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:

Republished: The brain-dead megaphone of work

Republished: The brain-dead megaphone of work

by • Comment, Working lives

There is nothing new about any of this. And yet it’s all new. I’ve spent months talking to people who really know their stuff about work and workplaces and underlying nearly all of those conversations is the following paradox. They know about flexible working, the under-utilisation of space, the twenty minute neighbourhood, the work ecosystem, universal basic income, the digital workspace, the office as club, all the rest of it. Heard it all before, often many times, over many years. Some of them have been living it too, and yet… (more…)

Financial uncertainty, wellbeing and supply chain disruption revealed as top risk factors 

Financial uncertainty, wellbeing and supply chain disruption revealed as top risk factors 

by • Business, News

Companies across the UK are most concerned about the risk of financial uncertainty (34 percent), employee health and wellbeing (31 percent) and supply chain disruption (23 percent) on their businesses over the next 12 monthsAccording to new research by Marsh, an insurance broker and risk advisor, companies across the UK are most concerned about the impact of financial uncertainty (34 percent), employee health and wellbeing (31 percent) and supply chain disruption (23 percent) on their businesses over the next 12 months. The findings come from Marsh’s UK Business Risk Report 2023 [registration], which features data obtained in May and June 2023 from over 2,100 UK businesses with turnover of between £100,000 and £500 million + per year. Now in its third year, the report explores how circumstances over the last 12 months have impacted the business risk appetite and approach to risk management among UK companies, and identifies their priorities for the year ahead.  (more…)

The Workplace Cocktail Hour. Chris Moriarty on AI, toxic workplaces and more

The Workplace Cocktail Hour. Chris Moriarty on AI, toxic workplaces and more

by • AI, News, Podcasts, Technology, Workplace, Workplace Cocktail Hour

In the first of a new series of news-based podcasts, I catch up with Chris Moriarty, the co-founder of Audiem and much besides. Over a glass of gin and tonic, we discuss the AI Safety Summit and the proclamations of imminent doom that came before and after it. We also talk about the covid inquiry and the toxic workplace culture it exposed as an intriguing subplot. (more…)

A Newtonian perspective on reason, productivity and creativity

A Newtonian perspective on reason, productivity and creativity

by • Comment

On the doorstep of the British Library, you will find Edouardo Paolozzi’s imposing statue of Sir Isaac Newton. At first glance, this position seems to make perfect sense. Where better for a monument to the Enlightenment’s poster boy than raised on a plinth at the entrance to the world’s second largest library? And yet, there’s more going on here than is evident at first glance. (more…)

It’s hard to keep dead tech down

It’s hard to keep dead tech down

by • Comment, Technology

People are curiously slow to give up on dead tech, sometimes for sound practical reasons and sometimes not so muchIn 2022, Cormac McCarthy published two novels at the age of 89. An impressive feat, doubly so because he wrote them on the same old dead tech typewriter he’d bought from a pawn shop in 1963. Prior to his death, he no longer had the original, a light blue Olivetti Lettera 32, because that was sold at a charity auction for a quarter of million dollars in 2009. A friend replaced it with an identical model for just $11. But one that lacked the cultural imprint, clearly. (more…)

Half of people would reject a job with no flexible working

Half of people would reject a job with no flexible working

by • Flexible working, News

According to a new poll, a lack of flexible working would drive almost half of UK workers to reject a job offerThe latest report outlining how the lack of some or other workplace feature would lead to mass resignations and job rejections arrives from recruitment firm Robert Half. And yes, we do wish PR companies and their clients would knock it off now. If we added up all these polls, nobody would stay in or accept any job. According to the poll, a lack of flexible working would drive almost half of UK workers to reject a job offer. (more…)

The office needs to take on the characteristics of the city. Despina Katsikakis IN conversation

The office needs to take on the characteristics of the city. Despina Katsikakis IN conversation

by • Facilities management, Features, Property, Workplace design

Despina Katsikakis, the new President of the BCO has been shaping the way we think about offices for four decades

One of the unintended consequences of the era of online meetings is a chance to gain an insight into people’s actual lives. So it is that as Despina Katsikakis and I are talking, she spots my whippet Luna wandering into shot in the background and lets out an exclamation. She too has a whippet by her feet. And as a result, this abnormal, formal situation becomes a lot more normal and relaxed.   (more…)

Canary in the coal mine: other business districts are watching what happens next for Canary Wharf

Canary in the coal mine: other business districts are watching what happens next for Canary Wharf

by • Cities, Features, IN Magazine, Property

Already the symbol of a bygone era, Canary Wharf runs the risk of becoming a relic unless it reinvents itself. And others are watching The first casualties of the already cliched injunction to make offices worth the commute were always going to be the world’s most inaccessible business districts. In the UK the most high profile of these is Canary Wharf, 52 hectares of former wasteland in East London that became a financial powerhouse. Part of the regeneration of the area that began in the 1980s, it became synonymous with the era and with Margaret Thatcher and her reform of the financial services sector. This came to pass even though its most iconic structure One Canada Square was only completed in 1990, shortly after she had left office and shortly before its developer filed for bankruptcy. (more…)

The future of work has no destination, there is only the journey

The future of work has no destination, there is only the journey

by • Comment, Workplace design

One of the truisms about depictions of the future is that they often have more to say about the world in which we live than the one to come. So, when George Orwell wrote  Nineteen Eighty-Four the story goes that its title was derived by inverting the numbers of the year in which it was written – 1948. Whatever the truth of this, Orwell understood it was a book as much about the world in which he lived as the one it portrayed. Our images of the future are invariably refracted through the prism of the present. This is just as true for predictions about the future of work, many of which are explored in the new issue of IN Magazine.

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Issue 17 of IN Magazine lands

Issue 17 of IN Magazine lands

by • IN Magazine, News, Premium Content

IN Magazine issue 17 lands

The new digital edition of IN Magazine is now available, free to read here. Print copies will be mailed out to subscribers soon. In this issue: we talk to incoming BCO President Despina Katsikakis about whippets and, less importantly, her history of pioneering workplace innovation; we visit a new space in London that proves biophilia is about a lot more than a plant wall; a special supplement produced in partnership with BVN explores the multi-faceted complexity of retrofit; Helen Parton explores how new developments are looking to increase their social value; we question the wisdom of predictions; and much more. (more…)

Are the days of landmark corporate headquarters over?

Are the days of landmark corporate headquarters over?

by • Comment, Workplace design

There’s something in the idea that the creation of a bespoke, landmark corporate headquarters is a sign that something has gone wrong - or is about to - for the firm behind it.There’s something in the idea that the creation of a bespoke, landmark corporate headquarters is a sign that something has gone wrong – or is about to – for the firm behind it. I’d first developed or come across this idea when visiting British Airway’s Waterside building in the late 1990s. At the time it was arguably the most talked about office building in the world, lauded for its inbuilt urban landscape, mix of settings and humane, biophilic design features. (more…)

From the archive: The way to create a successful workplace is simple, but never easy

From the archive: The way to create a successful workplace is simple, but never easy

by • Comment, Flexible working, Technology, Workplace design

This was originally published in December 2020. All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. As is now the way of these things, the famous opening words of Anna Karenina have been used to name a principle that is applied across a wide range of fields. It describes how success can only happen in one way, but failure comes in many forms. (more…)

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