Built Environment Professions - Part 3 - Mentoring - A Professional Necessity

New members of staff require time and if a mentor does not allocate sufficient time to train and supervise them then the consequences are likely to result in a demotivated member of staff who is not developing and likely to make mistakes. If this is the case an employer should question their selection of mentor or ask themselves if they have made provision to fulfill the role effectively with the mentor’s workload.

Source: http://caithnesschamber.com/

Any successful business will undoubtedly have staff development as one of their core business objectives and understand the importance of the continued professional development of their employees.  Although training and development should occur at all levels of a business, a key part of the process involves training of new and junior members of staff when they are embarking on their new profession/role for the first time.  These are the type of people who will be extremely ‘green’ and have maybe decided on a career change or just left education and think they are now ready to enter the stresses and strains of the professional world.  If we take a second to think back a few years (in some cases, like myself, more than a few years) to the time when this was us, you may remember feeling lost, often alone and generally overwhelmed at times. 

If your experience was anything like mine, you were thrown in at the deep end and allowed to sink or swim and basically learn by your mistakes.  Unfortunately, times have moved on and the litigious nature of the professional world, no longer affords us this luxury.  Nowadays organisations appear to be much more inclined to take the training of their newer employees much more seriously and often attach individuals to mentors.  Mentoring is defined by Eric Parsloe, The Oxford School of Coaching & Mentoring, as: "Mentoring is to support and encourage people to manage their own learning in order that they may maximise their potential, develop their skills, improve their performance and become the person they want to be’. The role of a mentor is therefore a significant one, usually allocated to an extremely busy individual who will be expected to work closely and oversee the activities of a new member of staff for a defined period of time.

Source: http://shetakesontheworld.com/

For mentoring to be effective it requires time and commitment from the mentor. However time is often a commodity in short supply and if the mentor is not aware or does not take account of the time needed to adequately fulfill their role then the results can be disastrous. Employers need to select mentors very carefully and try to ensure they are appropriately trained, they know what is expected of them and importantly the extra time needed to fulfill the role is taken into account in the mentor’s workload.  If an employer does not take account of these things when selecting a mentor then a number of things will happen.  Firstly, the allocated mentor will immediately feel that the employer is allocating them an additional responsibility with no consideration for their current workload.  Secondly, the new member of staff may be seen as a hindrance (which is actually true in the early days!). Finally the new member of staff, will pick up that they are unwanted, which will make them feel disillusioned and unhappy. This is unfair on the mentor and the employee and creates a situation where nobody achieves what they want.

A good mentor however is invaluable and will realise that every minute that they spend with a new member of staff will be repaid tenfold.  Having acted as a mentor on many occasions I soon realised that the first few weeks required some intensive supervision, which meant that I needed to put certain things on hold so that I could make enough time to allow this to happen.  In these first few weeks I would set a weekly timetable, which would also include time slots where I had arranged for members of staff in other parts of the organization to facilitate certain activities.  For example, I would allocate a day with administrators, so that an appreciation of filing, photocopying, incoming and outgoing post and other policies and procedures could be attained.  All of these are fundamentally important activities within the business.  I also arranged for time to be spent in other departments, so that an appreciation of the wider business activities was also attained.  If you do take the time in the early weeks to spend time to train and supervise appropriately, then you will find that your new colleague becomes an asset who you can allocate ‘real work’ too, which will help to develop them and ease the burden on you.  The problem with a lot of people, however is that they focus on the here and now and are too short sighted to see this!

It is also very important to make new people feel welcome and at ease in their new role.  Always remember that one day you had been in this position and that no matter how busy you are politeness and courtesy costs nothing.  As stressful as a work environment may be, there is absolutely no excuse for shouting or being rude to your colleagues.  I say this because in the past I have seen a number of members of staff almost reduced to tears as a result of being inappropriately spoken to by more senior members of staff.  This is totally unacceptable and in most cases was due to the fact that the member of staff had not been given adequate support and supervision from their mentor, which had resulted in a number of mistakes/issues occurring. New members of staff require time and if a mentor does not allocate sufficient time to train and supervise them then the consequences are likely to result in a demotivated member of staff who is not developing and likely to make mistakes. If this is the case an employer should question their selection of mentor or ask themselves if they have made provision to fulfill the role effectively with the mentor’s workload.

