Office Smokers Require Space

Whilst we know that the majority of people don’t approve of smokers, the recent regulations have made things difficult for those that do.

What smokers do
Many office smokers jump on board the cafe culture bandwagon (minus the coffee) and make an increasing amount of little trips to buy ‘coffee’ and sweets or for any other spurious reason.

Whilst it is maintained that pubs have been badly effected by the smoking ban, it is clear that “going to the pub” is becoming ever more popular in the summer so that some can smoke outside with a drink.

Society on smoking
Yellow boxes have appeared outside airports, and a smoker has to get into that yellow  box before lighting up. Not long ago, it was cars that were not allowed into yellow boxes.

The most extreme effect that we have heard of so far is the older heavy smoker who had a cigarette outside his office, then went upstairs to his office, sat down, and wanted a cigarette. So up he got and went downstairs, had a smoke, came back up, and by the time he got there, wanted another smoke! We hear that he saw the desperate futility, gave up (not smoking unfortunately)and ‘retired’ certainly from working in an office anyway!

Key consideration
Office space with “outside space” such as a terrace or balcony is in high demand people specifically state this as being required and for good reason. Even though smoking is frowned upon, by catering for smokers, you don’t lose precious work hours to people making excuses to find other means to smoke.

If you don’t have smokers on your workforce, obviously this is less of a worry, but do have a look at our checklists to find things you may not have thought of before looking for a new office. We are always happy to help you with your requirements so do talk to us.

Office Air Conditioning

It looks like we are in for a hot spell, which is great for weekends, bank holidays and lazy days by the sea.

Not always as pleasant, however, for London commuters having to spend weekdays in warm offices filled with computer screens, artificial lighting and tightly packed desks.

Landlords with empty London office space to let are blowing their trumpets about air conditioning (if they have it) and asking their letting agents to turn the temperature right down to exaggerate the cool temperature.

When prospective tenants depart, the cooling is turned back to “normal” in order to save life of their condensers, cost and of course the planet.

A growing number companies renting office space in London list air conditioning as a “must have”.

Unfortunately, cooling is often pretty inferior for lots of reasons, notably the simple fact that London has historically had a pretty temperate climate, so landlords have not spent the time designing as good air conditioning solutions as they would if they were in Australia of Dubai…

So without further ado, here are the 5 main issues air conditioning entails:

1. Cooled buildings in town are often sealed, so windows can’t be opened do you really want to be breathing in recycled air? It has been medically proven that air conditioning speeds up the spread of illness throughout buildings.
2. Balancing can be hard so staff will need shorts and T shirts at one end and duffel coats 40 feet away!
3. Some systems allow for zoning to take account of personal preferences, while in many others the boss will select his/her preferred temperature and everyone else will have to put up with it.
4. More environmentally aware office occupiers prefer to put up with the British summer, as it is good for the environment and good for employees.
5. Bringing in more flexible summer dress code options is a very viable and more cost effective solution, as Michael recently blogged about.

With hotter summers and high office density, cooling is probably here to stay. Our advice at FindaLondonOffice is to check the a/c system before you take a lease.

Now for the girls, life is so much easier!

When I first started in property, I could wear any shirt of my choosing, but it had to have a white collar! In fact I was once sent home during the working day to change out of a shirt due to the collar not being white; the working time lost was around 2 hours, so you can see that people used to take the subject of dress code very seriously indeed.  It goes without saying that ties and jackets had to be worn at all times irrelevant of the temperature, and in those days, only the minority of office buildings had any form of air cooling!

How times have changed! Many companies have tried “dress down” days, but as always, some employees let the side down and dress as if they have just been to a 3-day stag party, so several firms have been forced to abandon the idea.  Nevertheless the expense and the hassle of suits has been abandoned by many.  As soon as the sun shows its face ties and jackets are abandoned, even by the sticklers in the City.

The whole of the media industry abandoned formal clothing a long time ago, and somebody advised me that when dealing with them, I should dress to their style.  The first time I did this, the client asked if I was having the rest of the day off after the meeting!  I am in property, and clearly because of that, I am still expected to wear a suit.  It doesn’t seem fair does it?

Another issue that our clients have made us aware of is that of gender discrimination becoming an issue in summer office dress code. In a survey polled for Croner by YouGov, 50% of women and 60% of men acknowledged that females were more likely to ignore dress code rules in the summer, though only 33% of women believe this is an issue throughout the year, compared with 50% of men.

So if whether your business offices are based in the city or otherwise, with the onset of summer, now is a very good time to consider whether your dress code is both consistent and proportionate.

We would love to hear your thoughts, so do drop us a comment below.

Business Mobile Phone Tracking

There is a lot to be said about the place of mobiles in business. The shift from mobiles being a relative rarity to everyone owning and using them in commerce has been a lightning fast transition. Of course being able to manage calls and e-mails wherever you are, without compromising your location is hugely advantageous. While this inevitably makes life easier for all of us, there are also negative implications, particularly with upcoming technology.

I do feel that mobiles have brought a certain justice in their own right.  In the era pre-mobiles, do you remember being served by a shop assistant, only the phone rang and they stopped serving you and took the call, as if the call had some sort of precedence over you and what they had been doing for you.  Who was there first?  Now you can take calls and even make calls whilst they serve you!

That said, privacy is a fast becoming a serious problem; technology to track mobile phones locations is already available and in the advent of smartphones with GPS built in as standard, this kind of technology is becoming more and more mainstream. Ultimately, this means you can be tracked to your location by your employer. A system like this opens up the possibility of abuse, where your activity could also be tracked outside of working hours.  Inconvenient though this may be for some of us, many employers think that if they pay for you and indeed for your mobile phone, they should be able to know where you are.

Of course the plus side is that while phones tell an employer where you are, if it’s been a particularly confusing day, your phone can tell you where you are as well!

Ultimately, employers knowing where you are probably won’t matter to you that much, unless of course your employer is your domestic partner!  That could be really troublesome!

Having spoken to several of our London office based clients, another issue is of course mobile phone etiquette. It is better to make this lucid to employees at an early stage, as many have very different ideas about what is acceptable! Remember, silent alerts were invented for a reason, mobile microphones are pretty good these days, shouting will not achieve a clearer line for the person unlucky enough to be on the receieving end, however it will achieve the extreme irritation of those in your vicinity!

At FindaLondonOffice we ensure we stay on top of these kinds of issues. Our clients frequently converse with us about other aspects of business as well as commercial property.