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:

April 10, 2013

What the CIFF 2013 show taught us about workplaces in China

by Mark Eltringham • Comment, Flooring, Furniture, Workplace design

You can tell a lot about how we work by the things with which we choose to surround ourselves. That is why it always pays to keep an eye on the world’s major office products shows. So, while eyes are trained on Milan this week for the international furniture fair, John Sacks offers us a view from the world’s largest exhibition CIFF which took place late last month in Guangzhou. Ignore the show’s dreadful website, this was a vast and important exhibition which tells us much about in the world’s second largest economy. Over 900 companies exhibited at CIFF in a venue with over 210,000 sq. m. of floor space and more than 60,000 people were expected to visit. The report can be seen here.

April 9, 2013

Office design goes to the movies. Part 7 – The Apartment

by Mark Eltringham • Comment, Facilities management, Workplace design

[embedplusvideo height=”151″ width=”220″ standard=”https://www.youtube.com/v/x356ll3hTxg?fs=1″ vars=”ytid=x356ll3hTxg&width=220&height=151&start=&stop=&rs=w&hd=0&autoplay=0&react=1&chapters=&notes=” id=”ep9389″ /]

In which Jack Lemmon exchanges the crushing uniformity of the open plan for a corner office as a reward for allowing senior managers to use his apartment as a venue for their infidelity. This is from 1960, the pre-cubicle, pre-VDU world of large ranks of serried workers in an open plan office with only the privileged few allowed any degree of privacy or the wherewithal to display status. many ways, the layout has much in common with the way many offices are designed now. Office design may have moved on in the past half century but some things are always with us.

April 9, 2013

Growth in unified communications and BYOD but concerns remain

by Mark Eltringham • Knowledge, News, Technology, Workplace

A new report from research firm Ovum anticipates rapidly growing interest in the use of managed unified communications (UC) applications over the next two years. The survey, conducted with Dimension Data, found that over a third of large enterprises will be procuring managed UC services by 2015. The report also suggests that Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) policies are supported by 60 per cent of American businesses, with a growing number of firms looking to integrate their BYOD policies with their new approach to unified communications. One technology they won’t be looking to integrate is The Cloud which only a fifth claimed they would use for UC applications.

April 8, 2013

Public sector property initiatives have proved successful but work still needed

by Mark Eltringham • Comment, Facilities management, Knowledge, Public Sector, Workplace design

There was a time, not so long ago, when nobody worried too much about the shape of the rooms that led off the corridors of power. But the pressure on UK finances has politicised the design of the UK’s public buildings. The latest example of this was the recent announcement in Parliament of a report that, amongst other things, called for a new approach in the way facilities are designed to deliver better services in a more cost effective way. The report Restarting Britain 2: Design and Public Services was the result of an eight-month investigation led by the Design Commission along with politicians, designers and civil servants.

April 5, 2013

What Tesco’s move into a Clerkenwell office tells us about how it sees itself

by Mark Eltringham • Comment, Property, Technology

If Tesco ever wants to update its three word strapline from Every Little Helps, it could plump for something more accurate such as We Own You. Unless Facebook or Google register it first, of course. The news this week that the extensively diversified retailer is to set up an office for its digital operations in the heart of one of the UK’s Technology Media and Telecoms (TMT) hothouse in Clerkenwell tells us a great deal about how it sees its operations in this area. The move will not only help Tesco to recruit staff in and around the Tech City area of East London, but sets a marker for how it views its place in the scheme of things.

April 4, 2013

Office design goes to the movies. Part 6 – Playtime

by Mark Eltringham • Architecture, Comment, Facilities management, Workplace design

[embedplusvideo height=”192″ width=”220″ standard=”https://www.youtube.com/v/Qifl9saFtSw?fs=1″ vars=”ytid=Qifl9saFtSw&width=220&height=192&start=&stop=&rs=w&hd=0&autoplay=0&react=1&chapters=&notes=” id=”ep6472″ /]

One of the few films to address office design as something worth commenting on per se. A film in which M. Hulot stumbles around a modernist dream of Paris, all glass, steel and cold straight lines. People inhabit box like apartments and box like office cubicles which separate them from each other and, by implication, life. The film was produced in 1967, shortly before the cubicle was popularised in real offices. In the sequence in which M. Hulot visits an office building, he gets lost, gatecrashing meetings and ending up in a gadget trade show which is furnished in a virtually identical way to the office.