If you are currently acting as a mentor, I refer to the definition stated earlier and ask you to consider whether you are encouraging and supporting your colleague to help them manage their own learning in order to help them to develop skills to maximise their potential. Or, do you see them as a burden that has been thrust upon you, where you have no time to help them.  If it is the latter, then I suggest that you speak to your employer and see if they can find someone more suitable, as this is not fair on the person you are mentoring.

Please feel free to share this article and other articles on this site with friends, family and colleagues who you think would be interested

Information/opinions posted on this site are the personal views of the author and should not be relied upon by any person or any third party without first seeking further professional advice. Also, please scroll down and read the copyright notice at the end of the blog.

Planning for Offices - Space Rationalisation

Guest article from Joe Malone BSc(Hons) ICIOB 

Understanding the existing core data for the building you inhabit may well highlight that it is not fit for purpose or space inefficient; critical information if you are reviewing plans for future accommodation that may well fuel your appetite for a move

Source: http://www.sven.co.uk/

Many organisations, particularly Government organisations are currently reviewing their office space requirements with a view to rationalising and making efficiency savings but how should you approach this exercise? Many organisations see this as a simple exercise in reviewing their ways of working and you will commonly hear of organisations looking to reduce their desk to staff ratio but organisations looking to build or rent new office space have a unique opportunity to fully consider how their buildings can contribute to space efficiency and the starting point to this is first ensuring that your organisation has a robust space standard. It consistently surprises me that so few organisations have a space standard in place.

The Space Standard

Essentially the space standard will contain ideal core data drawn from best practice guidance produced by The British Council for Offices and the Office of Government and Commerce.

The National Audit Office recently published this report which again placed emphasis on government organisations to start the space rationalisation process (Link)

The simple table below shows ideal data drawn from best practice guidance and provides a template for space planning. If you were planning to inhabit existing rather than new office space then the Net Internal Area (NIA) of 10m² should be increased to 12m² and the table should review actual core data for the building you inhabit. In fact understanding the existing core data for the building you inhabit may well highlight that it is not fit for purpose or space inefficient; critical information if you are reviewing plans for future accommodation that may well fuel your appetite for a move. 

Aside from best practice guidance there are some subjective issues based on the organisations culture and aspirations for team working. Is there an aspiration to remove the perceived management hierarchy by having managers share the same open plan floor space as staff?  Undoubtedly, open plan office space is more efficient and encourages collaborative team working but are there issues of business privacy that would prohibit this working arrangement? Privacy is often the given argument for individual staff retaining their own office space but it is seldom justified when shared but limited cellular space can be booked by all staff members at suitable times. 

Office Ideal Core Data (New Space)
Headcount	190
Minimum legal requirement for office space provision per staff member	11m³
Office of Government Commerce (OGC) and British Council for Offices (BCO) standard for NIA per person (Average public sector = 24m² per person)	10m²
Business aspiration for efficiency savings	30%
Ratio of workstations to staff	7/10
Number of workstations to achieve 30% space efficiency	133
Cellular space	≤ 10%
Meeting Room provision	Typically 1.2 m² per staff member
Primary circulation space as a percentage of total NIA (Normal range for efficient buildings = 10-15%)	≤ 15%
Floor plate efficiency (NIA:GIA)	80-85%
Flexible partitioning	Yes
Local Support Space	≤5% of Total NIA
Central Support Space	25% of Total NIA
On Site Parking Space provision standard	1 space per 25m² of GEA
Required number of staff parking spaces	100 (0.8 ratio spaces/desks)
Ideal GEA Required for staff parking	1900m²
Number of single user offices	6
Number of Meeting Rooms	8

Efficiency Savings on Existing Office Space

You are of course limited on efficiency savings that can be made on existing space, your floor plate efficiency is generally fixed and you may be limited in changes that can be made to cellular and primary circulation space etc. Those who inhabit more modern buildings with flexible partitioning have a greater opportunity to make physical changes to the floor space and therefore rationalise how they use that space.

