What IS hybrid working?

What IS hybrid working?

by • Comment, Flexible working

A man working at a laptop in a pub to illustrate the possible definition of hybrid working In an uncharacteristically Waddellian moment*, the Word of the Year for 2022 according to The Economist was ‘hybrid work’. Yet despite its ubiquity, in the comparative calm of social channels over the holiday period lurked claims that no-one knows what hybrid working is. Even though millions of people are doing it. Given that such an assertion came as a surprise, there was only ever going to be one opening post for 2023: an attempt to explain it. More →

How businesses can support employee wellbeing over a difficult festive period

How businesses can support employee wellbeing over a difficult festive period

by • Comment, Wellbeing

Wellbeing at ChristmasWhen we think about the festive period, the financial pressures that Christmas brings, amid rising energy bills and not having enough to eat shouldn’t be first and foremost on our minds. With thirty million people employed by businesses in the UK, that is a huge number of employees who could benefit if employers acted now to support them and their wellbeing. This winter has been extremely challenging for many people across the UK. And for the first time since 2009, the UK is in recession. More →

Never mind the workplace predictions, here’s some bollocks

Never mind the workplace predictions, here’s some bollocks

by • Comment, Flexible working, Technology, Workplace design

A painting of Janus to depict the number of workplace predictions and retrospectives at the end of the yearTime of the year for looking backwards and forwards. For workplace predictions and retrospectives. The Economist announces that the word / term of the year is hybrid work. This is interesting because, although The Economist is using it as an interchangeable term for flexible working as many do, a great deal of energy is still expounded on defining exactly what it means. We may work out when the obsession with three days in the office, two at home thing started. But for now, determining where people are at any given time doesn’t seem very flexible to me. More →

Getting past the uncertainty of GDP to find something better

Getting past the uncertainty of GDP to find something better

by • Business, Comment, Everything Omni, Wellbeing

Epicenter Coworking Space in Stockholm, where Sweden has an economic model that deals with the uncertainty of GDP as a focusThe other night, my fourteen-year-old daughter was revising for her Economics exam, and we discussed the Swedish Economic Model and its relevance in our own age of uncertainty. According to the International Monetary Fund, Sweden’s national debt to GDP ratio has fallen chiefly since 1995. We proceeded to discuss the term Gross National Product (GDP). GDP measures the monetary value of final goods and services produced in a country in a given period of time over three months or a year. More →

The Great Relearning about the Great Office Problem

The Great Relearning about the Great Office Problem

by • Comment, Flexible working, Technology, Workplace design

A person using computer in style of edward hopper in an office at nightOne of the latest people to invent activity-based working is sociologist Ana Andjelic, who combines it with the similarly familiar hub and spoke office model on her substack as a solution to the Great Office Problem. She’s not the first and is a less surprising pioneer of a decades old model than some other people who should really know better. That includes an architectural practice who came up with the idea earlier this year and whose name escapes me. More →

Flexible working should be the norm for as many people as possibe

Flexible working should be the norm for as many people as possibe

by • Comment, Flexible working

The UK government has announced that all workers will now gain the right to request flexible working as a day one right – as to after 6 months of employment in the previous legislation. This move is a very welcome one, yet not enough to make flexible working a norm for all workers. To ensure that workers are truly able to access flexible working arrangements, we need to tackle the flexibility stigma still rampant in the UK. More →

The unspoken privilege of wellbeing

The unspoken privilege of wellbeing

by • Comment, SF, Wellbeing

Two women talking in a pleasant and well designed office, one on a bench the other a swing, to illustrate the importance of wellbeingI sat in the main hall at a recent conference, listening to the keynote presentation. A Head of HR at a large manufacturing company described the implementation of their wellbeing strategy over the last year. So far, so important. There is no doubt that the conversation around wellbeing has been rightly amplified, as employees are seeking to gain and maintain more life in their work-life balance. However, as I sat there listening, I became uncomfortable. Seriously uncomfortable. Then I became cross. More →

Is carbon counting really the answer for the office furniture industry?

Is carbon counting really the answer for the office furniture industry?

by • Comment, Environment, JK

A footprint on a beach to illustrate how the office furniture sector and others need to take a more sophisticated approach to environmental issuesThere is an increasing awareness that carbon is contained within all the products we buy. As an example, a leading sports trainer manufacturer is now displaying carbon content labelling, rather like food retailers quote calories. Within the workplace sector, the environmental impact of the built environment and products such as office furniture and flooring are seemingly well known. This must include consideration regarding how refurbishments and changes to embrace new working practices are managed responsibly. More →

The workplace circus continues to entertain, but back in the real world…

The workplace circus continues to entertain, but back in the real world…

by • Comment, Flexible working, Technology, Wellbeing

A painting of a clown sitting alone, waiting to enter the workplace circusThe Great Workplace Circus headlines its 322nd show of the year with everybody’s favourite distraction, Elon Musk, being driven into the ring by his own shoddily built clown car, declaring he needs everybody at Twitter to be ‘extremely hardcore’ before sacking a few people from his space programme, then setting fire to the tent himself. The swarm of stories spawned by this extraordinary behaviour include this tired and predictable rant in the Telegraph about ‘lazy Brits’. Ironically, there’s nothing lazier than a columnist on this rag with some space to fill. More →

Problems at Twitter, grease proof chairs, and the trouble with AI

Problems at Twitter, grease proof chairs, and the trouble with AI

by • Comment, Flexible working, Technology, Workplace design

The level of layoffs at several Big Tech firms has been the main source of news and comment over the past week or two. Around 11,000 people at Facebook and another 7,500 at Twitter are to be made redundant. Elon Musk then ensured the conversation moved on by forbidding remote work completely. More →

Summing up where the office now stands in the scheme of things

Summing up where the office now stands in the scheme of things

by • Comment, Flexible working

A painting in the style of Edward Hopper of a lone man waiting to board a commuter train to get to the office The argument about what it takes to encourage people to come into the office more often seems to have boiled down to an equation. It’s now common to hear somebody argue that the office has to be worth the commute it takes to get to it. So, if you want people to spend more time in the building, you need to do the maths. O must be greater than or equal to C More →

The human mind and body are not really machines for living in

The human mind and body are not really machines for living in

by • Comment, Workplace

It is ironic that while we live in a world in which we are witnessing the automation of more and more human skills and capabilities, we are often best able to understand the way people function with symbols of mechanisation. That is the underlying conceit of what turned out to be one of the animated film events of recent years, Pixar’s Inside Out. The movie depicts the inner workings of the human brain as under the control of tiny people, literally inside our heads, making decisions on our behalf we only half understand. More →

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