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:

The Great Workplace Conversation gets quieter and more interesting

The Great Workplace Conversation gets quieter and more interesting

by • Comment, Flexible working, Wellbeing, Workplace design

I recently stumbled upon the phrase epistemic trespass, which describes the phenomenon of people making judgements in fields in which they have no expertise. I came across it as it was used to explain the sudden explosion of opinions about Afghanistan from a hitherto unknown horde of experts. Which may or may not be the same horde that has been so very certain about immunology and public health during the pandemic. It’s an old idea and one that needs to be treated with care, for reasons set out by Noah Smith here. But it is useful in some ways because we all recognise the phenomenon and how social media amplifies it. (more…)

Digital twin and other tech to benefit from landmark $3.5trillion infrastructure package

Digital twin and other tech to benefit from landmark $3.5trillion infrastructure package

by • Facilities management, News, Property, Technology

Siemens digital twinGrowth in key tech sectors is set to rocket after a landmark $1 trillion infrastructure package bill passed in the US Senate, part of a comprehensive $3.5 trillion plan within President Biden’s post-COVID Build Back Better initiative and paralleling the UN’s Race To Zero campaign. There had been an upward trend in share prices for companies in several tech sectors already, but Pitchbook research identified nanotechnology and digital twin technology as most likely to gain from the new bill – the largest public investment in America’s infrastructure for decades. (more…)

The reason we can’t stomach so many opinions on the future of work

The reason we can’t stomach so many opinions on the future of work

by • Comment, Workplace design

There’s a scene in the 1986 horror movie The Fly in which Seth Brundle (Jeff Goldblum) persuades the reporter Veronica Quaife (Geena Davis) to try two steaks, one of which Brundle has just sent between two teleportation pods in an effort to work out why they can’t process organic matter, including the organic matter belonging to a very unfortunate baboon. (more…)

The unshocking truth about work and workplaces

The unshocking truth about work and workplaces

by • Comment, Workplace design

I recently read an interesting little book called Office by Sheila Liming. It’s a small book, easy to read in a sitting and linked to a series of essays in The Atlantic. The author is a Professor of English so it’s no surprise to find that it’s beautifully written and draws on a range of sources to illustrate its points. It’s pretty sound on its own terms but also illustrates perfectly what is wrong with so many current narratives about work. The writing may not be clichéd but the thinking often is. (more…)

The office is everywhere and nowhere, baby

The office is everywhere and nowhere, baby

by • Flexible working, Podcasts, Premium Content, Workplace design

Workplace Insight and IN Magazine publisher Mark Eltringham recently took part in a lively episode of the Nowhere Office podcast with Julia Hobsbawn, Stefan Stern and Joanna Swash. They considered the current nature of work, what long term changes we can expect to emerge now and the role of working culture in providing a great experience for everybody, whoever and wherever they are – and whenever they might work. (more…)

If you’re certain about the changing world of work, you’re certainly wrong

If you’re certain about the changing world of work, you’re certainly wrong

by • Comment, Working culture

world of workIf you click on the first link in any article on Wikipedia and keep repeating the process, eventually you will land on the Philosophy page. Or you will 97 percent of the time, according to Wikipedia itself. There’s a dry explanation for this involving the site’s classification system, as explained by the mathematician Hannah Fry here. But there’s a more poetic explanation that I prefer. That every subject leads back to a consideration of ourselves, our lives and our place in the world. Anthropocentric maybe, but then again, the proper study of mankind is man. (more…)

The new era of flexible working and knowing when to lie flat

The new era of flexible working and knowing when to lie flat

by • Comment, Flexible working, Wellbeing

flexible working and knowing when to lie flatWhen people first started working from home in large numbers for the first time in the Spring of 2020, one of the most talked about issues was how the productivity of most stayed the same or improved. This shouldn’t have been that surprising given all that we have learned about remote and flexible working over the years, but it certainly drove the debate for a while. (more…)

Never mind the agile workplace, here is something you already know

Never mind the agile workplace, here is something you already know

by • Comment, Workplace design

The myth has it that John Lydon’s audition for the Sex Pistols consisted largely of wearing a Pink Floyd t-shirt with the words I HATE scrawled above the prog rock group’s name. It appealed to the new band’s managers and its existing members at a time when they needed a singer with the right attitude as much as the right chops. Before Lydon’s involvement, bass guitarist Glen Matlock had taken to approaching anybody he saw of his age group with short hair to ask them if they could sing. This was a time when everybody had long hair.

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We need to acknowledge our bias if we want to see the world for what it is

We need to acknowledge our bias if we want to see the world for what it is

by • Comment, Wellbeing, Working lives

We’re all biased. We all recognise the sharp bump of our critical thinking skills kicking into life when confronted with ideas and information that go against our beliefs. We know how they doze in the comforting embrace of affirming data. So, it’s been entertaining this week to observe the reaction to the large-scale academic study of 10,000 IT workers which found that they had worked 30 percent longer hours while working from home, a fifth of it outside their normal times of work, without actually doing any more work. In essence their productivity had fallen by 20 percent in spite of their increased hours. (more…)

IN Magazine issue 6 has been published

IN Magazine issue 6 has been published

by • Features, IN Magazine, News, Premium Content

IN Magazine cover artIt’s now a year since we launched IN Magazine and what a year it’s been. Issue 6 is now out. IN continues to explore the latest ideas from the world of work, speak to the most interesting people and feature the most pioneering ideas. In this issue: Kerstin Sailer casts a spell on the workplace; Microsoft’s Experience Centre in Amsterdam; what we can learn about the workplace experience from app design; the new emphasis on fresh air; the problem of managing people across borders; what happens to spaces when people abandon them; and why we must take the environmental impact of commercial property far more seriously. And, of course, much more. All back issues of IN Magazine can be found here. Illustration: Ian Pearsall

The binary choices and multiple outcomes of flexible working

The binary choices and multiple outcomes of flexible working

by • Comment, Flexible working

A year of unnecessarily binary conversation about work leads inevitably to this. A stupid question. Is Big Tech going off work from home? Betteridge’s Law takes care of that, just as it did another question from 12 months ago. Even though the article is slightly better than the headline, the insistence that the only two choices we have are home or office remains. (more…)

From the archive: Escaping the gravity of the fixed times and places of work

From the archive: Escaping the gravity of the fixed times and places of work

by • Features, Technology, Wellbeing, Working culture

In November 2019, just before that thing happened, there was this… The worst workplace related news story of 2019 is also one of the most widely reported. I’m not linking to it because I don’t want to give it any credibility, but it has been discharged into the ether by Fellowes along with a ‘behavioural futurist’ called William Higham. I will say only two things about it. Firstly, we flatly refused to publish a story about the damn thing and it’s a shame that the mainstream media couldn’t spot it for the utter drivel it is. The fact that they have picked up on it says something about the way such issues are covered in the press. That’s why you’re more likely to see a stress-related story about rats driving cars on the BBC than you are something meaningful. (more…)

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