as workers prefer flexible office environment
Most workers now look for flexibility in where and how they work finds a new survey from the British Council for Offices. But this doesn’t mean homeworking; as less than a third (28 percent) of workers now say they would prefer to work from home, a figure that has dropped from 45 percent in 2013, when the research from the BCO and Savills was last conducted. Over three-quarters of respondents (77 percent) said that they currently work in a traditional office, with the majority (60 percent) choosing to work from a dedicated workstation compared to only four percent that are asked to share desks with colleagues. This desire for a dedicated desk has increased over the past three years, rising from a figure of 41 percent in 2013; but despite demand for a dedicated desk, most workplaces (70 percent) now also include a communal environment to work from, providing a space for more dynamic working.
THE DISRUPTORS: The Millennial generation is imposing its will on design
What makes Millennials tick? Lots of businesses, AEC firms included, would like to know the answer to that question. That’s because, at 75.4 million strong, the 18–34 generation has just left Baby Boomers in the dust as the largest population group in America, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
Managing the High-Intensity Workplace
People today are under intense pressure to be “ideal workers”—totally committed to their jobs and always on call. But after interviewing hundreds of professionals in many fields, the authors have concluded that selfless dedication to work is often unnecessary and harmful. It has dysfunctional consequences not only for individuals but also for their organizations.
Six-hour days make workers happier and more productive, study finds
Employees are more productive and have better health if they work a six-hour day, an experiment in Sweden has found. Staff at the Svartedalens nursing home in Gothenburg took part in a controlled trial of a 30-hour working week, with an audit published on the experiment in April finding staff were more productive and energetic – with patients at the home reporting an improvement in their care.
How A Good Relationship With Manufacturers Can Lead To Great Design
German designer Sebastian Herkner started his own studio in 2006, right after graduating from Offenbach University of Art and Design. In 2011, he was showing at the Salone Satellite in Milan when Patrizia Moroso spotted his Bask collection—a series of baskets woven from paper yarn—and asked to produce them.