News & Views

So the World Workplace carnival is officially underway. IFMA president Kathy Roper this morning opened the gathering of what she described as “alpha facility managers” for their week of “being facility nerds.” Emphasising the conference’s sustainability credentials (a far cry from previous years) Roper announced that host city Phoenix is the first US city to be on track to be a carbon neutral city with its 17-point Green Plan. She went on to introduce the city’s mayor Phil Gordon to welcome the thousands of delegates to his city.

Gordon went further, proudly announcing that although Phoenix had 5,000 new residents every month and created 45,000 jobs every year, sustainability had been its guiding force for decades. Mayor since 2004, Gordon boasted that the city uses less water now per capita than it had two decades ago. The Phoenix Convention Center is a green building, he said.

Warming to the sustainability theme was Bjorn Lomborg, author of Cool It: the skeptical environmentalist’s guide to global warming, who gave the opening address. He argued that there was a lot of fluff about global warming and facility managers needed to take rational not fashionable decisions. In an hour-long speech (a tad too long for my limited concentration and the audience became restless in places) Lomborg outlined four key points. Firstly that global warming is real and man-made and that its total cost (presumably in cleaning up after floods and hurricanes) is $15trillion. Secondly he argued that the consequences of global warming is vastly exaggerated and one sided which can lead to bad judgements. He cited the valid example of statistics which are used be the global warming lobby to argue for change: in the UK 2,000 people will die every year by 2050 because of increased heat. “They fail to say that the statistics show that 20,000 fewer people will die because of cold.” Generally more people in the world, apart from sub-Saharan Africa, die from cold than heat. Global warming will result in 400,000more heat deaths but 1.8m fewer cold deaths worldwide, he said.

Lomborg’s last key points were that governments needed to find a smarter way to tackle climate change and that more R&D was required; and that there were many other problems beside global warming where governments could do good work. “This is not the biggest problem on the planet,” he said arguing that for $75billion a year the UN could solve basic global problems such as lack of clean drinking water, sanitation, basic healthcare and education. “When kids in the third world are going to bed hungry, their parents aren’t worried about climate change, they want food and clean water.”

Lomborg’s talk provoked considerable debate, especially among American FMs where sustainability is a newer concept. Worryingly several took away the message that there was little point making the small changes as it would make little or no difference to the bigger picture. Lomborg was also rather black and white ­ – the UN is already helping to tackle some of the basic problems Lomborg outlined while also challenging global warming. It’s not an either or argument.

But this is World Workplace and Lomborg was quickly forgotten as a local band marched delegates from ballroom to exhibition room where several hundred stands offered everything from free popcorn (Emcor) to jellybeans as well as the latest FM innovations and developments. On the Planon stand, the IFMA Foundation launched its latest book Work on the Move – Driving Strategy and Change in Workspaces which brings together global workplace experts (including the UK’s Alexei Marmot and case studies from the Home Office and RBS from Advanced Workplace Associates) to discuss how work is changing, the impact it’s having on the workplace and how facility professionals can respond.

What sets World Workplace apart from the UK FM conferences is certainly the sheer size – thousands of delegates and more than 250 exhibitors make it the event to be, and be seen. It also means more revenue for some of the glitzier parts of a conference – the keynote speakers, the marching bands, the receptions are all occasions to remember.

But what makes it so different from the UK is its make-up.  World Workplace is all about networking. Once the opening address was over at 11.30 this morning, there was nothing but networking and visiting the exhibition for the rest of the day – until the evening Welcome Reception at Chase Field, the home of the Arizona Diamondbacks baseball team for more networking. Americans (and despite the International I in IFMA, the audience is largely American) are not afraid to sell or be sold to, which makes for a buzzing exhibition where people genuinely interact with the organisations there (if only sometimes to get the extravagant freebies). Even some British delegates admit that they can come to World Workplace and not go to one educational session – it’s all about who you meet in-between that makes the difference.

Coughs and sniffles are commonplace at this time of the year as our bodies adjust to the cold and wet autumnal weather. But recently I fell victim to a more modern virus.

