Tag Archives: workplace

Covid-secure workplaces revisited: how businesses can help people get back to work

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This is the first in a series of republished blog posts from The Knowledge Exchange. These articles will revisit important topics with ongoing relevance for public policy and practice, as well as for communities and wider society. The first revisited post covers the workplace, and focuses on the ways in which employers can ensure their employees can return to Covid-secure places of work. At the end of the republished article, we’ve updated the post to report on recent developments.

As well as being a public health emergency, the coronavirus (COVID-19) has had wide-reaching economic implications. It’s something of an understatement to say that it has had dramatic effects on all our working lives.

And while successive lockdowns have helped in reducing the number of COVID-19 cases, business cannot remain on hold forever. Gradually, carefully, workplaces have been reopening, and growing numbers of workers are preparing to return to their jobs in offices, shops, schools and construction sites.

In 2020, a White Paper produced by The Knowledge Exchange explained how the workplace has to change in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

A redefined workplace

Before the pandemic, the workplace landscape was already changing. But now it is being totally redefined. Organisations of all shapes and sizes, in all sectors, are facing hard decisions. And how to reopen their workplaces, in a way that protects the health and wellbeing of their employees, is a key challenge.

The White Paper focuses on what employers have to consider when thinking about how to reduce the spread of the coronavirus. The most important challenges concern:

  • social distancing, including areas where this is more difficult, or not possible;
  • organising the workplace, including the location of desks and the installation of additional features, such as screens and hand-drying facilities;
  • cleaning and sanitising, including what needs cleaning, who will do it and when.

As well as complying with guidance, employers have to make sure their staff are confident in the plans for reopening workplaces. A survey for the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development in May 2020 showed that almost half (44%) of respondents were concerned about catching COVID-19 at work.

How businesses can prepare for reopening

Every organisation needs to introduce sensible measures to control risks. Therefore, before reopening a workplace, it is vital to conduct a COVID-19 risk assessment, in line with guidance from the Health and Safety Executive.

A risk assessment should:

  • identify what work activity or situations might cause transmission of the virus;
  • think about who could be at risk – paying attention to whether the people doing the work, or those they live with, are especially vulnerable to COVID-19;
  • decide how likely it is that someone could be exposed;
  • act to remove the activity or situation, or if this isn’t possible, control the risk.

During the risk assessment, it’s essential  to consult with workers and afterwards to share the results. Different industries and sectors may require specific measures. On construction sites, for example, access between different areas may need to be restricted, and high traffic areas may have to be regulated to maintain social distancing. The UK government has published guidance covering a range of different types of work in places such as offices, factories, shops and outdoor working environments.

Actions to make the workplace COVID-secure

The UK government and the Scottish, Welsh and Northern Ireland devolved administrations have provided guidance on how to work safely. This gives practical advice on how the guidance can be applied in the workplace.

In planning to reopen their workplaces, every organisation should translate this guidance into the specific actions it needs to take, depending on the nature of their business. At the same time, employers must also ensure that everyone in the workplace continues to be treated equally. Discrimination against anyone because of a protected characteristic, such as age, sex or disability is against the law, and employers also have particular responsibilities concerning disabled workers and new or expectant mothers.

The White Paper contains a checklist of actions which all organisations need to take. These include

  • developing cleaning, handwashing and hygiene procedures;
  • helping people to work from home;
  • maintaining social distancing;
  • managing transmission risk where social distancing is not possible.

CAFM Explorer: an invaluable support tool for getting back to work

Much of the workload involved in ensuring a safe and effective return to work will be taken on by facilities managers. Keeping workplaces clean, managing shift patterns, ensuring availability of personal protective equipment and creating procedures for inbound and outbound goods are just some of the many considerations to be made.

The White Paper highlights the value of the CAFM Explorer software solution to help organisations manage and consolidate information on the vital elements of a COVID-secure workplace, such as one-way systems, desk spacing, cleaning, staggered hours and hand sanitising stations.

Developed by Idox, a trusted supplier of digital software and services, CAFM Explorer can also trigger work orders as a result of an action – for example, ensuring a desk is cleaned once it has been booked – as well as providing processes to support working at home.

