About Mark Eltringham

Mark is the publisher of Workplace Insight, IN magazine, Works magazine and is the European Director of Work&Place journal. He has worked in the office design and management sector for over thirty years as a journalist, marketing professional, editor and consultant.

Posts by Mark Eltringham:

Digital sector set to become ‘pivotal’ in Middle East over next five years

by • Cities, Facilities management, News, Technology

Dubai Perfect CityDeloitte has launched a new report into the Technology, Media and Telecommunications sector in the Middle East. Deloitte predicts that 2015 will be ‘pivotal’ for Digital Islamic Services as they start to take off across the Middle East region. The report estimates that within the next three to four years the region’s digital economy will nearly double in size from around US$15 billion currently to around $30 billion by 2018. The predictions are based on hundreds of discussions with industry executives, analysts and commentators, along with tens of thousands of individual interviews. The report also predicts that Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries will make significant open data advancements in 2015, and within the next three to five years, break into the top half of countries ranked the most ‘open’ in the world.

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Driverless cars will transform the UK economy by 2030, claims report

by • Flexible working, News, Technology, Workplace design

Driverless carsA new study from the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT) and KPMG claims that the development of connected and autonomous vehicles will help generate 320,000 jobs in the UK and deliver huge benefits to society and the economy. The first ever comprehensive analysis of the opportunities provided by the new technology claims that by 2030 driverless cars will deliver a £51 billion boost to the UK economy, reduce congestion and carbon emissions and cut serious road traffic accidents by more than 25,000. By that time all new cars will incorporate some form of connectivity, according to the report’s authors. It also predicts that the UK will be a global leader in the production of this next generation of vehicles, with the support of Government including financial backing. The study was presented at last week’s SMMT conference in London.

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Gamification remains a mystery to employees and unused by many firms

by • News, Wellbeing, Workplace

gamificationAlthough it’s currently one of the most talked about workplace ideas, gamification remains a mystery to many workers and even HR professionals keen on the idea are probably not doing much about it. Those are two of the findings of a report from consultancy Penna based on interviews with 2,000 HR directors and employees. The study set out to explore how well senior HR professionals understood gamification, its uses and their perception of the barriers to adoption. Researchers also asked employees about their level of ‘everyday engagement’ with gamification and whether they recognise it as a concept. Over half (52 percent) of HR directors claim to be ‘massively interested’ in the idea although 44 percent also agreed that their organisation was ‘not at all interested’. Remarkably the survey also found that 89 percent of employees don’t even know what it is.

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The latest issue of the newsletter is now available to view online

by • Newsletter, Property, Wellbeing, Workplace, Workplace design

Insight_twitter_logo_2In this week’s issue; we glimpse the lives of Japanese workers who reject social norms and instead choose to live in Internet cafes; a new report explores how artificial light and the dark affect us in more ways than we might think; HSBC announces its plans to relocate a thousand employees from London to Birmingham; the civil service looks for better ways to meet the needs of disabled staff and overcome their current barriers to career progression; the Government reports on the state of its estate including a look at how it is introducing new ways of working to drive change; a new report lays out the challenges and opportunities of the much talked abut subject of workplace wellbeing; and Anna King offers some thoughts on this year’s MIPIM event. Sign up to the newsletter via the subscription form in the right hand sidebar and follow us on Twitter and join our LinkedIn Group to discuss these and other stories.

Civil service addresses work conditions and careers of disabled employees

by • Flexible working, News, Workplace, Workplace design

disabled employeesThe UK Cabinet Office has published a report in partnership with Disability Rights UK to look at ways the Civil Service can better support the careers of its 27,000 staff with disabilities and health conditions. The report claims that ensuring that disabled employees ‘fulfil their potential makes basic business sense and would significantly enhance the Service’s performance.’ It claims that there has been some progress since the last report on the subject in 1998, but that barriers remain. Nearly 9 percent of civil service employees now claim to have a disability which is more than double the reported rate of 4.1 percent in 1998. The report identifies the underlying challenges and looks to share best practice. It notes that while there is strong commitment to disability equality from senior champions, this has not been translated into line manager action and cultural change.

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Wellbeing continues to improve despite static pay levels, claims ONS

by • Environment, News, Wellbeing, Workplace

WellbeingThe overall wellbeing of the UK population continues to improve despite ongoing concerns about pay levels and job security, according to a new report published today by the Office for National Statistics. The latest analysis includes an assessment of changes in national wellbeing for the first time and finds that year on year 33 percent of indicators had improved, 42 percent showed no overall change, 21 percent were not assessed and 5 percent deteriorated. The proportion of people in the UK giving the highest ratings for each aspect of personal wellbeing measured by the report increased significantly in the financial year ending 2014. The report defines wellbeing as a measure of “how we are doing as individuals, as communities and as a nation, and how sustainable this is for the future” based on 41 metrics.