A few days ago, a friend of a friend tweeted to say he’d heard something funny about me. What could it be? That I’d been walking around all day with loo roll on my shoe? Intrigued, I clicked on the link at the bottom of his tweet. And just like that, less the ACHOO!, the virus spread to all my followers.

A few hours later Cathy, out of the office visiting a client, sent me a direct message saying that my Twitter account had been hacked. “It just sent me random msg to log onto a fake Twitter site,” she wrote. Great, I thought. She had obviously opened the link, and the virus would soon be winging its way to all of Magenta’s followers. Infecting my boss; a great start to my third week on the job.

But it would seem that I’m not alone in bringing social media viruses into the workplace, according to new research. A Ponemon Institute survey of 4,640 global organisations found that virus and malware attacks against them have increased because of employees using Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and other social media in the workplace. More than half of these organisations said these computer attacks grew as a result of workers using social networks. About a quarter of those respondents said the attacks rose by more than 50 per cent. Many organisations also feel they are ill equipped to handle the security risks of social media. Of those surveyed, only 35 per cent had a policy on using social media at work. Of those, just 35 per cent enforce it. Also intriguing is the study’s finding that in the US workers spend an average of 62 minutes each day using social media for personal reasons, compared with 37 minutes for business purposes. Not unrelated, 60 per cent of the organisations surveyed have increased their Internet bandwidth in the past 12 months to accommodate employees’ use of social media.

Social media is essential to business

But for all the risks and work hours wasted, social media has undoubtedly changed our lives and the business landscape. Not only has it changed the way we chat with friends and family and the way we consume information, it has also changed how companies sell, how they serve their customers and how they communicate with everyone. Some 67 per cent of respondents of the Ponemon Institute survey said that social media is essential or very important to meeting business objectives.

This is why at Magenta Associates we use social media every day. Cathy uses Twitter to tweet trends, statistics, facts, figures and stories in the press, and has conversations with clients, users and friends in the industry. We update our Facebook page regularly, and we keep a watchful eye on LinkedIn for networking opportunities. Elsewhere in the FM community, the uptake of social media has been somewhat slow and even reluctant. The FM trade press have Twitter accounts as do a smallish number of FM businesses. But the marketplace is still young, and FM businesses that establish a strong social media presence now will really gain an advantage over their competitors.

Back at Magenta, fortunately Cathy took the news that I had infected her Twitter account in her usual good-natured way, and she immediately sent out a tweet to stop anyone opening the link. A few days later, another friend tweeted saying that she had come across a really interesting blog about me. No doubt it would have been very interesting indeed, but I never found out. Like in the real world where you can’t catch the same virus twice, in the social media stratosphere you open a dodgy tweet once – and you (hopefully) never do it again.

Here are Magenta’s top common sense tips on how to avoid being infected by social media viruses:

1. Use caution when clicking on links from people you don’t know well and even from friends. Does the language used sound professional or like that of your contact?
2. If in doubt, email or DM your contact to check that the link is safe to open.
3. If you click on a suspect link, immediately notify your followers by DM or email not to open the link. Reset your password. But be sure to do so via the social media site directly rather than clicking on a link in an email, which could take you to a page that looks like the Twitter or Facebook reset password page. Once you’ve entered your password on the fake site you’ve just given the thief access to your account.
4. For the same reason, type the address of your social networking site directly into your browser or use bookmarks.
5. Be selective about your friends on your social networks. Identity thieves are known to create fake profiles in order to get information from you. Also be careful what you post about yourself. Hackers can break into financial and other accounts by clicking the “Forgot your password?” link, especially if they’ve found online the answers to common security questions, such as your birthday or mother’s middle name.

How do you use social media, and have you fallen victim to any social media viruses recently? We would love to hear from you.