Final thoughts

It is too early to say what lasting effects the coronavirus will have on UK society and business, but it’s likely we will all be living in the shadow of COVID-19 for the foreseeable future. It’s essential, therefore, that organisations make themselves aware of the steps necessary for preparing, implementing and managing the Covid-secure workplace.

To receive your free download of the Getting Back to Business White Paper, please visit the CAFM Explorer page or email marketing@idoxgroup.com.

What happened next

When this blog first appeared, in June 2020, lockdown restrictions in the UK were being lifted, and there were signs that more people who had been working remotely were ready to return to their usual places of work. However, in the autumn the emergence of a more infectious strain of the coronavirus – the Delta variant – forced governments to reimpose restrictions. For most of 2021, many people have continued to work from home, although this benefit has not been available to people working in key sectors such as health, public transport and retail.

The development of vaccines to prevent the worst effects of Covid-19 has resulted in governments again relaxing restrictions. Although, the guidance on returning to work from the administrations in England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland may differ, the increasing numbers of people who are double-vaccinated indicates that by the end of 2021 more people will have returned to their usual place of work, at least for some of the working week.

While some employers are urging their staff to return to the workplace, others are stressing that no pressure is being put on their workers to go back to the office right away. In the United States, some employers may be planning to cut the pay of those who continue to work from home, while others are trying to lure their workers back with incentives. At the same time, as the UK government’s furlough scheme comes to an end, many employers must consider whether they can continue to employ their workers, or make them redundant.

It’s now clear that the Covid-19 virus will be part of our lives in the long term. What’s not yet clear is how we can learn to live and work with it. So, the guidance on returning to the workplace that was highlighted in our original blog post and our White Paper still stands. And the CAFM Explorer solution remains an important tool in ensuring that, when the time is right, people can return to their workplaces safe in the knowledge that they are Covid-secure.

Further reading: articles on employment and the workplace from
The Knowledge Exchange blog

Follow us on Twitter to see which topics are interesting our research team

The Knowledge Exchange remains open for business and continues to provide current awareness and enquiries services to our clients. If you have any questions, please get in touch.

Guest post: How working from home could revitalise rust belt cities

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Michel Serafinelli, University of Essex

For years, we have been promised a work-from-home revolution, and it seems that the pandemic has finally brought it to pass. In April this year, at the height of the first wave of coronavirus, 47% of people in the UK were working from home, the vast majority of them doing so because of the pandemic. In a sense this is overdue: the work-from-home potential for UK employees is 32%; in France, Germany and Italy between 24% and 28%.

This structural transformation has the potential to at least partially undo another transformation from the previous century. With the decline of manufacturing in the United Kingdom after the 1970s, some cities – incuding Hull, Sheffield, Bradford and Stoke-on-Trent – entered a spiral of high unemployment and out-migration that has lasted to this day. This trend is echoed in other “rust belt” cities such as Saint-Etienne in France, Wuppertal in Germany and the American city of Detroit.

The rise of teleworking could end that spiral – if the right conditions are met.

The changing workplace

It’s unlikely that telework will end when the pandemic does – we will instead probably see workplaces encouraging a mix of in-office and home working. Some organisations may start asking workers to be in the office for only two to three days per week, while others may opt for a “conference model” (that is, a few consecutive days or a week per month for all employees).

This does not mean the death of big cities. London will probably stay attractive and innovative thanks to its very strong initial advantage. San Francisco and Seattle in US, Munich in Germany and Amsterdam in the Netherlands will all remain hubs for knowledge workers. Scholars believe face-to-face still rules when it comes to creativity, and such cities provide an environment that is conducive to innovation.

But rust belt areas are cheaper and can attract skilled workers to regularly spend more time there once the pandemic is over.