In general terms organisations will look to review their ways of working and introduce clear desk policies, increased working hours or mobile working so that they can reduce their desk to staff ratio. The average cost of a work station is circa £4500 per staff member so if you reduce the number of workstations by 30% then there are some immediate and on-going savings in not providing or supporting these work stations. If the object of this exercise is to free up space to achieve a headline figure of  say 6m² per staff member then the question I would ask is, ‘What do you now intend to do with the free space you’ve created?’ I come across this anomaly many times, organisations want to achieve this headline figure but have no real plans for the space created, moreover they have these hypothetical ideals of space per staff member in mind without understanding the wider context of additional space required for circulation and support.

If you rationalise and free up space then make sure you can generate income from that space otherwise what’s the point?

Efficiency Savings on New Office Space

I’m currently involved with the planning a new build office and if we use the ideal core data in the table we see that we have 190 staff and a guide for 10m² of NIA per staff member. This means we have to build an office with a net internal area of 1900m², or do we?

The reality is that we are still looking to reduce our desk to staff ratio by 30% and it follows that we can reduce the size of our building by 30% leaving a total requirement for only 1330m² of NIA. At our anticipated build cost of £836 per m² then this space reduction would save around £550k on the cost of development. Whilst these savings are incredibly attractive I should issue a word of caution… organisations that take full advantage of these space savings can lose business flexibility! Are you absolutely sure that there will be no future requirement for additional space? It’s a fact that many public sector organisations have a continuous downward trend in terms of the number of staff they employ but private sector businesses looking for continued growth should bear in mind future space requirements.  

By rationalising and freeing up space, organisations can create the opportunity for the co-location of services. Rochdale Metropolitan Borough Council recently took the opportunity to  relocate staff from geographically dispersed premises throughout the Rochdale area into a single Municipal Office providing a single point access service to a mixed use development containing offices, library, restaurants and cafés. They were fortunate in appointing an architectural firm who are fully conversant with BCO guidance and best practice and I’m sure that this was a critical success factor in their excellent new office design. (Link)

The concept office design I created in Sketch-up had a greatly reduced footprint and reduced development cost due to the space freed in the adjacent building and the glazed link provided to utilise that space.

Source: Joe Malone

Concept Office Design Utilising Free Space Created in Adjacent Building

For cash strapped public sector organisations looking to review their accommodation, identifying space efficiencies for shared accommodation or co-location can be the critical factor in gaining approval for new office development.

Joe Malone BSc(Hons) ICIOB 

Please feel free to share this article and other articles on this site with friends, family and colleagues who you think would be interested

Information/opinions posted on this site are the personal views of the author and should not be relied upon by any person or any third party without first seeking further professional advice. Also, please scroll down and read the copyright notice at the end of the blog.

Do Consultants (Really) take the time to understand the needs of their Clients?

Guest article from Richard Davies - Project  Manager, Capital Projects, Property Services – Severn Trent Water 

When organisations are looking to rationalise, their first port of call is often an external consultant.  In my experience, where the consultant fails is not getting to grips with the culture of the organisation that has instructed them.....  This leads to wasted time and recommendations that cannot be implemented

 

Severn Trent Centre - Google Images

In these increasingly uncertain economic climates, all organisations are looking to minimise their cost base and gain maximum efficiencies.  This can lead to many actions for example reducing staff and an increased focus on outgoings.  This is as true for large organisations regardless of size.  It is a fact that one of the areas of focus, particularly for large organisations is the use and amount of operational space they hold, particularly if they have recently rationalised their staffing levels.

Until a few years ago, property was just something a company had to have in order to operate.  In most cases was treated as an unavoidable overhead, not a key part of the business, however it is increasingly becoming an important part of the cost base as companies look to minimise their overheads.   With modern technology allowing people to work from home, in most cases reduced work force sizes, and most companies adopting open plan rather than cellular office space companies are finding that they have more space than they need and a rationalisation is required.

