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:

OECD, UN Environment and World Bank call for a radical shift in infrastructure thinking

OECD, UN Environment and World Bank call for a radical shift in infrastructure thinking

by • Cities, Environment, News

The OECD, UN Environment and World Bank Group have this week called on leaders of G20 countries to do more to enable a radical shift of investment into low-carbon, climate-resilient infrastructure as a way to limit the impact of climate change. Delivering a new report, Financing Climate Futures: Rethinking Infrastructure, to the G20 at its Summit in Buenos Aires, the three International Organisations said governments need to adopt a more transformative agenda on low-carbon, climate-resilient investments if they are to meet the Paris Agreement goal of cutting CO2emissions to net zero in the second half of the century and build resilience to climate change.

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New report challenges idea that productivity has no link with income

New report challenges idea that productivity has no link with income

by • News, Workplace

A new IZA World of Labor report published today suggests that workers’ effort may be more responsive to wage incentives and therefore the efficiency costs of progressive labour income taxation larger than previously thought. A fundamental question in economic policy is how labour supply responds to changes in remuneration. The responsiveness of labour supply determines the size of the employment impact and efficiency loss of progressive income taxation for example. The economist Tess Stafford of the University of New South Wales, Australia, summarises a number of recent studies of independent contractors’ labour supply which confirm a key prediction of economic theory: workers work more (in fact, quite a bit more) when earnings are temporarily high.

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Meaningful work an important driver of health and wellbeing for men

Meaningful work an important driver of health and wellbeing for men

by • News, Wellbeing

Men’s care brand Harry’s has published the findings from their first US Masculinity Report in partnership with University College London psychologist John Barry, co-founder of the male psychology section of the British Psychological Society. The report surveyed 5,000 men aged 18-95 across the US, weighted for race, income, education, sexual orientation and other factors. Respondents were asked about their wellbeing, happiness, confidence, emotional stability, motivation, optimism, and sense of being in control. They were then asked how satisfied they are with their careers, relationships, money, work-life balance, physicality, and mental health. The reports key finding was the strong correlation between wellbeing and meaningful work.

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The meaning of life, the Black Mirror of Beijing, standing desks not a silver bullet and some other stuff

The meaning of life, the Black Mirror of Beijing, standing desks not a silver bullet and some other stuff

by • Features

So, what is the meaning of life? According to a study by Pew, the gold standard US based researchers, it’s spending time with family and friends, reading, listening to music and going for a walk in the open air. Work comes somewhere down the list. Just one-third of the survey’s respondents mentioned their career or job as a source of meaning, and only a quarter cite finances or money. This, it turns out, is not too far off Monty Python’s conclusion in their eponymous film:  Try and be nice to people, avoid eating fat, read a good book every now and then, get some walking in, and try and live together in peace and harmony with people of all creeds and nations. That’s that sorted then.

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Reducing commuting times could drastically reduce CO2 emissions

Reducing commuting times could drastically reduce CO2 emissions

by • Environment, Flexible working, News

A decrease in commuting times in the UK will reduce levels of carbon dioxide by 7.8 million tonnes per year by 2030, according to a new study by Regus. The economic study, carried out by independent researchers, found that if the growth in flexible workspace continues to increase, commuters in the country could save 115 million hours of commuting time per annum by 2030 from a turn to flexible working. Meanwhile, the nation which would see the largest annual carbon emission saving by 2030 is the United States. It is predicted to save nearly 960 million hours in commuting time, and with US commuters relying heavily on cars, this time saved translates to over 100 million tonnes of CO2.