A busy street in Soho, London.
London will not lose its appeal. christo mitkov christov/Shutterstock

The job multiplier effect

How can formerly deprived cities thrive after the pandemic? To understand the potential for revitalisation of rust belt cities, we can invoke the job multiplier effect. This is where the presence of skilled workers helps create other jobs through increased demand for local goods and services. For example, after their day on Zoom (at home or in a local co-working space), skilled workers will want to go out. In this way they support a barista, a waiter, a chef and perhaps a taxi driver. Some will decide to renovate the house they live in, and ask a local architect. Once or twice a week they go for yoga. They may need a dogsitter when they travel.

This is not the only mechanism that could help with local revitalisation. Some of the people regularly spending more time in rust belt areas would be entrepreneurs, and we may see new business creation, as they seize new opportunities in industries such as culture, renewable energies, tourism, quality agro-food or handicraft.

In principle, therefore, our increased ability to work from home could lead to new growth opportunities.

Will it work?

But there are important caveats. Not all rust belt cities will be able take advantage of the post-pandemic world. After all, there were large differences in labour market performance after the 1970s, when the aggregate number of manufacturing jobs started to decline.

In the UK, both Middlesborough and Slough had 44% manufacturing employment in 1970. But their experience was vastly different in the three following decades, with Middlesborough employment declining by 13% per decade and Slough employment growing by 12% per decade. Places such as Norwich and Preston in the UK, Bergamo in Italy, and San Jose in the US were traditional manufacturing hubs that nonetheless performed well in the decades that followed the start of manufacturing decline in their countries.

To understand why we may see large differences across different cities again with the rise of working from home, we first have to think about differences in what economists call human capital endowments – this relates to the skills of the workforce in a particular place. For example, if locality A has a greater share of the workforce with a university degree than locality B, it has a higher human capital endowment and is more likely to recover from industrial decline.

The skill level of the workforce is important for the task of local reinvention – in our research team’s analysis of the reinvention potential for cities, we used the share of the workforce with a university degree as a proxy for this. To distribute these advantages across the board, scholars studying declining areas have called for measures aimed at boosting training and facilitating the assimilation of knowledge and innovation.

Another important challenge is the digital divide – the gap in speeds between areas with privileged access to the internet and the rest of the country. In the UK this is more than just a gap between urban and rural parts of the country – inner-city areas in London, Manchester, Liverpool and Birmingham are also left behind. A large reduction of this gap was important for job creation before COVID-19 – it should be a top priority now.

An overhead shot of a woman typing on a laptop at a table.
The UK’s digital divide affects cities too. marvent/Shutterstock

Local amenities also play a role. For skilled workers with family ties in a specific area, once they decide to regularly spend more time outside London, the choice of location is often pretty clear. For skilled workers without such ties, factors such as the cultural and recreational activities on offer in a new city become important, especially since they are used to a vibrant selection in London.

Overall, rust belt areas in Western economies face some opportunities for regeneration with teleworking, but there are also several important challenges. To maximise the potential for success, governments should consider measures that boost training, investment in high-speed broadband and improve transportation links between these cities and London.

These kinds of investments would help smaller cities such as Middlesborough, Hull and Stoke-on-Trent take advantage of the new opportunities presented by telework. Otherwise Manchester and, to some extent, other larger cities such as Birmingham and Liverpool could be the winners, among the rust belt, in the post-coronavirus work-from-home economy.

Michel Serafinelli, Lecturer in Economics, University of Essex

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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Getting back to business: creating and managing a COVID-secure workplace

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 COVID-19 has changed the world and how we live our lives. As well as being a public health emergency, it has had huge economic implications. At the start of the pandemic, millions of people around the world were instructed to stay at home, either to work or to remain on the payroll with support from the state.

While the lockdown has successfully reduced the number of COVID-19 cases, business cannot remain on hold forever. Gradually, carefully, workplaces are reopening, and workers are preparing to return to their jobs in offices, shops, schools and construction sites.

A new White Paper produced by The Knowledge Exchange looks at how the workplace has to change in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

A redefined workplace

Before the pandemic, the workplace landscape was already changing. But now it is being totally redefined. Organisations of all shapes and sizes, in all sectors, are facing hard decisions. And how to reopen their workplaces, in a way that protects the health and wellbeing of their employees, is a key challenge.

