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news opinion
Southampton will steal a march on some other cities in the UK by being among the first 16 to get 4G – the superfast mobile network
The strangely-named EE has announced that it will roll out 4G very soon, allowing downloads and streaming on your mobile at five times the speed of the current 3G network.
You may say, so what? But cities that have the latest and fastest communications are very attractive to businesses. Why locate in a city with old technology when you can choose one with the best available?
Even more important than mobile comms, in our opinion, is for businesspeople to be able to work with the fastest and most easily-accessible broadband wireless systems.
We think that cities that want to compete with the best in Europe and the US should adopt free public wifi. London adopted a free wifi zone for the Olympics – and Paris and New York are among cities that have had free wifi zones for some time.
We want to see Reading, Oxford, and other major business centres in the south jump ahead of their competitors and go wireless throughout the city.
Meanwhile, the Government should press further ahead with its strategy of bringing broadband to rural areas. We need a fully-working comms infrastructure before we need new roads…
David Murray Publisher
www.businessmag.co.uk
Timeout from commuting
Reducing commute time benefits both workers and businesses, writes Steve Purdy, UK managing director, Regus
A fruitless limbo between personal and work time, it is not surprising that commuting is regarded as one of the least enjoyable things in life.1 Commuting has in fact been identified as one of the main causes of daily stress with lengthy journeys of over 45 minutes associated with poor sleep quality, exhaustion and bad health.
Commuting can also impact business negatively. Reports value the lost- productivity cost of commuting to businesses through delays and transport problems at £1.2 billion in the UK.
To discover how workers would employ their time if they were able to cut down on their commute, and to identify the potential benefits to workers and businesses that a shorter journey into work could bring, Regus commissioned a survey canvassing the opinions of 2500 professionals across the UK.
The research discovered that attitudes towards flexible working are changing across the Thames Valley. For example, over two fifths of Reading workers (42%) report that they are free to work from locations other than their company’s main offices for half a week or more, helping them reduce the overall time spent commuting and giving them the flexibility to choose work locations closer to home.
Businesses have increasingly been offering flexible working practices to staff as they find that worker morale and health improve. Research has in fact shown that mental health, blood pressure, and sleep patterns are better among people who can determine their own working hours.2
While the health benefits of slashing commutes have been amply investigated, little has yet been proven with regards to the business benefits of introducing more flexible working practices. Confirming previous research revealing that 72% of companies had experienced increased productivity directly as a result of flexible working,3 the latest Regus survey discovered that if workers based in the Thames
Valley were able to reduce their commute, 63% would reinvest their time in more work, effectively gaining additional working hours and therefore boosting overall productivity.
Other activities that workers would swap with commuting are: spending more time exercising (56%) and spending more time with their partner and family (59%). All these activities are mood or health enhancing as workers reveal that if they could reduce commuting they would probably be fitter and would also be likely to spend more time with their loved ones, improving all-
One example of a local firm that has changed the way it thinks about the workplace and reduced the need to commute is High Wycombe-based DigOnline, the graphic and web designers specialising in online and digital media.
Robert Minter, director, comments: “We decided a while back that there really is no longer the business need to commute, when you could work perfectly well (indeed more productively) on a remote basis. Commuting can wreck your day before it’s even started.”
Although many firms are benefiting from a more flexible approach, 49% are still not granted this degree of freedom. When the employee and business benefits of helping workers reduce their commutes are analysed it becomes evident that there is no time to waste in introducing greater flexibility for the workforce which in turn will be healthier, happier and, very importantly, more productive.
Details:
www.regus.co.uk
important relationships and boosting their emotional and psychological well-being.
Earlier this year our research showed that over half (53%) of Thames Valley workers believe that companies have been doing more to reduce the time employees spend commuting compared to two years ago.4 This is an important indication that businesses are becoming more aware of the effects that commuting can have on employee health and productivity. Nevertheless, not all businesses are able to reduce commute time for workers on a daily basis and the research suggests that in some cases, instead of helping cut commute time, businesses are acting on commute frequency and allowing staff to work from alternative locations that are closer to home for half the week or more.
1 A Survey Method for Characterizing Daily Life Experience: The Day Reconstruction Method, Daniel Kahneman, Alan B. Krueger, David A. Schkade, Norbert Schwarz and Arthur A. Stone, 2004
2
www.telegraph.co.uk/health/ healthnews/7250150/Flexible- working-is-good-for-health-as-well-
as-family-review.html
3 Regus, Flexibility drives productivity, February 2012
4 Regus, A better balance, May 2012
In the November issue of The Business Magazine
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THE BUSINESS MAGAZINE – THAMES VALLEY – OCTOBER 2012
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