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Go Home On Time Day highlights one of the least discussed workplace issues

Go Home On Time Day highlights one of the least discussed workplace issues

by • Flexible working, News, Wellbeing

Today is National Go Home on Time Day (in Australia at least) and the 10th annual report by The Australia Institute’s Centre for Future Work published to coincide with it estimates that Australian employees will work 3.2 billion hours of unpaid overtime for their employers this year, worth an estimated $106 billion in wages. It’s refreshing to see a figure  applied to this issue, because most of the stuff we get tends to highlight how much time employers are losing to the myriad of distractions, responsibilities, foibles, preferences, cock-ups and ailments that come with giving jobs to humans. An issue we satirise here. More →

The most common workplace tactics for health promotion may be detrimental for overweight employees

The most common workplace tactics for health promotion may be detrimental for overweight employees

by • News, Wellbeing

Workplace health promotion programmes that encourage employees to take responsibility for their own weight may have detrimental effects for employees with obesity, reveals a new study. These range from feeling increasingly responsible for their weight but perceiving they have less control over it, to increased workplace weight stigma and discrimination. Ironically, these effects could even lead to increased obesity and decreased wellbeing. Published in Frontiers in Psychology, the study finds these pitfalls could be avoided through programs focusing on the employer’s responsibility to maintain employee health.

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Teams collaborate more effectively when they break off constant contact

Teams collaborate more effectively when they break off constant contact

by • News

Despite the understandable impulse organisations have to encourage people to be in constant communication with each other, teams often get better results when they collaborate only intermittently, according to a report How Intermittent Breaks in Interaction Improve Collective Intelligence, written by Ethan Bernstein, the Edward W. Conard Associate Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School; Jesse Shore, assistant professor at Boston University’s Questrom School of Business; and David Lazer, professor at Northeastern University.

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What The Midwich Cuckoos can teach us about Millennials

What The Midwich Cuckoos can teach us about Millennials

by • Comment, Workplace

Children of the damned

John Wyndham’s 1957 novel The Midwich Cuckoos is the story of a fictional English village in which, following an unexplained event that causes everybody within Midwich to fall unconscious, all of the women in the village fall pregnant and 61 children are subsequently born all at the same time. The children bear absolutely no physical resemblance to their parents, with pale skin, blond hair and piercing eyes. As they grow older it also becomes apparent that they are strange, emotionless and have a telepathic bond with each other. It’s not much of a spoiler to tell you that things don’t go well. The only rationale for what had happened to create the children in the first place is an unexplained incident of xenogenesis – the birth of offspring unlike their parents. Something similar must have happened on a global scale from the beginning of the 1980s onwards, at least based on what we are told about Millennials.

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Facebook is the new smoking, orgasms at work, a ghost airport and some other stuff

Facebook is the new smoking, orgasms at work, a ghost airport and some other stuff

by • Features

A slow news week here in the UK so the opportunity presents itself for quiet consideration of some important issues about the workplace. The big story has been the change of identity for the British Institute of Facilities Management, unveiled after weeks of debate and speculation. We’ll be running some commentary on what this all might mean in the next few days but for now, suffice it so say that any parallels with Brexit are entirely coincidental.

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More needs to be done to bridge the digital gender divide, says OECD

More needs to be done to bridge the digital gender divide, says OECD

by • News, Technology

Barriers to access, education and skills, as well as ingrained socio-cultural biases, are driving a digital gender divide that is holding back women’s participation in the digital economy, according to a new OECD report. Bridging the Digital Gender Divide: Include, Upskill, Innovate says women are not currently empowered to take advantage of the opportunities offered by the digital transformation. While G20 economies have taken important actions to narrow gender gaps in general, more needs to be done to increase the participation of women and girls in the digital economy so that they too can contribute to and benefit from the digital transformation that is under way.

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New report writes an obituary for the commercial office lease

New report writes an obituary for the commercial office lease

by • News, Property

A new white paper from Magenta Associates (registration required) explores the fate of the traditional commercial office lease in the context of deep social, political and economic changes. Earlier this year, a group of senior corporate real estate (CRE) and facilities management professionals were invited to participate in a roundtable, led by author of The Elemental Workplace Neil Usher, to discuss whether time is up for the traditional commercial office lease and how viable alternatives might look in the future.

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