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 5, 2016

The problems that come with London’s success need better solutions ⁰

by Mark Eltringham • Architecture, Cities, Comment

We might all welcome London’s success as a thriving centre of commerce and culture, but this comes at a price and we need to look for a better balance than we currently see between London and the rest of the UK. Of course London is often the main victim of its own success. Its thriving tech and creative firms continue to spill out of the incubator districts created for them to find cheaper and more appropriate spaces in which to grow. In doing so they are pushing up rents in such unlikely nearby places as Croydon. In the traditional business districts in the City and Docklands, the capital’s tech giants are now able to compete for the first time for some of the most expensive real estate on the planet. To cope with demand, the Mayor is rubberstamping tall buildings like never before, many of them bloody awful, unloved by Londoners and heritage organisations alike, transforming the skyline and creating windswept, arid tundra at their feet.

May 3, 2016

Remote working may be the answer to the housing crisis, claims report ⁰

by Mark Eltringham • Cities, Flexible working, News, Technology

A new report from techUK and Citrix claims that the UK’s housing crisis is exacerbated by the majority of workers (59 percent) working on the basis that there is greater potential for securing employment by living and working in large cities. The Housing Crisis: a Digital Solution (download) is based on data from YouGov research into the expectations of 1,243 UK knowledge workers with the potential to enjoy remote working. The report claims that the burden that location-dependent work places on large cities could be significantly reduced by allowing workers to work remotely, as over half of British workers (54 per cent) stated they would be likely to relocate to a rural area if they could still perform their role to the same level. However, while many workers would relocate if they could, connectivity, transport and corporate culture were all cited as challenges to achieving this especially when 48 per cent of rural premises don’t have access to high-speed broadband internet.

May 3, 2016

Pointless admin and inadequate technology cost UK £60 billion a year ⁰

by Mark Eltringham • News, Technology, Workplace

Inadequate and poorly performing technology coupled with the burden of pointless administrative tasks are having a major negative effect on the UK’s productivity, costing businesses around £60 billion a year. That is the conclusion of a new report from workforce management consultants Kronos. According to the report, The £60Bn Question: Is Employee Engagement the Driver of Business Success?, employees spend around 7 percent of their time on unnecessary admin and 82 percent struggle to complete their daily tasks. According to the line managers that took part in the survey, 77 percent claim that outdated technology is the biggest challenge they face and 72 percent believe that they are hampered by the need to carry out tasks that could be automated. Many respondents also cited a lack of engagement as an issue with 34 percent claiming rating their organisation enjoying high levels of engagement and 59 percent claiming their chief exec was more interested in the bottom line than employees.

May 2, 2016

The cocktail party effect and the false narrative of office acoustics

by Mark Eltringham • Knowledge, Workplace, Workplace design

Ask most people what they find most annoying about modern office life and they’re likely to tell you that it is the sounds of other people. The knee jerk response to this is often to blame the hegemony of open plan design and then find ways to reduce the amount of noise generated within the office. Like many others, this is an enduring narrative and one that many well-informed people continue to challenge. As always, the issues around office acoustics are far more complex and interesting than that and we’ve known it for a long time. Donald Broadbent was a researcher who died twenty years ago. Yet his research into cognitive psychology has never been more pertinent than it is right now as we continue to struggle with the the effects of unwelcome noise in open plan offices. Offices may have changed in the last twenty years, but human beings haven’t. This revealing programme, broadcast by the BBC, explores some of his ideas. There are no visuals so you have to use your ears.

April 29, 2016

UK’s ‘best workplaces’ announced by Great Place to Work ⁰

by Mark Eltringham • News, Workplace, Workplace design

Great Place to Work has announced what it considers to be the UK’s best workplaces. The category for large firms was headed by McDonald’s and IT firm Softcat followed by Salesforce UK, Cisco, Capital One and Hyatt. The medium sized organisation category was headed by housing association RHP Group followed by manufacturers Cosatto, financial services firm Goodman Masson, R Twining & Company and IT provider UKFast. IT companies were also prominent in the small business category with Foundation SP and DMW, first and second respectively followed by professional services firm Futureheads Recruitment, non-profit Resurge and professional services firm, New Chapter Consulting. Google topped the best multinational category, followed by SAS Institute, manufacturing firm WI Gore & Associates IT firm Net App and telecommunications firm Telefonica. A full report on the awards including its methodology can be found here.

April 27, 2016

Digital divide in businesses is holding back the British economy ⁰

by Mark Eltringham • News, Technology

A digital divide is opening up across the British economy, with just over half (55 percent) of “pioneer” firms adopting digital technologies and processes, while the other half (45 percent) are falling behind, according to new research by the CBI and IBM. Despite the UK taking top place globally for e-commerce and fifth place for the availability of technology, it ranks only fourteenth in the world for company-level adoption of digital technology, with many companies struggling to digitise their businesses at the rate of peers in other countries. Companies cite a mix of connectivity challenges and security concerns as barriers to digital adoption, but predominantly they are hindered by a lack of appropriate skills inside their business (42 percent of firms) and an unclear return on investment (33 percent). The report’s findings for the UK echo those of a global study carried out by Cognizant.