Why not connect with Magenta Associates on social media:

Connect through LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/cathyhayward
Follow us on Twitter: @cathy_magenta
Follow us on Facebook: Magenta Associates

Our productivity at work is ruined by small things – the light which is just a little too bright, or dim; the office being too hot or cold; the noisy colleague the other side of the floor; or the printer not being filled up with paper (and no paper being in sight). Yes, there are bigger things too. Organisations failing to provide the right type of workspace, for example not enough quiet rooms to do some one-to-one or reflective work or not enough space to collaborate with colleagues we might see only occasionally.

These are what Tim Oldman, founder of Leesman, the opensource index which measures the performance and effectiveness of office environments, describes as “productivity toxins”. Oldman was speaking at the Federation of Corporate Real Estate’s autumn seminar looking at some of the key issues involved in creating an efficient workplace.

Sometimes it’s good to go back to basics. Meirion Anderson, MD of workplace project and change management specialists Aberley argued that “At its most basic, a workplace is there to protect us from the elements”. And another great one-liner: “A desk is just there to stop your laptop falling on the floor.”

New ways of working is now so established that at the seminar it was given its very own acronym (NWOW) – sounds very Now. But despite this, people are still getting it badly wrong. The 100 or so delegates heard about offices being turned into ghost towns by flexible working taking off. Businesses which had no culture because everyone was dispersed or NWOW being DONE too, and organisation rather than being drawn out of the business. And while the key driver of introducing flexible working is saving on real estate costs, there is also much additional value creation that comes with it (increased productivity and staff wellbeing for example).

Perhaps the most interesting session was the break out debate on NWOW where a group of subject enthusiasts were given the task of seeing which aspects of the workplace prevented NWOW. Naturally when a group is set free from the constrains of a formal seminar, the first thing to do is break the rules. After much debate, it was agreed we couldn’t answer the question. New ways of working and productivity at work, while it might be hampered by a lack of WiFi or quiet rooms, it will fall at the first hurdle if management trust is not intrinsic to the process (it’s all about Marx and infrastructures and superstructures – read more at Neil Usher’s fabulous blog)

Read tweets from the event.

Read our blog about changes in the workplace. 

More about the Federation of Corporate Real Estate

What a shame that London mayor Boris Johnson has bowed to pressure and axed two so-called “chill-out” spaces at City Hall. The report in today’s FM World Daily claims that the business lounges where staff can read, eat and hold informal meetings are being removed to make way for more desks.

The “chill-out” spaces have caused controversy because of the big expense to fit them out – about £25,000 (not that much when you consider the building’s overall budget but the Evening Standard kicked up a big fuss at the time). Some chairs apparently cost nearly £900 each, four high tables cost £2,000 each and carpets added another £4,170, according to the FM World report (although that may well be the list price and a substantial discount was achieved). In any case surely setting the spaces up and then demolishing them 12 months later is the real waste of money?

It’s also interesting that according to the FM World report, the original design in 2002 was for 426 desks, on handover there were 570 and this eventually increased to 697. And more to come by the sound of it. It would be interesting to know how many staff the building supports, the desk to person ratio, how many of the staff in the building are encouraged to work flexibly by time or location or whether agile/intelligent working has made it as far as City Hall.

Usually much more can be done to encourage people to work in other locations (either at home, in client sites, local offices, third spaces etc) which then frees up much-needed space in the main head office.  If people were to work in this way, then the business lounges currently being ditched would be the first thing needed to allow staff to drop in to work, meet colleagues informally. Those types of informal spaces can support many more people when they’re set up as business lounges, rather than being covered in desks.

Despite renowned architect Frank Duffy claiming that the modern office is on its way out, it remains the base for the majority of people from 9 til 5. But new ways of working combined with new technology have made obsolete pieces of furniture that were, until recently, stalwarts in the office – and home.

1. The Desk
Experts (read consultants) in new ways of working would have us believe that the humble office desk is dead. Instead of being chained to our own personal bit of mdf, we will work in everything from office break-out spaces to cafes, drop-in meeting facilities and the kitchen table. But nothing has quite replaced the desk for sheer ergonomic comfort, as anyone who has spent a day hunched over a laptop in Starbucks will testify.  The size and shape of the desk has certainly changed – gone are the massive L shaped desks which took up half a room. Instead smaller desks, or collaborative benches are popular. And even the big law firms where massive mahogany desks were passed down the generations from father lawyers to son lawyers, have gone (but probably only to the home office).