April 4, 2013

UK construction activity slips again, but at a slower rate

by Mark Eltringham • Knowledge, News, Property

According to the latest Markit/CIPS monthly survey of purchasing managers in the construction industry, output in the sector decreased once more in March but at the slowest rate since October of last year. The seasonally adjusted Markit/CIPS UK Construction Purchasing Managers’ Index (PMI) which measures overall output in the sector, was calculated at 47.2 during March, up from 46.8 in February. Scores below 50 are deemed to indicate a contraction in the market. The reduced output was put down to a combination of subdued underlying demand and unusually bad weather.

April 4, 2013

UK commercial property investors shift focus to the regions

by Mark Eltringham • Knowledge, News, Property

Investors in the commercial office market are increasingly being drawn towards the UK regions, according to a new report by Deloitte Real Estate. The UK Key Cities publication explores the trend that regional offices are emerging as a focus for savvy investors seeking higher returns. At the same time, individual cities are recognising the need to stand apart from competing locations and bridge the gap between themselves and London. These cities are being bolstered by factors such as improved connectivity through large planned infrastructure projects, devolution of power, and investment into the retail and leisure markets.

April 3, 2013

Five things the Wall Street Journal inadvertently told us yesterday about office design

by Mark Eltringham • Comment, Facilities management, Furniture, Workplace design

Some inadvertent truths

If I were to show you a headline from the Wall Street Journal announcing ‘Say Goodbye to the Office Cubicle’, you might date it at any time between the mid 1980s and 1990s. Maybe earlier. But it was actually in yesterday’s issue, dated 2 April 2013. Now, we could be amused by this or act all aghast at the sight of those dinosaurs yet to adopt a norm of open, collaborative and shared spaces never mind the ‘digital workplace’; or we could conclude that this tells us several important things about how those people and organisations who don’t keep a daily eye on workplace trends view the buildings they inhabit.

April 3, 2013

Office design goes to the movies. Part 5 – Minority Report

by Mark Eltringham • Comment, Furniture, Technology, Workplace design

We obviously like films like this. High concept noir sci-fi, based on a book by Philip K Dick of course; dystopian, chock full of ideas and technology that seemed cool and subversive in 2002 and is mundane in 2013. I mean, the screens are still cool but who wouldn’t rather have a file stored in the Cloud or on a USB stick than inside a perspex panel the size of a brick? Deskheads may recognise the furniture as the totally of-a-piece Resolve from Herman Miller designed by Ayse Birsel. They can use this fact to bore whoever they are watching with who would presumably rather be watching Tom Cruise doing his Blue Steel face in the foreground. Or is it Magnum?

April 2, 2013

New research from China highlights benefits of working from home

by Mark Eltringham • Facilities management, Knowledge, Workplace, Workplace design

A new report from researchers at Stanford Graduate School of Business and the Guanghua Management School at Beijing University looking into the experience of working from home at one large Chinese firm has found that the practice led to a 13 per cent increase in productivity. The research also found that workers reported increased levels of job satisfaction and half elected to continue working from home when the choice was given to them at the end of the study period even though it was evident that their chances of promotion on the basis of performance had reduced as a result of the experiment.

April 2, 2013

Will an upturn spark a revival of interest in the idea of employer branding?

by Mark Eltringham • Facilities management, Technology, Workplace, Workplace design

You may recall that a few years ago there was a voguish interest in the idea of employer branding. This is the kind of thing that has always gone on but can always be defined and popularised, in this case following the publication of a book on the subject in 2005. By 2008 Jackie Orme, the head of the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development, was calling it ‘an integral part of business strategy’. Still, it appears to have dropped off the radar a bit over the last few years, a fact we might put down to the effect of the recession. Firms certainly seem to have their mind on other things. Research published last year by PriceWaterhouseCoopers showed that in 2009, 54 per cent of businesses said they placed a special focus on retaining talent. By 2012 that had dropped to 36 per cent.