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:

They call it mellow yellow. Issue 19 of IN Magazine lands

They call it mellow yellow. Issue 19 of IN Magazine lands

by • Environment, Flexible working, IN Magazine, Premium Content, Property, Technology, Workplace design

The new issue of IN Magazine has been published today.The new issue of IN Magazine has been published online today. In this issue: we ask why firms are so reluctant to change what they do; a dream of the past and future of work; Andy Lake talks about his new, visionary book; how AI might make cities worse; what inclusive design means; a panel of experts discuss what changing work practices mean for major business districts; why we must rethink how we light our streets and squares; how to strike the right balance when it comes to creating meetings in offices; and we take a grand tour through the Bucharest HQ of the world’s biggest travel group. (more…)

What do we need offices for anyway? The Greeks had a word for it

What do we need offices for anyway? The Greeks had a word for it

by • Comment, Workplace design

offices - what is going onThe Greek word anagnorisis describes the sense of having just caught up with a truth that was always waiting for you. It’s a common literary and artistic device found in the plots of everything from Oedipus Rex to Macbeth, Star Wars and Fight Club, but it’s also a word that conveys a useful, complex idea that does not have an adequate English version. The mot juste, if you like. And it’s a useful idea when it comes to framing the current conversation we are having about offices and work more generally. (more…)

Insight weekly: What working from home is doing to you + New issue of IN magazine + The fear of the penalty kick

Insight weekly: What working from home is doing to you + New issue of IN magazine + The fear of the penalty kick

by • News

Insight Weekly includes a round up of the best stories and commentary from the past seven days. It includes free premium content including features, podcasts, supplements and a link to the digital edition of IN Magazine. In this issue:  your experience of working from home might improve your wellbeing – and might not; facilities managers are the goalies of the workplace; the new issue of IN; and a chat over a G&T with the one and only Antony Slumbers.  You can subscribe to this and our magazines here. (more…)

Whenever I hear the future of work, I reach for my pistol

Whenever I hear the future of work, I reach for my pistol

by • Comment, Flexible working, Workplace design

the future of workFor years it has been evident that there is no ‘future of work’. There is only a journey with no destination and no single way of not getting to it. That hasn’t stopped people talking about it all endlessly. And each time they have, I’ve reached for my pistol. (more…)

Of mice and men

Of mice and men

by • Comment, Flexible working, Technology

What humble computer mice can tell us about the way we now work. Or how the law of unintended consequences applies to hybrid workersThe history of the humble computer mouse dates back to the 1960s and engineer Douglas Engelbart’s work on improving the way people and computers interact. He initially called the device he envisaged a ‘bug’ but the first prototype he created with Bill English was so unmistakeably a rodent that there was only one thing they could have called it. If only they had settled the question of whether the plural was mouses or mice. (more…)

Underutilised office space? I just can’t be bothered with it

Underutilised office space? I just can’t be bothered with it

by • Comment, Flexible working, Workplace design

A while ago, Antony Slumbers asked me why I thought firms had never done anything much about the underutilisation of their offices. This was in the first throes of lockdown-driven remote work hysteria, prompted by one of those headlines about how offices being half empty was some signifier of hatred for them.

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Workplace design and the corrective force of rediscovery

Workplace design and the corrective force of rediscovery

by • Comment, Workplace design

rediscovering workplace designIt has become something of a preoccupation of mine to consider why so many of the conversations we hold about workplace design are largely about the rediscovery of old ideas. It may be because there are constants about how people interact with their surroundings and each other and the truisms underlying those interactions. Although these are often reframed by the amount of data we now have to support them, some things never change. (more…)

The final word on … responsibility

The final word on … responsibility

by • Business, Comment

There have been many experiments  over the years that expose the darker aspects of human nature. One of the most telling of these was carried out by two American researchers called John Darley and Bibb Latane in 1968. The two men’s work was partly inspired by a notorious 1964 murder in which a woman called Kitty Genovese was stabbed to death in public. The murder took place over a period of around half an hour, during which a number of witnesses who watched the crime from their windows failed to help the victim.

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The final word on workplace wellbeing

The final word on workplace wellbeing

by • Comment, Wellbeing

The final word? Of course not. Five years ago this month, we published an article that described how the quest for productivity had been supplanted almost entirely by a new emphasis on workplace wellbeingThe final word? Of course not. Nearly six years ago, we published an article that described how the quest for productivity had been supplanted almost entirely by a new emphasis on workplace wellbeing. It was the final nail in the coffin of scientific management and its central notion of the office as a factory, subject to rigid times and places of work and manufacturing’s culture of process, efficiency and productivity. The office a splice of factory and panopticon. (more…)

A hazy shade of Winter: Nigel Oseland sounds off on the Workplace Cocktail Hour

A hazy shade of Winter: Nigel Oseland sounds off on the Workplace Cocktail Hour

by • News, Podcasts, Premium Content, Wellbeing, Workplace Cocktail Hour

It’s bitterly cold outside but over a glass of hazy IPA, Nigel Oseland and Mark Eltringham warm to a conversation about fish guts, the sounds that make us cringe, what comfort means to different people and what it would really take to get them to spend more time in the office. And it’s not free fruit, corporate sanctioned togetherness or quirky office features. Nigel also explains why firms might be getting it wrong when it comes to managing which people use which spaces in agile environments. We also discuss how people overestimate their own productivity and underestimate that of their colleagues and what that means for the way we organise. (more…)

Workplace piffle, humane design and throwing away the blank slate

Workplace piffle, humane design and throwing away the blank slate

by • Comment, Technology, Wellbeing, Workplace design

workplace designThe piece I wrote on workplace bullshit came in for quite a bit of attention when it was published and also meant I was pointed to this excellent article on how to spot it when you see it. Lots is said about the skills we’ll need to cope with the challenges of the current Century, but this is perhaps one of the most important. Especially trying to spot it in ourselves. Paradoxically, but understandably, we already seem reasonably able to spot it in our politicians and other people we don’t quite trust. (more…)

The wonder of you. Monica Parker on joy, serendipity, toxic work cultures and awe

The wonder of you. Monica Parker on joy, serendipity, toxic work cultures and awe

by • News, Podcasts, Premium Content, Wellbeing, Workplace Cocktail Hour, Workplace design

Monica Parker joins Mark Eltringham to share an Old Fashioned while discussing how to find wonder in the everyday, the limits of workplace design, our renewed obsession with productivity, how to achieve flow states in a world of distractions and what it means to be truly happy. There’s not much workplace news around right now as people are still finding their feet after Christmas, so we also explore some lessons we might take from the Post Office scandal about how organisations go wrong and the role of human nature in creating toxic cultures. (more…)

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