April 27, 2016

The digital future of work is more about humans than machines, claims study ⁰

by Mark Eltringham • Flexible working, News, Property, Technology

The claims that robots will render the human species redundant are largely exaggerated suggests a new report from Cognizant’s Centre for the Future of Work and the Economist Intelligence Unit. But we will have to find a new path and it may be one that emphasises human strengths and characteristics working alongside robots. The study of 420 managers in Europe and the US explores the future of the workplace in an increasingly automated world and suggest we will also see the emergence of new jobs involved in the design of augmented reality and avatars as well as a generally greater emphasis on robot-human partnerships in an increasingly digital world. The study claims, unsurprisingly, that the reliance on physical office space will recede, forcing businesses to employ intelligent workplaces which will monitor workers’ environment, needs and even moods.

April 25, 2016

Driverless vehicles set to create vast swathes of developable real estate ⁰

by Mark Eltringham • Cities, News, Property, Technology

A new report from WSP and Farrells claims to identify exactly how the advent of autonomous vehicles will have a significant impact on the real estate sector worldwide. It suggests that changes in the way cars are owned and used will free up large tracts of potentially valuable property for other uses. Although the report confirms that driverless cars may increase the amount of people able to use cars for transport, including those currently unable or unwilling to drive, the amount of parking necessary to accommodate them may shrink significantly as shared ownership becomes a norm and road design changes to meet the needs of autonomous vehicles. The end result will be significant changes in the way urban space is planned and developed with a potential increase in the amount of land available for development by up to a fifth. IN the UK this will equate to hundreds of millions of pounds of added value for major city centres.

April 22, 2016

The new issue of Work&Place is now available to read online ⁰

by Mark Eltringham • Facilities management, Premium Content, Property, Work&Place, Workplace, Workplace design

The new issue of Work&Place is available to view online. As ever it presents a truly global perspective on the forces that are redefining our relationship with work and how designers and managers are creating workplaces and working cultures to help firms and people thrive in the new era. This issue includes: Francisco Vazquez Medem looking at the current state of flexible working in Latin America; Ian Ellison finding the unlikely candidate for the missing piece of the workplace puzzle; Andrea Hak assessing what we can all learn from Yahoo’s recent trials and tribulations; Serena Borghero engaging in the ongoing quest for the truly engaged workplace; and Baptiste Broughton gauging France’s unique revolutionary spirit and how it applies to the worrkplace. Each issue of Work&Place, sponsored by Steelcase and Condeco, is read by well over 60,000 workplace professionals worldwide and invites all those associated with the industry to share their own thoughts and experiences during this tumultuous era. Illustration by Simon Heath.

April 21, 2016

Employees squander a month each year checking email outside of work ⁰

by Mark Eltringham • Flexible working, News, Technology

A study published today by enterprise service management firm Samanage, confirms that US employees are spending a significant amount of time checking email after hours. What is perhaps more surprising is the amount of time they spend on this. The report claims that a significant proportion of workers are spending far more time emailing outside the office than they do taking vacation. Among the 1,500 US adults surveyed in the Email Overload Survey, more than one in three (35.2 percent) check email at least one hour a day outside of work hours, totaling more than 30 days of extra work per year. Given the average US worker receives 10 days of vacation annually, employees are spending triple that amount of time emailing after work hours. It’s also clear that Americans have a hard time putting down their mobile device and stepping away from email as respondents reported checking their work email instead of sleeping or eating.

April 19, 2016

UK Government extends groundbreaking One Public Sector Estate scheme ⁰

by Mark Eltringham • Facilities management, Flexible working, News, Public Sector, Workplace design

A groundbreaking scheme which encourages UK local authorities to reduce the space they occupy, share offices and cut the amount of property they own is to be extended. The Government is inviting new councils to join the One Public Sector Estate scheme which already has more than 100 participants including Derby City Council (pictured). It has allocated an additional £35 million to expand the programme with councils encouraged to apply for a share of funding. The Government hopes all councils will be signed up by 2018. Although the scheme is in its infancy and results are not yet fully known, the most recent 24 partnerships are expected to generate around £138m in property sales and save £56m in running costs over the next five years, as well as free up space for 16,500 new homes. The scheme is jointly delivered by the Local Government Association and the Cabinet Office’s Government Property Unit. Our special report on innovative approaches to public sector property can be found here.

April 19, 2016

Three day working week is ideal for the over 40s, claim researchers ⁰

by Mark Eltringham • Flexible working, Knowledge, News, Workplace

A new report from Australian academics suggests that workers aged over 40 perform better and have generally improved wellbeing if they enjoy a three day working week. Called Use It Too Much and Lose It? The Effect of Working Hours on Cognitive Ability, the study of 6,500 men and women was carried out by researchers at the Melbourne Institute of Applied Economics and Social Research at the University of Melbourne. They gauged a range of subjective and objective factors based on data drawn from the Australian government’s Household, Income and Labour Dynamics survey as well as looking at work habits and factors such as type of employment, lifestyle and family. The researchers asked participants in the study to take part in cognitive tests the results of which suggest that the optimum working week is around 25 hours. Conversely the study suggest that the cognitive ability of those working about 60 hours a week can be lower than those who are not employed at all.