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:

May 18, 2018

Overall wellbeing of UK continues to increase, according to official data

by Mark Eltringham • News, Wellbeing

smiley coffee

New government statistics suggest that the general wellbeing and happiness of the UK population has increased over the last twelve months. According to the Office for National Statistics’ annual report on wellbeing, Britons are more contented now than at any point since the study was first published seven years ago. The latest report is based on an analysis of responses to the ONS, which asked people to rank out of ten how happy they were on the previous day, to what extent they regarded their lives as worthwhile, how satisfied they were with life, and how anxious they were generally. For 2017, average happiness was calculated at 7.53 out of ten, living worthwhile lives at 7.88, and life satisfaction at 7.69. There was no significant change in anxiety levels, which currently average at 2.91 out of ten, the ONS said.

May 14, 2018

Seven stories to get your week off to a flying start

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

Why great employees leave great cultures

Are flexible short term leases the new future?

Four mega-trends for the future of work

The revolution will not be transactionalised

Bjarke Ingels joins WeWork as Chief Architect

The road to automation, the joy of work, and the ‘Jen problem’

How Soho House transformed BBC Television Centre (registration required)

May 14, 2018

Manchester incubator aims to develop region’s strength in tech and research

by Mark Eltringham • Cities, News, Property, Technology

Manchester Science Partnerships (MSP) has opened its new £2m tech incubator which it hopes will help create up to 2,000 jobs in data science and technology innovation companies over the next decade. Reflecting the ambitions of the updated Greater Manchester strategy to build on the city region’s strengths in technology and digital innovation, the incubator will provide start-ups with a wide package of business support services including: access to finance, talent and markets advice. Manchester is already a European top 20 digital city and this new incubator is designed play a role in strengthening the city’s status as a location for technology businesses over the coming years.

May 10, 2018

London’s tech startups and SMEs shift focus from normal hotspots to migrate South of the river

by Mark Eltringham • News, Property

Hubble, an office and coworking marketplace, has published new data which it claims shows that tech startups and other growing SMEs in London are leaving the capital’s best known tech hotspots, including Shoreditch and Soho, for south of the river. Hubble’s search data suggests that London Bridge (29 percent of all searches) is the most popular location in London for companies searching for flexible office space in 2018 (a sharp rise from 3.7 percent of searches in 2017), beating Shoreditch with 27 percent of all searches. More than 37 percent of searches were for office space in south London, counting London Bridge and the Southbank (8.5 percent). Startups and SMEs are branching out to different creative “hub-spots” within London, but most prominently is an unprecedented shift to south of the river. Searches for London Bridge specifically make up 29 percent of all searches and the Southbank, as a whole, making up 37.5 percent of all search queries.

May 4, 2018

The workplace week in seven stories you should read

by Mark Eltringham • Features, Technology, Workplace, Workplace design

The need to work less is a matter of life and death

House-hunters resort to commercial property in Madrid

The return of the traditional workplace for tech firms?

Ten million British jobs could be gone in 15 years and no one knows what happens next.

Embracing technology to move facilities management forward

Tiny robots will deliver your lunch, because we hate human interaction

The lapsing of Finland’s universal basic income trial (registration)

May 3, 2018

Open plan offices make people more image and status conscious

by Mark Eltringham • News, Workplace design

Employees may subconsciously act and dress differently in open plan office environments, according to a new study published in the journal Gender, Work and Organization. The research carried out by academics from Anglia Ruskin University and the University of Bedfordshire over the course of three years analysed the behaviour of around 1,000 employees at a UK local authority that moved from six separate departmental buildings into a new shared office building. The design of the building made extensive use of glass and incorporated large, open-plan offices and collective spaces, with the usual aim of eroding hierarchical and departmental boundaries and promoting interactions.

May 2, 2018

The quest for wellbeing has taken over from our search for productivity

by Mark Eltringham • Comment, Wellbeing, Workplace design

For decades, humankind has sought to establish the link between office design and productivity. And by humankind I mean a parochial band of researchers, suppliers, workplace specialists, futurologists and designers with a special interest in the whole thing. Most other people only expressed a passing interest in the subject. It did not seem to matter to this band that the whole thing had been proved many times over many years, invariably falling on cloth, if not exactly deaf, ears. We’ve known for some time what makes people happy and productive at work and much of the new research has merely served to proved something we already know. Undaunted, researchers maintained their quest for the evidence that would get the message across to an apparently indifferent world. This quest has mutated over the past few years into something that is at first glance only slightly different but which has some rather interesting implications. The go-to workplace topic of the early 21st Century is no longer productivity per se, but wellbeing, and that is making all the difference.

