November 9, 2018

Gen Z are technologically literate but not actually robots, Dell study confirms

Generation Z is entering the workforce, bringing with it a tech-first mentality that will propel businesses further into the digital era while potentially deepening the divide among five generations in the workplace. According to global research commissioned by Dell Technologies, post-millennials – those born after 1996 and known as Gen Z – have a deep, universal understanding of technology and its potential to transform how we work and live.

August 21, 2018

People might be more productive when supervised by a bad robot

by Freddie Steele • Automation, News, Technology

We will have to get used to a lot more talk about how we interact with artificial intelligence and it might involve addressing some difficult ideas. Try this for a start. People might perform better on certain tasks when supervised by a ‘mean’ robot rather than a ‘nice’ one, according to a new study published in the journal Science Robotics (registration or subscription required). The study involved asking 58 young adults to complete a Stroop test which involves subjects stating the colour of font used in a written word. The difficult comes from the cognitive difficulty of identifying a colour when the word itself indicates a colour, for example when the word red is printed using a blue font.

July 16, 2018

Seven stories you may have missed that will get your week off to a flyer

by Freddie Steele • Features, Property, Technology, Workplace, Workplace design

A bunch of coworking startups saying the same things about how different they are

The agile workspace is pants

Mass incompetency in business: the way we promote people is dead wrong

Want to discover (or re-discover) your sense of purpose at work?

Is stress at work always a bad thing?

Augmented space planning: Using procedural generation to automate desk layouts

A Stanford researcher says we shouldn’t start working full time until age 40

July 5, 2018

Open plan offices may discourage communication, claims new study

by Freddie Steele • News, Workplace design

The usual rationale for open plan offices is that they help people to collaborate more effectively. But this premise is challenged by a new study from researchers at Harvard Business School which suggests that employees at two large Fortune 500 companies actually engaged in less face-to-face contact after switching to entirely open workspaces. As published in the journal Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, Ethan Bernstein and Stephen Turban sought to conduct a real-world comparison of people’s behaviour in different types of offices to test a hypothesis that open plan layouts reduce communication.

June 28, 2018

Fewer than a third of people see their employers as technology leaders

by Freddie Steele • News, Technology

The key to keeping today’s digital worker productive, positive about their job and around at all is to arm them with the most updated technology possible. That is the perhaps unsurprising conclusion of a new study by Unisys Corporation that explores the importance of deploying current and future digital capabilities in the workplace in the UK and eleven other countries around the world. The report is available here but you’ll be obliged to register.

May 16, 2018

A 21st Century take on the idea of the time capsule that tells us something about the way we work

by Freddie Steele • Comment

Last December, National Geographic published a story about the discovery of one of the oldest known time capsules. It was concealed by a chaplain of the Cathedral of Burgo de Osma in Spain, in the buttocks of a statue of Jesus Christ. Hidden inside were some documents that detailed life in Spain in the late 18th Century, along with some thoughts on the political and religious systems of the time. Historians have concluded that this was one of the very first time capsules, given that the creator clearly intended it to be discovered at some point in the distant future. This has been the standard approach to time capsules for hundreds of years; a chance to leave behind some artefacts or thoughts for a future generation to learn about the past.

May 13, 2017

From footprint to footfall: how the experiential workplace is set to take over the world ¹

by Freddie Steele • Briefing, Facilities management, Premium Content, Property, Workplace design

From the archive. This piece was originally published in 2016. The culture within which we work determines how effective, successful, fulfilled and well we are in both our professional and personal lives. The organisations for which we work – on whatever basis that might be – the physical surroundings they create, and the other places in which we choose to work are now woven into the fabric of our lives as never before. The technological immersion that allows us to work in new ways also means that each day becomes a series of experiences. Because we are free to work wherever and whenever we choose, we are increasingly able to determine the nature of those experiences. For those who design and manage offices this represents both a great opportunity and an unprecedented series of challenges.