Search results

University faculty, researchers and graduate students are increasingly working out of hotdesks, nonterritorial workspaces available on a “first come first served” basis and cleared of all work and personal possessions at the end of every work session. The aim of this study of the hotdesking experiences of doctoral students in a US public university facility is to identify the themes and coping behaviors associated with hotdesking and examine their implications for campus workspace design and policymaking.

This study uses multiple methods – direct and participant observation of flex workspaces in the study site, semi-structured interviews of doctoral students hotdesking in the study site and archival research of public institutional data.

Study participants work early or late to secure suitable hotdesks, perform important tasks in locations other than the study site, incur co-working space and home office costs, etc. to cope with the themes of uncertainty, lack of control and lack of workspace continuity associated with hotdesking. Workspace reservation systems, storage lockers and workspaces for diverse tasks can improve the on-campus hotdesking experience. Off-campus support such as financial support for setting up and maintaining a home office, subscription to co-working spaces, etc. can facilitate productivity and foster a sense of connection in hotdesk users.

This study contributes evidence that hotdesking doctoral students operate in a hybrid work environment composed of on- and off-campus locations. This study provides original insight that hotdesk users need on- and off-campus workspace support to experience productivity, connection and well-being in a hybrid campus work environment.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact and success of a business incubation project on its participants. The study aims to consider the impact of the project in terms of developing and supporting entrepreneurial activity within Wales. It seeks to build on and enhance existing business incubation literature and contribute to the field by identifying “good” practice and considers the measurement of success within such projects.

This study employs an individual case study methodology which evaluates all aspects of the Graduate Teleworking Initiative (GTi) project. A range of qualitative and quantitative methods is utilised to capture the views of aspiring entrepreneurs. In addition the progress of entrepreneurs is compared with “distance travelled” methodologies developed by other EU programmes, using the experiences of GTi businesses as individual case histories. In addition, this paper looks at additional ways to measure the success of this type of project, based on a study of the current academic literature and work currently being undertaken with funding agencies in Wales in respect of economic regeneration. The case study method is recognised as the most effective research strategy to capture the “rich” experience of complex projects.

The study finds that, if incubation facilities are to receive continuing support, the measurement of success needs to be broader than a set of statistical outputs. The academic literature queries whether business incubation works, and invites us to decide if the end result is of value or not. This paper considers additional ways to measure the success of this type of project. Applications for public funding in support of business incubators as part of an overall economic regeneration strategy should be able to provide a wider evaluation of effectiveness, and this paper seeks to develop a model to this purpose, to assist the ongoing development of incubator facilities in Wales.

This study will be of interest to business incubation providers and entrepreneurial researchers in identifying valid and achievable success measures and should inform developments in this field.

The paper provides a unique insight into a successful business incubation project and identifies the key to its on going success. Furthermore, the study identifies generic measures of success for a typical business incubation project based on the GTi experience and a detailed investigation of alternative business incubators.

It is apparent that the world of education has changed; the latest developments in the superhighway and the Internet are allowing students to be more flexible as to the time and place of learning in ways that were unimaginable ten years ago. The emergence of newly adopted metaphors such as “virtual university” and “networked campus” has greater impact on the teaching and learning modus operandi. The Dearing Report on higher education in the UK has emphasised that open access to a networked desktop and portable computer by all students will become the sine qua non for the next millennium. One of the main questions this paper is seeking to address is the wider implications of these changes on a university’s planning and design. Will the university be radically transformed into a virtual world? Will the university as we know it be able to exist at all? What are the alternative usages of the existing buildings? An attempt will be made to examine the implications of teleworking on university planning and the use of campus buildings. It is anticipated that this paper will highlight issues for open discussion which might increase the level of understanding and awareness between all those involved in the policy making, planning and management of university estates.

Changes in information technology, demographics and corporate culture are considered when predicting the form, size and location of future offices. Argues that the likelihood of companies adopting more flexible work patterns such as teleworking, hotdesking, etc. and an increasingly distributed office network means that current methodologies used to model future demand using variables, such as rental charges and building costs, might prove to be inappropriate given probable future trends. Proposes that alternative data sets will have to be considered and modelled if forecasts are to reflect these changes.

The purpose of this paper is to develop a model to harness occupancy sensing in a commercial hot-desking environment. Hot-desking is a method of office resource management designed to reduce the real estate costs of professional practices. However, the shortcoming is often in the suitability and appropriateness of allocated work environments. The Internet of Things could produce new data sets in the office at a resolution, speed and validity of which that they could be factored into desk-allocation, distributing seats based on appropriate noise levels, stay length, equipment requirements, previous presence and proximity to others working on the same project, among many others.

The study utilises primary data from a commercial office environment in Central London (numerical building system data and semi-structured interviews) to feed a discrete events simulator. To test the hypothesis, the authors look at the potential for intelligent hot-desking to use “work type” data to improve the distribution of individuals in the office, increasing productivity through the creation of positive “work type environments” – where those working on specific tasks perform better when grouped with others doing the same task. The simulation runs for a typical work day, and the authors compare the intelligent hot-desking arrangement to a base case.