2.Tea trolleys
The distant rattle of the tea trolley was the highlight of most office workers’ afternoons. The steaming aluminum tea pot would hove into sight, and all work was forgotten as workers queued up in soup-kitchen style for their brew and a slice of, often homemade, cake. Sadly the nearest most workplaces get to the tea trolley is the sandwich man and his crate of tepid sandwiches which have already been polluted by a circular London commute at exhaust pipe height.

3. Clocking off machine
Clocking off machines were a permanent fixture in most offices, ensuring that you were measured not by what you produced, but by the minutes you spent chained to your desk (or at least in the office). While some factories, and even places like MacDonalds, still have them, they have largely disappeared from most offices meaning that workers may actually get judged by their performance, and not their ability to work the system – did bosses really think we didn’t share clock in cards?

4. Office nameplates
Back in the day before even the CEO sat in an open plan environment anyone who was anyone had an office, and even if you didn’t get a view, you always got a name plate – usually with both your name (not first name of course because that would be too friendly) and job title. They were designed partly as a source of information about the occupant, but mainly to instill fear and awe in any subordinate forced to knock on said door. The most fearsome name plate always belonged to the head secretary whose office overlooked …

5. The typing pool
Although you could argue that the modern-day call centre is very much like the post-war typing pool, it doesn’t come close to the uniformity both in dress and behavior of 100 touch typists in perfect synchronisation being watched by a matron in her 50s to ensure that no gossip, mistakes or short skirts left the typing pool to distract the rest of the business.

6. The telephone table chair
Remember the telephone table? It sat in the hall from the early part of the last century until the mobile home telephone made the sofa a more preferred spot to take a long call. Ebay is now deluged with hundreds of ‘vintage’ models.

Next for the chop will be filing cabinets (paperless office anyone?), pedestals will be replaced by those funky lockers and in-trays will become obsolete in the new paperless mobile world. Are you feeling nostalgic yet?

I’ve just got my hands on Jason Hawkes’ London at Night,
a beautiful, glossy coffee-table book with stunning photographs of the capital in darkness. It is also a sad illustration of the light pollution lack in the UK’s biggest city. Because when I say “darkness’ I refer only to a lack of sunlight. Every image on every page is flooded with light. Some are street or car lights, or lights from bars and restaurants – all probably necessary to some degree. But the majority of brightness comes from office buildings.

And those where the reader is close enough to see individual chairs and desks appear to be completely deserted. The majority of the floors of the Willis Building at 51 Lime Street are lit and devoid of people; and this eerie emptiness can be found throughout the City, in the American-style office blocks in the Docklands and the More London complex near London Bridge which houses big names such as Ernst and Young and Norton Rose. The Gherkin is one of the few buildings which appears to be selective about its lighting requirements: a beacon of darkness in a city of shining lights.

Yes, cleaners would no doubt be accessing the floors of some of these buildings, and there would be some people working late in distant, unseen, corners. But the vast majority of the energy used is unnecessary, and costly to both the bottom line and the environment. When are designers, facilities professionals and building users going to wake up to the need to switch the lights off: either manually or through movement or time sensitive controls. It’s not as if the technology doesn’t exist. In theory we’re willing, but in practice it seems, we’re weak.

A few weeks ago, I wrote about the unstoppable trend towards mobile working and how, wherever you go, there are people perched with their laptop or talking business on their mobile phone. I had two concerns: lack of free WiFi coverage and a lack of consideration for ergonomic comfort. The day after that piece was published in this magazine I was on the Stansted Express when two chaps got on and started discussing their employer, a well-known facilities management company. Not only did they openly name the organisation several times but they talked about what they believed to be fraudulent practices and made derogatory remarks about senior execs.

