Time is up for fluorescent lighting, so what happens after the tube strike?

Time is up for fluorescent lighting, so what happens after the tube strike?

by • Environment, Features, Lighting, Workplace design

Just like the Rolodex, the fax machine and smoking in the office, fluorescent lighting is becoming a thing of the past in the workplaceAs we rapidly advance through the latter half of 2023, the office landscape is undergoing a significant shift, with the imminent fluorescent lamp ban. Just like the Rolodex, the fax machine and smoking in the office, fluorescent lighting is becoming a thing of the past in the workplace. Both the UK and the EU are taking bold steps by phasing out all forms of fluorescent lamps with some types, such as T5 and T8 fluorescent tubes, banned from sale as early as September 2023. If they haven’t done so already, business owners will need to explore alternative lighting solutions to stay compliant with new regulations, set to take full effect by February 2024. More →

A bit of alien thinking on coffee and some other BS

A bit of alien thinking on coffee and some other BS

by • Facilities management, Features, Technology, Wellbeing, Workplace design

I’ve sometimes highlighted how our perceptions of the workplace are subject to an apex fallacy. The daily consumption of narratives about campuses, tech palaces and ‘cool’ design can obscure the fact that most people don’t experience this stuff in their daily lives. They work in adequate or possibly nice offices. Some in shabby offices or horrible offices. Many travel into work at the same time each day and sit with roughly the same people and do roughly the same things. They may work from home more frequently now, but they have a routine there too. Most will work in a mundane or nice home that mirrors the mundane office that awaits at the other end of the commute. More →

Workplace and property firms must wake up to the new era of networked businesses

Workplace and property firms must wake up to the new era of networked businesses

by • Features, Flexible working, Property, Workplace design

the networked workplaceWhile millions of words have been dedicated to the expected changes in post-Covid workstyles – how will people work, where will they work, how will they be supported – very little has been said about their employers: companies and corporations. Yet the anticipated changes to work and the workplace raise questions about the role of the company. Is it one just half of a transaction between employer and employee? Or is it something more? Indeed, what is the role of the company in the modern economy? Is the nature of the company likely to change? The answers could have a greater impact on workstyles than the pandemic. More →

Ding! Dong! IN Magazine Issue 18 is available now for you

Ding! Dong! IN Magazine Issue 18 is available now for you

by • Features, IN Magazine, News, Premium Content

the digital version of issue 18 of IN Magazine is right on time to deliver all your festive workplace thinking.Well Christmas may get earlier every year, but the digital version of issue 18 of IN Magazine is right on time to deliver all your festive workplace thinking. In this issue: why the world’s biggest tech firms may no longer offer the best blueprint for working culture; Nigel Oseland doesn’t like Half Man Half Biscuit for some reason but does have a lot of great things to say about evaluating offices; you can’t just copy the design of an office you like and expect it to work the same; nothing about working life attracts more moans than noisy colleagues, so we look at one or two things you can do about it; why sometimes you have to turn your back on rationality; Kay Sargent and Jennifer Bryan urge you to change your habits; how to make the most of each day; and the brakes the UK is applying to its own aim of becoming a science and tech superpower. And of course much more. More →

From the archive: The role of workplace design in employee engagement

From the archive: The role of workplace design in employee engagement 0

by • Features, Wellbeing, Work&Place, Workplace design

A new report certainly raises the question of what more can be done, including in terms of workplace design, to boost engagement levels amongst these employees

Originally published six years ago, this feature is currently the most read story ever on the website with around 50,000 readers. A global study by my own firm Steelcase has found that one-third of workers across 17 of the world’s most important economies are actually disengaged. The findings make worrying reading for employers around the world, as engagement is so demonstrably linked to business critical outcomes such as employee retention, productivity and even profits. It certainly raises the question of what more can be done, including in terms of workplace design, to boost engagement levels amongst these employees. More →

