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:

February 18, 2016

What would happen if you didn’t turn up for work tomorrow? ⁰

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

You might assume that most people would like to think of themselves as more or less indispensable at work. And if they’re not already, would like to make themselves indispensable at some point. But what exactly would happen if you simply didn’t turn up for work tomorrow? It might be nothing, as the recent case of Joaquin Garcia proved. The Spanish civil servant hadn’t turned up to work for at least six years, according to reports from last year. His absence only came to light when his employer decided he was eligible for a long term service award. His case became something of a sensation in Spain, where he earned the moniker el funcionario fantasma – the phantom official. But his story isn’t a one off. In a grim news item from 2004, a Finnish tax inspector died at his desk and the fact went unnoticed for two days. More →

February 18, 2016

The UK public sector workplace is disempowered and can’t cope with change ⁰

by Mark Eltringham • Flexible working, News, Workplace

A new report claims that the typical public sector workplace in the UK is dysfunctional on a number of levels. That is not the conclusion of some right wing think tank, but instead comes from Civica’s Invigorating the Public Sector Revolution report, commissioned in partnership with Society of Local Authority Chief Executives and Senior Managers (SOLACE). Based on a survey of 276 senior and middle management staff, a mere 7 percent of respondents said that the public sector offered an empowering working culture and just 25 percent believe their management teams have the skills and attitudes to lead the organisation over the next ten years. Of particular concern was the ability of organisations to cope with change. Just under half (47 percent) of those surveyed believe their leadership team lacks the management skills needed for ‘a period of massive and accelerating change’. More →

February 15, 2016

UK commercial buildings emit far more carbon than they were designed to ⁰

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

Commercial buildings in the UK may be producing an average of 3.8 times more carbon than the estimate presented at their design stage, according to research from InnovateUK. The study examined six years of data from Innovate UK’s Building Performance Evaluation (BPE) Programme. It found that only one of the 48 buildings studied produced the amount of carbon specified by its design. In some cases, total emissions were 10 times the rate calculated for Part L compliance. ‘Building Performance Evaluation Programme: Findings From Non-Domestic Projects’, identifies complex energy controls and building management systems (BMS) as significant factors in poor levels of carbon emissions, suggesting that they should be simplified. Although two-thirds of the buildings studied employed renewable energy, a significant proportion of these experienced problems that had a negative impact on their energy consumption and carbon emissions. More →

February 15, 2016

The death of the office meme does not fit with a thriving property market ⁰

by Mark Eltringham • Comment, Flexible working, Property, Workplace design

You don’t have to look very far to find somebody or other proclaiming the death of the office. A quick Google search will come up with over 73 million results for the past year alone. This has been going on for decades, but a search engine now gives us a far better idea than the occasional feature in a trade magazine of just how the idea has evolved into a full-blown meme. The narrative has become so entrenched that the people who use it – typically the ignorant, the self-interested, the lazy and the ill-informed – rarely have their premise challenged. Usually it is an idea appended to some disruptive and supposedly apocalyptic trend and, at the moment, office kryptonite comes in the form of coworking, where once it was flexible working or mobile technology. And yet, for all the non-fatal wounds these innovations have inflicted on the traditional office, the idea of people travelling to work alongside each other in shared buildings endures. More →

February 15, 2016

Government needs to play catch up with needs of the self-employed ⁰

by Mark Eltringham • Flexible working, News, Technology

Politicians and legislators are failing to keep pace with the changing nature of work and as a result many of the UK’s growing army of freelancers feel like second class citizens. That is the key finding of a new report commissioned by the Government and authored by entrepreneur Julie Deane. She claims that the Government should do more to bring the self-employed into line with legislation affecting the wider working population, including access to higher rates of parental leave and pay. The report sets out ten key recommendations, notably that the parental allowance should be brought into line with the rules for employees, who are paid a higher portion of their salary for the first six weeks of statutory maternity pay before the percentage drops. It also suggests that the education system should do more to prepare young people for a changing world of work and that more should be done to offer a choice of workplaces for the self-employed.. More →

February 11, 2016

Manchester set to run out of Grade A office space this year, claims report ⁰

by Mark Eltringham • Cities, News, Property

Manchester could completely run out of ready to occupy, Grade A office space this year, according to a new report from Colliers International. The snapshot of the commercial property market in the city claims that take-up of space in Manchester during 2015 was over a third (37.5 percent) above a ten year average and the rate of occupation by both UK and overseas firms was double that of the previous three years. As a consequence, the local property market is currently unable to keep pace with demand and the availability of Grade A space declined by 61 percent during the year to reach its lowest level since 2006. There is now just 216,000sq ft of Grade A stock available to let in Central Manchester, with major new developments in the key Spinningfields district (above) and elsewhere not expected to complete until later this year and into 2018. Even some of these spaces are already let, according to the study. More →