The study shows that sensor data can be used for desk allocation in a hot-desking environment utilising activity-based working, with results that outweigh the costs of occupancy detection. The authors are not only able to optimise desk utilisation based on quality occupancy data but also demonstrate how overall productivity increases as individuals are allocated desks of their preference as much as possible among other enabling optimisations that can be applied. Moreover, the authors explore how an increase in occupancy data collection in the private sector could have key advantages for the business as an organization and the city as a whole.

The research explores only one possible incarnation of intelligent hot-desking, and the authors presume that all data have already been collected, and while not insurmountable, they do not discuss the technical or cultural difficulties to this end. Furthermore, final examination of the productivity benefit – because of the difficulty in defining and measuring the concept – is exploratory rather than definitive. This research suggests that not only human-centric smart building research should be prioritised over energy or space-based themes but also large-scale private sector collection of occupancy data may be imminent, and its potential should be examined.

Findings strongly suggest that the hot-desking may cost more in lost productivity than it gains in reduced rental costs and as such many commercial offices should revaluate the transition, particularly with a view to facilitate intelligent hot-desking. Companies should begin to think strategically about the wider benefits of collecting occupancy data across their real estate portfolio, rather than reviewing use cases in silos. Finally, cities should consider scenarios of widespread collection of occupancy data in the private sector, examining the value these data have to city systems such as transport, and how the city might procure it for these ends.

This paper raises positive and negative social concerns. The value in occupancy data suggested herein, bringing with it the implication it should be collected en mass, has a noted concern that this brings privacy concerns. As such, policy and regulation should heed that current standards should be reviewed to ensure they are sufficient to protect those in offices from being unfairly discriminated, spied or exploited through occupancy data. However, the improved use of occupancy data improving workplaces could indeed make them more enjoyable places to work, and have the potential to become a staple in company’s corporate social responsibility policies.

This paper fulfils an identified need for better understanding the specific uses of occupancy data in the smart building mantra. Several sources suggest the current research focus on energy and rental costs is misguided when the holistic cost of an office is considered, and concepts related to staff – although less understood – may have an order of magnitude bigger impact. This research supports this hypothesis through the example of intelligent hot-desking. The value of this paper lies in redirecting industry and research towards the considering occupancy data in smart building uses cases including – but not limited to– intelligent hot-desking.

When working remotely, homeworkers are provided with various technologies which may help them to avoid experiencing feelings of social isolation from colleagues. These include the mobile phone, which provides homeworkers with the means of engaging in interaction with colleagues irrespective of time and location. This paper aims to investigate how the mobile phone is used by homeworkers for social interaction purposes.

Data are collected from 25 respondents working in a telecommunications organisation using in‐depth, semi‐structured interviews.

Upon analysis, it emerges that a significant number of respondents use their mobile phone for retaining social interaction with colleagues outside of their designated work time and space. It also emerges that certain organisational factors help to explain why interaction is maintained in this way.

Implications for organisations employing homeworking are also presented, together with how the limitations of the paper can be overcome in future research.

The results challenge the common assertions concerning social isolation made within homeworking literature; these are discussed within the paper, which also addresses how the findings of this paper aim to aid, as well as to direct, theoretical progression within this area.

Communication is fundamental to the facilities management (FM) role within organisations; especially when the FM department is implementing changes to the workplace. This paper aims to present an evaluation of an instance.

A self‐administered online questionnaire was used to collect quantitative and qualitative data. The research focused on responses to satisfaction with the communication methods rather than reviewing the merits of alternative workplace strategies.

Findings included the impact of communication on staff satisfaction levels, the need to provide timely and relevant information and communication via a range of mediums and the need to ensure there was opportunity to participate in meaningful feedback. The key findings are substantiated with existing internal communication and change literature.

The research highlights the practical importance of the need to improve communication within the FM industry and especially in change circumstances.

The archives gathered in this collection engage in the current COVID-19 moment. They do so in order to attempt to understand it, to think and feel with others and to create a collectivity that, beyond the slogan “we are in this together”, seriously contemplates the implications of what it means to be given an opportunity to alter the course of history, to begin to learn to live and educate otherwise.

This paper is collectively written by twelve academics in March 2020, a few weeks into the first closing down of common spaces in 2020, Victoria, Australia. Writing through and against “social isolation”, the twelve quarantine archives in this paper are all at once questions, methods, data, analysis, implications and limitations of these pandemic times and their afterlives.

These quarantine archives reveal a profound sense of dislocation, relatability and concern. Several of the findings in this piece succeed at failing to explain in generalising terms these un-new upending times and, in the process, raise more questions and propose un-named methodologies.

If there is anything this paper could claim as original, it would be its present ability to respond to the current times as a historical moment of intensity. At times when “isolation”, “self” and “contained” are the common terms of reference, the “collective”, “connected” and “socially engaged” nature of this paper defies those very terms. Finally, the socially transformative desire archived in each of the pieces is a form of future history-making that resists the straight order with which history is often written and made.

This special “Anbar Abstracts” issue of the International Journal of Manpower is split into seven sections covering abstracts under the following headings: Human Resource Management; Career Planning & Recruitment; Women/Dependant Care; Health & Safety ; Education &Training ; Industrial Relations & Participation ; Redundancy.