The White Paper focuses on what employers have to consider when thinking about how to reduce the spread of the coronavirus. The most important challenges concern:

  • social distancing, including areas where this is more difficult, or not possible;
  • organising the workplace, including the location of desks and the installation of additional features, such as screens and hand-drying facilities;
  • cleaning and sanitising, including what needs cleaning, who will do it and when.

As well as complying with guidance, employers have to make sure their staff are confident in the plans for reopening workplaces. A survey for the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development in May showed that almost half (44%) of respondents were concerned about catching COVID-19 at work.

How businesses can prepare for reopening

Every organisation needs to introduce sensible measures to control risks. Therefore, before reopening a workplace, it is vital to conduct a COVID-19 risk assessment, in line with guidance from the Health and Safety Executive.

A risk assessment should:

  • identify what work activity or situations might cause transmission of the virus;
  • think about who could be at risk – paying attention to whether the people doing the work, or those they live with, are especially vulnerable to COVID-19;
  • decide how likely it is that someone could be exposed;
  • act to remove the activity or situation, or if this isn’t possible, control the risk.

During the risk assessment, it’s essential  to consult with workers and afterwards to share the results. Different industries and sectors may require specific measures. On construction sites, for example, access between different areas may need to be restricted, and high traffic areas may have to be regulated to maintain social distancing. The UK government has published guidance covering a range of different types of work in places such as offices, factories, shops and outdoor working environments.

Actions to make the workplace COVID-secure

The UK government and the Scottish, Welsh and Northern Ireland devolved administrations have provided guidance on how to work safely. This gives practical advice on how the guidance can be applied in the workplace.

In planning to reopen their workplaces, every organisation should translate this guidance into the specific actions it needs to take, depending on the nature of their business. At the same time, employers must also ensure that everyone in the workplace continues to be treated equally. Discrimination against anyone because of a protected characteristic, such as age, sex or disability is against the law, and employers also have particular responsibilities concerning disabled workers and new or expectant mothers.

The White Paper contains a checklist of actions which all organisations need to take. These include

  • developing cleaning, handwashing and hygiene procedures;
  • helping people to work from home;
  • maintaining social distancing;
  • managing transmission risk where social distancing is not possible.

CAFM Explorer: an invaluable support tool for getting back to work

Much of the workload involved in ensuring a safe and effective return to work will be taken on by facilities managers. Keeping workplaces clean, managing shift patterns, ensuring availability of personal protective equipment and creating procedures for inbound and outbound goods are just some of the many considerations to be made.

The White Paper highlights the value of the CAFM Explorer software solution to help organisations manage and consolidate information on the vital elements of a COVID-secure workplace, such as one-way systems, desk spacing, cleaning, staggered hours and hand sanitising stations.

Developed by Idox, a trusted supplier of digital software and services, CAFM Explorer can also trigger work orders as a result of an action – for example, ensuring a desk is cleaned once it has been booked – as well as providing processes to support working at home.

Final thoughts

It is too early to say what lasting effects the coronavirus will have on UK society and business, but it’s likely we will all be living in the shadow of COVID-19 for the foreseeable future. It’s essential, therefore, that organisations make themselves aware of the steps necessary for preparing, implementing and managing the Covid-secure workplace.

To receive your free download of the Getting Back to Business White Paper, please visit the CAFM Explorer page or email marketing@idoxgroup.com.

Further reading: articles on employment and the workplace from
The Knowledge Exchange blog

Follow us on Twitter to see which topics are interesting our research team

The Knowledge Exchange remains open for business and continues to provide current awareness and enquiries services to our clients. If you have any questions, please get in touch.

Living life in full colour: exploring the relationship between colour, design, behaviour and emotion

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Seeing red…. green with jealousy….. feeling blue. Associating colours with emotions is not new, but increasingly, psychologists are being asked to explore the relationship between colour, emotion and its impact in a number of different settings, including learning in classroom settings, the design of the built environment, including work spaces and travel hubs, and improving wellbeing as a result.