Having more space than you need leads to not only more rent, rates etc, but the space needs to be heated, lit, secured and managed, all of which is a strain which organisations can ill afford in these austere times.  In addition, there has been an increased tendency to move to open plan and hot desks from cellular office due to the amount of space taken up by offices.  Consequently this reduction in space can lead to savings in many areas: - energy bills, FM, security etc.



Severn Trent Centre  - Under Construction

My work over the past 3 year at Severn Trent Water has been centred on these types of activity.  The business has an aging, dilapidated estate which is in need of significant investment.  The first part of this was a new Operational Centre in Coventry, which allows the workforce to work in a much more flexible way.  It promotes the open plan and hot desking philosophy with an IT solution that allows working from home and other places to be as productive as the office.  By creating this building (Severn Trent Centre) it allowed us to close 7 other buildings, all of which were old and inefficient.  An illustration of this can be seen in the carbon footprint as the new building uses far less energy than any one of the buildings closed on, which is another important aspect for Severn Trent Water.


Many organisations are going through similar processors at present and this rationalisation exercise should provide opportunities for property professionals across the spectrum, with re-design of space, fit out, review of leases, enacting of breaks in leases etc.  However this opportunity must not be squandered. When organisations are looking to rationalise their first port of call is often an external consultant.  In my experience, where the consultant fails is not getting to grips with the culture of the organisation that has instructed them.   Their advice is restricted to analysis of headcount, square meterage and cost thereof, without really understanding how the organisation works.  This leads to wasted time and recommendations that cannot be implemented. 

It is vital that any advice provided must be considered in the context of the culture and operations of the organisation and therefore consequently there is an increasing need for large organisations to have a resident property expert that understands both the property world and the nuances of the organisation.  Only then, can they help steer the consultant and apply the advice provided by external bodies to gain the most savings. It is, however true to say that professionals on the outside remain closer to the cutting edge and new thinking than those within client bodies as there is a certain level of insulation that comes with working within a client body.  There is not the daily interaction with other similar professionals which can lead to a lag in implementing new industry best practice.

As long as the economic climate remains in its current state of health, companies will increasingly review their property costs, which will in turn result in opportunities for consultants, either as the resident expert within a client body, or as a consultant providing advice.

Richard Davies  - Project Manager, Capital Projects, Property Services – Severn Trent Water 

Information/opinions posted on this site are the personal views of the author and should not be relied upon by any person or any third party without first seeking further professional advice. Also, please scroll down and read the copyright notice at the end of the blog.

 

E-mail – Beware! - Once You Press Send - You Can’t Amend!

The content of an email will tell the recipient a great deal about the individual who sent it, the organisation they work for and also act as barometer for measuring competence and professionalism of both. Therefore a swiftly drafted email with spelling mistakes, other grammatical errors and poorly worded sentences will undoubtedly not inspire a Client to have confidence in other services you may be providing for them.



Source: Google Images

How many times have you pressed ‘send’ on an email, then immediately had that sinking feeling when you realise that you have included something that is incorrect or of a sensitive nature or you have send it to someone you shouldn’t?  In the professional world this can often lead to embarrassing situations, damage to reputations, loss of work, or ultimately legal action. Nowadays many of us both use and rely upon email as the main form of correspondence in our professional lives.  This is because it is instant.  Technology means that we no longer have to hand write things, proof read and amend, put them in an envelope, add a stamp and post, and then wait a day or two for it to be delivered to our recipient.  All we need to do now is type a new email as quickly as we can or reply to an e-mail we receive, press send and job done!  Sounds easy and indeed it is easy, however this high speed approach also comes with a high element of risk.