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Report identifies the challenges and opportunities of workplace wellbeing

by • Briefing, News, Wellbeing, Workplace, Workplace design

workplace wellbeingMuch of what has been called workplace strategy in recent years has been more about cutting costs than supporting people, often to the detriment of the latter. That is the central claim of a new report authored by Kate Lister and Tom Harnish of Global Workplace Analytics and sponsored by office furniture maker Knoll. The paper, What’s Good for People? Moving from Wellness to Well-Being, explores how better workplaces, processes and practices can improve workplace wellbeing, employee engagement and organisational performance. The study starts from the premise that people are dealing with unprecedented stresses and pressures in the workplace which now need to be addressed in the context of a recovering economy, the limits of an approach that focuses on doing more with less and an increasingly scant pool of human resources and talents.

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Number of women in FTSE 100 boardrooms doubles in four years

by • News, Public Sector, Workplace

Broken-Glass-46There is now at least one woman in the boardroom of FTSE 100 companies and the number of women on their boards has doubled over the last four years, according to the latest update from the body charged with monitoring the targets set by the Government in 2011. The latest data shows that women now make up 23.5 percent of top company board level executives, up from 12.5 percent and just shy of the targeted proportion of 25 percent. The Government has refused to set quotas but instead has relied on a soft touch approach to the issue. The report also finds that women now hold 24 percent of board level positions at all blue chip companies, up from 18 percent four years ago. Almost a third (32 percent) of new boardroom appointments in the past year have also gone to women, up from just over 13 percent over the same period four years ago.

HSBC to relocate its UK headquarters building to Birmingham

by • Cities, News, Property

GBR_BPO_110215ARENA201Banking giant HSBC has announced the relocation of its core banking business for personal and business customers to the Arena Central development in Birmingham. The move will see the bank take a long term lease on a 210,000 sq. ft. office and relocate around a thousand employees to the new headquarters building from London over the next four years. The choice of location follows a review into the bank’s operations and its ability to service the needs of some 16 million customers in the UK. The West Midlands is the UK’s second largest financial centre after London, with some 220,000 employees across the region. Two years ago, Deutsche Bank completed a deal for 200,000 sq. ft. of new space at Brindleyplace and earlier this year, the local council announced plans for the Snow Hill area in an attempt to create an alternative to London’s Docklands.

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Film: The Japanese workers who withdraw to live in Internet cafes

by • Comment, Flexible working, Technology

Japanese workers appear to manifest some of the most extreme reactions to the challenges of modern life. Often these are related to the uncertainties of work and the fracturing of time and space associated with contemporary working life. Two of the most common characteristics of the Japanese response appears to be isolation and exclusion. Recently, the Japanese Government investigated the phenomenon of banishment rooms which some firms are alleged to have used to exclude unwanted employees. There has also been a great deal of talk about hikikomori, those people who lock themselves away from the rest of the world, estimated to be up to 1 percent of the population. Now, a new film from Shiho Fukada tells the story of two Japanese men who have taken to living in Internet cafes as they seek to find their way in life.

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Government publishes its State of the Estate Report for 2014

by • Facilities management, News, Property, Public Sector

Home-office-001Yesterday, the Government published its State of the Estate report for 2014 detailing the size and cost, efficiency of use and sustainability of central government buildings. The report covers all central government property with the exception of the military estate, prisons, NHS, Defra rural estate, Foreign & Commonwealth Office and Home Office and overseas estate. The current Government has laid great store on its ability to rationalise and improve the estate and the report focuses on its achievements in this regard. The report claims that since 2010, the changes have resulted in the estate divesting some 2,000 properties (28 percent of the total), reduced the footprint of the estate by 2 million sq. m. (a 20 percent reduction).  It claims that this has been achieved by “identifying underused properties and modernising buildings to make better use of a smaller number of properties and the space within them.”

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How artificial light affects our health in more ways than we think

by • Knowledge, Technology, Wellbeing, Workplace design

artificial lightLife on Earth has developed over the course of billions of years to attune its cycles and rhythms to the fixed routines of light and dark. Yet the modern world counters this hardwired biology in humans and radically increases our likelihood of developing a range of physiological and mental illnesses and conditions. That is the main conclusion of a new paper from Richard G. Stevens  and Yong Zhu published by the Royal Society last week. The article outlines how inadequate light during the day, especially inside buildings, coupled with overexposure to artificial light in the evening not only disrupts our sleep patterns but alters our physiognomy at a metabolic, hormonal and even genetic level. The report also highlights how this can account for ‘a portion of the modern pandemics of breast and prostate cancers, obesity, diabetes and depression’.

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