May 1, 2018

No surprises in new report on future workplace trends

by Mark Eltringham • Comment, Flexible working, Technology, Wellbeing, Workplace design

The latest Global Workplace Trends report from Sodexo focuses on the ‘workplace experience’ and how it affects levels of engagement, wellbeing and corporate performance. It’s an undemanding study that sets out seven trends covering familiar themes in a familiar way, even though the authors claim it offers ‘fresh insights’. As well as the idea of ‘experience’, it touches on ideas about the intersections of digital and physical space and the implications for people and organisations as well as the workplace professions. It uses the standard vocabulary, various buzzwords and the usual presuppositions to look at the impact of Millennials, AI, the sharing economy and so on. The visuals are the usual parade of smiling, diverse – but no unattractive, disabled and old – hipsters sharing screens and being creative in sun-dappled interiors. Sauce it with some virtue signals and it’s job done.

April 30, 2018

IFMA finally announces plans for new facilities management chapter in United Kingdom

by Mark Eltringham • Facilities management, News

The International Facility Management Association (IFMA) has approved a petition for the formation of a regional chapter within the United Kingdom. Talks about the chapter have been ongoing for some time. The people behind the creation of the new chapter claim it will offer facilities management (FM) professionals ‘direct localised support that taps into the global industry in ways not currently available in the UK market’. The formation of the chapter, which joins 136 IFMA chapters across more than 100 countries, comes at a time when IFMA, through its collaboration with the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS), is driving formation of practice standards via the International Organization for Standardization and working to more tightly integrate FM with the larger built environment industry. Details of the collaboration can be found at define.fm.

April 30, 2018

Number of working mothers rise by a half in under forty years, claims study

by Mark Eltringham • Flexible working, News

The past four decades have seen a transformation of the UK’s jobs market and society marked in particular by a decline of the traditional single-earner couple driven mostly by the mothers of young children and partners of higher-earning men. More than three quarters of women aged 25-54 in the UK are in paid work, reaching a record high of 78 percent in 2017. In contrast, fewer than 60 percent were in paid work in the mid-1970s. New analysis by IFS researchers, funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), looks at changes in women’s working patterns over the last four decades. It claims that these big social and economic changes are in large part driven by working mothers. In the mid-1970s nearly half of couples with dependent children had just one adult in paid work; that proportion now stands at just 27 percent. The increase in maternal employment has been concentrated among those with children of pre-school or primary-school age, and also among the partners of relatively high-earning men.

April 25, 2018

Canada leads the way in worldwide surge in adoption of green buildings

by Mark Eltringham • Architecture, Environment, News, Property

Major metropolitan office markets across the globe are seeing a significant increase in the adoption of green building certification programmes, according to the inaugural International Green Building Adoption Index (IGBAI) – a study by CBRE and Maastricht University. The study reports that 18.6 percent of space in 10 markets across Australia, Canada and Europe is now certified green versus just 6.4 percent in 2007. Canadian cities set the pace, with 51.6 percent of the space in Vancouver (pictured) and 51.0 percent in Toronto holding green certifications. This is particularly notable for Vancouver, as the city has a formal initiative and action plan – “Greenest City 2020” – toward becoming the greenest city in the world by 2020. In Vancouver and Toronto, green buildings trends will continue to drive both new development and redevelopment of office product. In Vancouver, more than half of the 1.5 million-square feet of product under development is being built to high green certification standards, while much of Toronto’s existing class A product is undergoing intensive capital improvement projects that include upgrades aimed at earning green certifications as well.

April 25, 2018

Report sets out business case for health and wellbeing in green buildings

by Mark Eltringham • Architecture, Environment, Facilities management, News

The World Green Building Council has launched a new report highlighting what it suggests are the tangible economic benefits of green buildings and the improved levels of occupant satisfaction when companies implement new health, wellbeing and productivity features in existing green structures. Doing Right by Planet and People: The Business Case for Health and Wellbeing in Green Building presents case studies of 11 facilities around the globe that have one or more green certifications including LEED, Green Star and BREEAM. The report evaluates health and wellbeing features that were integrated into the facilities, such as enhanced fresh air ventilation, acoustic privacy, increase of daylight penetration and use of biophilic design elements such as green walls and extensive indoor plants.