Whilst working in professional practice I can remember numerous occasions when I was under pressure to meet deadlines or respond to clients or to deal with staff related issues. I also remember feeling that there was just not enough hours in the day to meet all of these demands.  It was always at these very moments that a little message would flash up in the bottom right hand corner of my screen and I would catch a brief glimpse of the sender and the first line of a new email before it would fade away.  I would sometimes know, just by either the sender or the short text that the content was not going to be good, so then I had the dilemma of either opening it immediately, or ignoring it until I had finished dealing with the latest crisis!  Many of you will know that the second you open an email, your plans for the day can change in an instant.  Just a few moments ago, what you considered as a priority or urgent suddenly seems less so because the email you have just opened presents you with a whole new situation or set of circumstances that must be dealt with now!  This really sums up how we often become slaves to email, and how we also let email dictate our lives, rather than use it in a more appropriate and positive way.

Source: Google Images

As we are considering correspondence in the professional world, the content of an email received will tell the recipient a great deal about the individual who sent it, the organisation they work for and also act as barometer for measuring competence and professionalism of both.  Therefore a swiftly drafted email with spelling mistakes, other grammatical errors and poorly worded sentences will undoubtedly not inspire a Client to have confidence in other services you may be providing for them. Robust quality assurance of all communication that leaves the office is a fundamental part for most successful organisations.  Letter, drawings and most hard copy communications are much easier to control and these procedures usually require hard copy correspondence to be ‘signed off’ or at least checked by a more senior member of staff, before they leave the office.  Email is much harder to control, as all staff members will have an individual account and will be free to receive and send emails as often as they want.  In most cases there will be no quality assurance procedure for this form of communication and this could prove to be an ‘Achilles heel’ if incorrect advice or information is given via email.  
  

Although most organisations will have an email policy, I wonder if questioned, how many of their staff will have read the policy, or indeed how many will know that one existed?  Typical wording in an email policy will state: ‘It is strictly prohibited to send or forward emails containing libellous, defamatory, offensive, racist or obscene remarks’, the wording generally covers the content of an email, but does not consider the quality.  So what can an organisation do to monitor and control the quality of an email before it leaves the office?  Well, this is obviously not easy, however if staff are ‘educated’ to adopt a number of good practices when drafting emails then quality is likely to improve and problems are likely to reduce.  Below I offer a few suggestions which may help: 

Never respond to an emotive email immediately – Sometimes it is very tempting to response to an aggressive or emotive email instantly, and ‘give it to them with both barrels’. This however is a very dangerous approach and one on reflection in the cold light of day you may regret.  Always be professional! Take a few moments to calm yourself down and then respond appropriately. 

Write well-structured emails and use short, descriptive subjects  - Emails should not be lengthy.  If the email starts to grow as you are writing it, then consider whether a letter may be a better option, one that you can attach to an email if urgent.  This again is about taking a professional approach in everything you do. 

Always check your grammar and use a spell checker before you send out an email - It is so important to check grammar and spelling because a simple mistake can change the tone or indeed the content of an email. Also, spelling mistakes are lazy and unnecessary and leave a lasting negative impression. Ask yourself what you think about someone who has sent you an email with poor grammar and spelling mistakes all over it.  Always take the time to read through your email before you press send. 

Attachments – Make sure you do not send unnecessary or the wrong attachments with you email.  How many times have you received an email, quickly followed by another email stating ‘here is the attachment’? For certain documents you may want to consider converting to PDF format before attaching them to your email.  This will ensure that there is no doubt about the content of the attachment and removes the opportunity for amendments to be made by the recipient.



Ensure that the email is sent to the correct recipients - The content of some emails may be private and confidential or of a sensitive nature.  In these instances perhaps email is not the most appropriate form of communication. If however email is used it is imperative that it is sent to the correct recipients.  When someone is busy or even stressed, it is very easy to not pay attention to who the email is being sent too and this can cause serious problems..  Always take the time to review the content of the email including who it is being sent too.



Source: Google Images



In the hectic world that we live in we are expected to communicate/respond instantly. It is clear that email is an important and effective way of communicating in the professional world, however it does have its risks, which all start from the moment an email is drafted.  This is worth thinking about because you can amend a draft email as many times as you want, but the moment you press send, you lose the opportunity to amend!

  

Information/opinions posted on this site are the personal views of the author and should not be relied upon by any person or any third party without first seeking further professional advice. Also, please scroll down and read the copyright notice at the end of the blog.