Manchester is now a major draw for office design firms

Manchester is now a major draw for office design firms

by • Cities, Features, Workplace design

Way before the lockdown rewired the whole events scene in cities around the world, I was given a task by an old, now departed, friend. He wanted to explore the possibility of creating something like Clerkenwell Design Week in Manchester. The obvious problem was that, for some of its historic parallels, Manchester isn’t Clerkenwell and it certainly isn’t London. What it particularly lacked for this type of event was a hothouse of office design showrooms sharing space with a youthful community of architects and designers. The ecosystem for such an event didn’t really exist in the same way. More →

The brain builds its sense of self from the people around us

The brain builds its sense of self from the people around us

by • Features, Wellbeing

We are highly sensitive to people around us. As infants, we observe our parents and teachers, and from them we learn how to walk, talk, read – and use smartphones. There seems to be no limit to the complexity of behaviour we can acquire from observational learning. More →

The office needs to take on the characteristics of the city. Despina Katsikakis IN conversation

The office needs to take on the characteristics of the city. Despina Katsikakis IN conversation

by • Facilities management, Features, Property, Workplace design

Despina Katsikakis, the new President of the BCO has been shaping the way we think about offices for four decades

One of the unintended consequences of the era of online meetings is a chance to gain an insight into people’s actual lives. So it is that as Despina Katsikakis and I are talking, she spots my whippet Luna wandering into shot in the background and lets out an exclamation. She too has a whippet by her feet. And as a result, this abnormal, formal situation becomes a lot more normal and relaxed.   More →

Canary in the coal mine: other business districts are watching what happens next for Canary Wharf

Canary in the coal mine: other business districts are watching what happens next for Canary Wharf

by • Cities, Features, IN Magazine, Property

Already the symbol of a bygone era, Canary Wharf runs the risk of becoming a relic unless it reinvents itself. And others are watching The first casualties of the already cliched injunction to make offices worth the commute were always going to be the world’s most inaccessible business districts. In the UK the most high profile of these is Canary Wharf, 52 hectares of former wasteland in East London that became a financial powerhouse. Part of the regeneration of the area that began in the 1980s, it became synonymous with the era and with Margaret Thatcher and her reform of the financial services sector. This came to pass even though its most iconic structure One Canada Square was only completed in 1990, shortly after she had left office and shortly before its developer filed for bankruptcy. More →

Smart technology needs to start with people if it wants to get smarter

Smart technology needs to start with people if it wants to get smarter

by • Features, Technology, Wellbeing

A wood carving of a blank, slumped person sitting at a desk with a laptop to depict the dehumanization potential of smart technology“My engineering students had come to class with technology on their minds.” So says artist and design researcher Sara Hendren, author of What a Body Can Do: How we Meet the Built World. It’s a fascinating book in which she consciously pushes back against the prevailing narrative that so-called smart technology has a fix for every problem. As a professor teaching design for disability at Olin College of Engineering, Massachusetts, Hendren draws attention to the assumptions that drive normative behaviours to define what is a ‘problem’ in the first place. More →

Is the workplace experience shaped more by maintenance or by design?

Is the workplace experience shaped more by maintenance or by design?

by • Facilities management, Features, Workplace design

The workplace experienceWhat has resilience got to do with the workplace experience? It is a word that has been used a lot recently as the great British public has demonstrated massive amounts of resilience in coping with Covid-19, fuel shortages, worries about food availability and a massive shift in how we work. So what is it? The dictionary gives two meanings: firstly the capacity to recover quickly from difficulties, i.e. toughness. And then secondly, the ability of a substance or object to spring back into shape; elasticity – like nylon for example.   More →

Why does colour psychology make so much difference to us?

Why does colour psychology make so much difference to us?

by • Features, Wellbeing, Workplace design

In 2013, two Australian academics set out to discover the answer to a deceptively simple question. Why is there such a thing as colour psychology, but not shape, line or texture psychology? The answers they come up with are complex, arcane and wide-ranging but they manage to sum them up to some extent in the conclusion to the paper they published. “No other visual attribute shares such diverse representations”, they wrote. “Study into shape, line, and texture hardly competes. For this reason, there are no proportion-shape-line-texture prediction agencies, and chromotherapy is not challenged by proportion-shape-line-texture therapies. Colour remains special and, given its rich and complex heritage, is likely to remain so.” More →

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