Colour is a powerful tool. It can be used to get attention, enhance clarity, establish a code, label and differentiate items, as well as to influence behaviour or learning outcomes. For example in schools we are often told to use blue or black ink. Red ink is supposed to be used by teachers to correct assignments, notebooks, and class work. This is a deliberate tool to draw our attention to the mistake we make, designed to help enhance our learning outcomes, in the sense that by drawing attention to the mistake we will remember not to repeat the points highlighted.

“Bad” and “good” colours

Studies have disagreed on how exactly our association between colour and emotions develops. Some have suggested it is an instinctive reaction, something primal which suggests to us that things that are red in colour are dangerous or negative, while blues and yellows signal happier less aggressive colours.

However, others have suggested that the connotations we associate with colour are learned, albeit from a very young age. We associate some colours as being “good” and others as “bad” and this impacts how we interact around them in spaces like classrooms and workspaces. The meaning of colours is culturally-specific and differs around the world in different societies and groups.

However, a third view is that colour theory is much more complex than simply yellow = happy and blue = sad. Colours can have several meanings, and can encourage an audience to feel or act in certain ways depending on when and how they are used, and in some instances depending on personal experiences which people link to specific colours. This is the reason why the literature on colour is so contested; in many instances it blurs the boundary between our instinctive associations of colours and those associations we create ourselves through experiences.

Image “Harvey_Nash_13″ by K2 Space is licensed under CC BY 2.0

How colours are impacting on the design of our spaces

Knowing how colour can affect behaviours is informative for designers and psychologists in a number of environments, including in schools, offices or hospitals. In a learning context, such as in a school using “engaging” hues (warm colours such as red, orange, and yellow) to prevent learners from getting bored, and passive hues (cold colours such as green and blue) to keep learners calm can help with learning, but getting this balance right is important.

A number of studies have looked at the impact of classroom design, including use of colour on the learning and behavioural outcomes of both neurodiverse, and neurotypical children, with many emphasising that overstimulation, particularly of young children through excessive use of bright colour can create a disruptive classroom environment and make it difficult to encourage concentration and staying on task. However, some colour in specific areas of the classroom is good to help with engagement and stimulation.

Similarly, colours have been used by architects and designers in their choice of building material or building design to help encourage feelings of calm or reflection. This is particularly the case in transport hubs like airports and in hospitals or care facilities. Using fresh and calming colours which relate strongly to nature is also a technique used by office designers to help create the feeling of open calm and fresh spaces to help improve working environments and improve productivity.

The design of the built environment and how “green” and “blue” features which incorporate natural materials (green spaces and water have a positive impact on mental and physical wellbeing) has been widely discussed by planners and architects. The evidence generally supports the view that the inclusion of green spaces, promotes health and wellbeing across the life course. This combination of colour and the integration of nature into spaces is being used increasingly in the design of buildings and  in master planning for large urban projects.

Final thoughts

Colour and emotion both play important roles in our capacity to learn and be productive. The association between colour and our emotions and actions is complex and a source of disagreement for some psychologists. Colour has been found to affect how people feel both psychologically and physically. Understanding how colour and emotion relate – and how colour can be used to change environments to encourage particular feelings of calmness or concentration, particularly in schools and workplaces – is something that will be further explored by designers.

Colour should be understood as part of a wider “toolkit” used by designers and architects to ensure that we are building better places that create environments which support and promote wellbeing, encourage positive emotions and create more effective spaces for us to work, learn and interact in.

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The next big thing in management and organisational development … why your organisation should be considering reverse mentoring

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A jigsaw of a handshake being completed ny two hands.

Think of the modern workplace and a number of features may spring to mind: technological innovations, flexible and remote working, to name a few. However, a more social factor is also at play: the multigenerational workforce. For the first time in history, it is now feasible that a workforce could comprise employees from four different generations, i.e. the World War II Generation (born 1929-1945), Baby Boomers (born 1946-1964), Generation X (born 1965-1979) and Generation Y/Millennials (born after 1980).

The characteristics of a generation

In 2012, Ashridge Business School identified that Generation Y (Gen Y) has grown up in an environment that is very different to previous generations. Additionally, their survey of managers from around the world found that Gen Y:

  • comes to the workplace with different skills;
  • is motivated by different things;
  • thinks differently about learning and development; and
  • approaches work relationships differently.