OK, this was an extreme example but it got me thinking about privacy and confidentiality for mobile workers. Sitting in a Costa Coffee a few days later I overheard two colleagues talking about a major client and the contract renewal process (including how they could add in ‘additional costly services’ once the deal had been signed). On the train to a meeting, a woman was on her mobile to a client talking about fairly confidential aspects of their relationship. And at a serviced office space, I was sharing a table with someone and could clearly see the business plan they were working on.

Ask around and you find that this is a common experience. One facilities professional told me how she was waiting in a hotel reception before a FMA meeting and couldn’t help but overhear a chap talking about a named FM client to a colleague over the phone. Once the call was finished, she introduced herself and said she was also in FM. He went white. Someone else told me about a recent train journey when he was sitting next to someone who was working on an internal document about a new software product which was going to market despite several known glitches. And of course the press is full of stories about memory sticks and confidential documents left where they shouldn’t have been. Next time you’re out and about, look and listen and I bet you’ll pick up some interesting titbits.

You would have thought that much of this is common sense. But I think workplace managers and HR professionals must also shoulder some of the blame. I don’t think we take the time to train people in new ways of working. We take them out of static workspaces, give them a laptop and a BlackBerry and expect them to understand the etiquette of working in public. But of course they often don’t and they continue to work in the way they did when they were in private workspaces. We need to explain how people using those spaces need to adapt their style of working – perhaps by using code names when talking about clients or your own business in public; not naming people individually but perhaps by their job title; and being careful what confidential documents you work on in certain environments.

I’m writing this on the tube and don’t think I’ve been overlooked…

As crisis management plans go, Japan’s was a well-prepared one. After the 1995 Kobe earthquake, the Japanese have become world leaders in seismic technology and all modern structures are designed for earthquakes – and older buildings retrofitted appropriately. Buildings shorter than three storeys have reinforced walls and foundation slabs of a certain thickness, while taller structures have innovative earthquake-resistant designs that undergo regular review by structural engineers. Mid-rise buildings often rest on huge rubber or fluid-filled shock absorbers which slide from side to side, dissipating lateral motion and turning it into heat. Buildings sway in high winds but that helps to prevent them disintegrating into reubble when earthquakes hit. Every household is instructed to keep a survival kit with a torch, radio, first aid kit and enough food and water to last for a few days, and issued with instructions such as avoiding placing heavy objects in places where they could easily fall during an earthquake and cause injury or block exits; having a fire extinguisher to hand; and being familiar with the local evacuation plans in their area. Earthquake planning is a key part of all organisations’ business continuity planning, and the Japanese view crisis management planning as a core business activity – it is simply an essential way of life.

This is a country used to quakes as the Japanese archipelago is located in an area where several continental and oceanic plates meet. But the recent earthquake in the north of the country, measuring 8.9 on the richter scale, followed by a series of aftershocks many of which were larger than the earthquake which devastated Christchurch last month, a tsunami and the resulting nuclear emergency, demonstrated that no crisis management plan, however carefully prepared and well practised, can cover all eventualities. The crisis management plan for New York’s Twin Towers, for example, included the notion that a plane might strike the towers. But it was envisaged that this would be an accident on the way back to a New York airport and the planes would therefore be almost empty of fuel. Of course when the planes hit on 11 Septemmber 2011, they were full of fuel which exercerbated an already disastrous situation.

The crisis in Japan is expected to be the world’s costliest natural disaster – in the region of £100bn. As facilities professionals, all we can do is to plan for realistic and anticipated emergencies. No doubt, crisis management plans in earthquake prone areas are being revisited at the moment, and of course it’s a timely reminder for all facilities professionals to dust off the business continuity plan and make sure it’s suitable for today’s business – and continually rehearsed and updated.

But of course it’s not just earthquakes and natural disasters which can rock a company. Cotswold Geotechnical was fined £385,000 last month after becoming the first company to be convicted of corporate manslaughter. The sum amounted to 115 per cent of its annual turnover and could well result in the company’s liquidation. The message is clear: while the horror of earthquakes and the shocking loss of life make the headlines, a lack of proper health and safety management can quickly result in not only reputational damage and massive fines, but also in the company’s demise. And all this is in the hands of the facilities manager.