February 9, 2016

Better workplace design and management could save the NHS £1 billion ⁰

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

The National Health Service could make around £1bn in savings if it made better use of its estate, including more efficient workplace design, according to Lord Carter’s wide-ranging 18-month review into the operations and productivity of the NHS. The wide ranging review claimed that a total of £5bn could be saved by adopting a range of best practice standards. Carter examined 32 hospitals as well as looking at systems in the US, Germany, Australia, Italy and France for the report. Among the differences highlighted were variations in the use of floorspace, with one trust using 12 percent for non-clinical purposes and another using 69 percent. Overall, the review suggests that the NHS could save £1bn by 2020 via from the better management of estates, such as lighting, heating and the utilisation of floor space. The challenges of running the NHS estate efficiently have been something of an issue for some time, as we have reported. More →

February 9, 2016

Report reveals huge surge in use of flexible working worldwide ⁰

by Mark Eltringham • Flexible working, News, Technology

Three quarters of companies worldwide have now introduced flexible working to enable employees to vary their hours and work from home or on the move according to one of the largest global surveys of its kind conducted with 8,000 employers and employees across three continents. The Flexible: friend or foe? survey was commissioned by Vodafone and took place between September and October 2015. The countries surveyed were Germany, Hong Kong, India, Italy, Netherlands, Singapore, South Africa, Spain, the UK and the USA. A total of 8,000 employers and employees were interviewed online. The rapid adoption of high-speed mobile data services, fixed-line broadband and cloud services is playing an integral role in this workplace revolution: 61 percent of respondents now use their home broadband service to access work applications and 24 percent use a mobile data connection via their smartphone, tablet or laptop with a broadband dongle. More →

February 8, 2016

High urban rents and falling rural land prices drive flight of startups to countryside ⁰

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

We’ve reported before on the flight of tech firms and other startups from the UK’s cities to the countryside. Now it appears that 2016 will see an acceleration in the exodus, as a consequence of the perfect storm of expensive rents in the cities, falling rural land prices and a growing number of people using technology and improving digital infrastructure to live somewhere they feel they have a more balanced life. That is the striking conclusion of a new survey from the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) and Royal Agricultural University (RAU) indicates. Over the second half of 2015, non-farmers, such as those starting-up cottage industries, accounted for around 25 per cent of rural land sales. This figure was up from just 18 per cent in the first half of 2015, according to the RICS/RAU Rural Land Market Survey H2 2015 and the trend was strongest in South East England where non-farmers accounted for 32 per cent of all sales. More →

February 3, 2016

Government plans to cut size of estate by 75 percent by 2023 ⁰

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

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The UK Government has today published the latest edition of its annual State of the Estate report, which gives an update on plans to consolidate, divest and modernise the central government property portfolio. Minister for the Cabinet Office Matt Hancock claims that the current administration has reduced the size of the estate by 2.4 million sq. m. since 2010. (As is the way of these things, the minister claims this is equivalent to 336football pitches, 43 Shards or more than the entire principality of Monaco. Presumably individual departments measured their own successes in blue whales and double decker buses.) He claims that this means that the total central government estate has fallen below 5,000 holdings for the first time and could fit inside the area of West Finchley (which is a new measurement on us). The reduction has been achieved by selling property ranging from the historic Old War Office (top) to an old bakery and lighthouse. More →

February 3, 2016

Flexible working men pay a greater career premium than women ⁰

by Mark Eltringham • Flexible working, News

The growing complexities of flexible working and changing gender roles are laid bare yet again in a new report published in Australia by management consultancy Bain & Company and advocate group Chief Executive Women. The report, The Power of Flexibilty, claims that male workers pay a penalty in their careers when they opt for flexible working because they enjoy less support and are more harshly judged than their female counterparts. Many are regarded as anomalies, caught between the expectation that men spend longer hours at work on the one hand, while striving to create a more balanced life, often in a household in which a woman is increasingly likely to be the main breadwinner. The authors of the report claim that men are currently experiencing the same sort of stigmas and biases faced by women in the early days of flexible working, even though both sexes continue to face barriers when opting for flexible work. More →

February 2, 2016

Record investment in UK commercial property in 2015, but trouble ahead ⁰

by Mark Eltringham • News, Property

A near record £67.5 billion was invested in UK commercial property in 2015, making it the second strongest year on record and 46 per cent above the 10-year average, according to research from commercial property analysts CoStar Group. Momentum slowed sharply in the second half of the year, with investment down 19 per cent from the previous year. According to CoStar, this reflects the fact that investment activity has been especially strong over the previous 18 months and good opportunities are harder to find, but also that global economic and political uncertainty are impacting investment decisions. Nevertheless, 2015 was a strong year for the UK’s Big Six regional cities. Office investment increased 16 per cent to £3.2 billion, which is the highest level since the recession and more than double the eight-year average. Foreign investors seeking standing assets and development opportunities underpinned much of this investment. More →