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06
magazine
www.binfo.co.uk
agenda
Overworked, stressed
and loving it
British office workers are working harder
than ever – at least 50 hours a week,
according to analysis of worldwide working
habits conducted by Steelcase – yet still
enjoy feelings of well-being that are among
the highest in the world.
In the UK, executives rarely leave the office
before 7pm, and ‘deskfasts’ and lunches at the
computer are the norm. British office workers
feel stressed in their own jobs but adopt a ‘keep
calm and carry on approach’ to chaotic working
environments and take unpredictable changes
at the office in their stride. Although many
UK workers remain dissatisfied with working
conditions, they are unique in rounding off the
working week in the pub with colleagues.
So says,
Culture Code
, an analysis of office
life and culture in China, France, Germany,
the UK, India, Italy, Morocco, the Netherlands,
Russia, Spain and the US.
Zoe Humpries, one of the report’s authors,
said: “British workers face constant pressure to
stay longer at work and do more.Workers are
stressed and dissatisfied with their working
conditions. That said, British workers are
competitive and most are convinced they have
to be tough to succeed. The British rank very
highly on individualism and have embraced
mobile working easily. However, they move jobs
quite frequently. Close personal relationships
are not regarded as important in business.”
www.steelcase.co.uk
In a new report,
Megatrends: The trends
shaping work and working lives
, the
CIPD highlights the ‘Megatrends’ that
have transformed the workplace over
the last 100 years and identifies future
trends that will re-shape the way we
work in the next decade.
Megatrends of the last 100 years include:
l
De-industrialisation: In just half a
century from 1961, the proportion of the
workforce employed in manufacturing fell
from 36% to 8%, while the proportion
employed in services rose from 49% to
81%;
l
Demographic change: In 21 years from
1992, the proportion of the employed
workforce aged 50 and over has risen from
21% to 29%, while the proportion aged
under 25 has fallen from 18% to 12%;
l
Educational attainment: In 18 years from
1993, the proportion of 16-64 year olds
with a degree compared to those with no
qualification almost completely reversed,
from 11% with a degree and 26% with no
qualifications in 1993 to 24% and 11%
respectively in 2011;
l
Decline of collectivism: In 33 years, union
membership halved from 13 million in
1979 to less than 6.5 million in 2012;
l
Dramatic shifts in organisation size: In 12
years, from 1998 to 2010, the proportion
of private sector employment accounted
for by firms with more than 250
employees fell from 49% to 40%, while
the proportion employed in the smallest
firms (1-4 employees) doubled from 11%
to 22%.
The report identifies a number of emerging
‘megatrends’ that the CIPD believes will
impact the world of work in the future and
poses a number of questions that the CIPD
wants business leaders and HR professionals
to discuss, debate and prepare for:
l
Have we seen the end of the pay rise? The
UK has experienced four years of falling
average real earnings, the most sustained
period for at least half a century;
l
Has job turnover slowed down? Despite
talk about the end ‘jobs for life’, there has
been a decline in voluntary exits from
firms, a trend that pre-dates the recent
recession;
l
Are we working harder than ever?
Employees report that they’re working
more intensively than ever before –
caused as much by developments in
technology as by recession-driven
reductions in staff numbers;
l
Are organisations losing the trust of their
workers? Evidence shows plummeting
trust in organisations and their leaders,
exacerbated by recent scandals in sectors
as diverse as financial services and the
NHS.
www.cipd.co.uk/megatrends
Four questions that will redefine the world of work
The world’s changing faster than work is, warns CIPD as it launches a
debate on the future trends that will shape work and working lives.
Living offices for an age of
collaboration
Herman Miller has unveiled a new approach to
office design, comparing its significance to the
introduction of Action Office, which created
a new office paradigm during a similar era of
transformation more than 40 years ago.
Launched at Neocon 2013, Living Office is a
portfolio of ideas, furnishings, tools and services
suited to today’s evolving corporate culture, workforce
demographics, employee expectations, technologies
and modes of work.
In particular, it reflects the changing role of the
office in an era of mobility and always on access to
information and communication, when its primary
function is to bring people together for teamwork and
collaboration.
Living Office has been developed with insight from
Herman Miller’s Space Utilisation Studies, which reveal
the extent to which existing office environments fail
to meet the demands of a modern workforce.
These show that private offices are unoccupied
77% of the time; workstations are unused 60% of
the time; conference room seating is rarely used to
full capacity; people like to work in social spaces
and will choose them over less social spaces; smaller
meeting spaces are used more than larger spaces; and
rooms with technology are used much more than
those without.
Herman Miller has identified 10 modes of
individual and group work and 10 related settings that
are essential to today’s global work experience. Each
of these Living Offices can be executed in a variety
of ways using Herman Miller products including three
new ranges:
n
Public Office Landscape designed by Yves Behar /
fuseproject, which provides surfaces, storage and
seating to enable a multitude of work settings with
free movement from one task and/or environment
to another (photo above);
n
Metaform Portfolio designed by Studio 7.5,
which offers a collection of modular blocks
(with accessories) to delineate space and create
reconfigurable work settings (photo below); and
n
Locale designed by Sam Hecht and Kim Colin, for
the creation of dynamic, high-performance work
areas within open-plan environments.
www.hermanmiller.com