As noted by Steve Regus, writing for HR magazine in 2012, Gen Y also take a less hierarchical attitude towards work, and place a high importance on mentoring and feedback. The trick, according to Regus, is for organisations to utilise the strengths of this diverse workforce to their advantage, by creating opportunities to learn from each other.

The technological benefits of reversing

One way that some organisations have approached this is through reverse mentoring. Rather than following the usual path of older, more senior employees being assigned a newer colleague to mentor, reverse mentoring (unsurprisingly) sees younger or newer employees sharing their knowledge with company stalwarts. An early champion of this strategy in the 90s was Jack Welch, then CEO of General Electric. Welch recognised the importance of capitalising on the skills of the company’s younger employees, and instigated an initiative that saw older employees learn how to use Netscape. Today, reverse mentoring is commonplace in global companies including Microsoft and Cisco.

Technology is an area in which reverse mentoring is particularly valuable. Having grown up in an age of constant technological change and development, Gen Y are ideally placed to offer insight into how technological innovation can benefit an organisation and its processes. Crucially, technological innovation has also opened up the possibility of working more flexibly, something that is highly valued by Gen Y employees. Senior employees who have taken part in reverse mentoring programmes have also highlighted gaining an insight into the potential benefits of flexible working as one of the positive outcomes of developing a mentoring relationship with a younger employee. Thus, opening up this dialogue between generations can potentially diffuse conflict between the traditional 9-5 generations and the less hierarchical Gen Y.

A two-way street

In practice, reverse mentoring has been found to be less ‘teaching an old dog new tricks’ and more of an exchange of information and experience. At General Electric, one of the most basic benefits for the young mentors was simply the ability to gain contacts in the upper echelons of the company. The mutual benefits of the relationship can also be seen in terms of the insight it offers each party. The older participant gains in terms of gaining new perspectives on the company’s industry, and the thinking of its workforce, while the younger gains a better understanding of the company’s strategies and objectives, and becomes better placed to recommend actions or technologies that may support these.

Reverse mentoring – how to do it

In 2013, Boston College’s Sloan Center on Aging and Work published an evaluation of the implementation of a reverse mentoring initiative by The Hartford, a leading US insurance company. The company’s CEO had identified a need for the company to become more confident in its use of digital technologies, particularly social media, and recognised that its younger employees were best placed to drive this forward. Following a successful initial pilot that went onto become a national initiative within the company, The Hartford highlighted the following factors as crucial to the success of any reverse mentoring programme:

  • the creation of a project timeline;
  • identifying the business objectives – link the reverse mentoring programme to what the business is trying to achieve as far as possible;
  • ensure that mentors are fully informed of what mentees are expecting to get out of the exchange;
  • making sure the initiative has clear agendas and timelines;
  • using the mentor role as a way of keeping younger employees motivated; and
  • encourage both mentors and mentees to be open to the relationship and gaining new knowledge, and to respect that each other approaches learning differently.

The final point is echoed by the majority of companies who have used reverse mentoring within their organisation. Initially, Cisco had issues around more senior employees adapting to younger employees’ more informal way of working. As they, and other reverse mentoring adoptees have discovered, though, the key is commitment to the programme, in recognition of the value it can bring to the business.

Follow us on Twitter to see what developments in policy and practice are interesting our research team.

Further reading: if you liked this blog post, you might also want to read Heather Cameron’s post on how entrepreneurship drives growth in the UK.

The Burstow Commission report – is this the turning point for home care workers?

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By Steven McGinty

“If home care is not in crisis yet, it soon will be.“

These are the words of report author, Ingrid Koehler, Senior Policy Researcher at the Local Government information Unit (LGiU). She describes the current home care system as not fit for purpose and explains that this crisis is the reason why the Burstow Commission was formed.

‘Key to care: report of the Burstow Commission on the future of the home care workforce’ was launched last week and considers how the home care workforce might look in the future. Continue reading →