February 12, 2020

Workplace leaders must adapt to a new technological reality

by Brian Kropp • Comment, Technology, Workplace

I speak with senior workplace leaders daily and those conversations, coupled with our research and that of other people, offer us a striking perspective on the trends and changing nature of the workplace and in particular the impact of technology. Some themes are cropping up time and time again in these conversations and research and point to a new technology-led reality that we must all address. More →

February 5, 2020

Bridging the gap between the reality and perception of engagement

by Callum Gill • Comment, Flexible working, Technology, Workplace

Organisations are currently operating against a backdrop of environmental, social, political and technological upheaval. Changes in the way people work, buy, communicate and live their lives abound while the communications narratives become ever more complex. The zeitgeist dictates how an organisation’s purpose and communications should match the growing expectations placed on it by its identity and need to address its engagement with staff and the outside world. More →

February 4, 2020

Blundering blindly towards the truth about work and workplaces

by Mark Eltringham • Comment, Workplace

If you don’t like some of the stories we publish on Insight, you should see the ones we reject. It’s something I catch myself saying a lot and underlying it is an awareness that bullshit can be appealing. We should apply the smell test to stories and go in search of what might best be described as the facts, contradictions and nuances that are characteristic elements of some sort of truth. More →

January 29, 2020

Don`t believe what you read about wellbeing, except this

by Mark Eltringham • Comment, Wellbeing, Workplace, Workplace design

As we are told repeatedly, the modern workplace is not very good for our physical and mental wellbeing, and potentially a death trap. Most of us are lucky to get home in one piece at the end of each day, regardless of the job we do. More →

January 24, 2020

Workplace culture can eat strategy for breakfast

by Alistair Craig • Comment, Workplace design

It was management consultant and author Peter Drucker who coined the well-worn maxim that “culture eats strategy for breakfast”. But often it is used in the wrong way. Far from suggesting that culture alone dictates workplace function, he presented culture as a first among equals. A strategy that does not heed culture is more likely to fail. A culture without strategy is prone to go adrift. It is vital for an organisation to be aware of its own culture and subcultures. Without self-awareness, the steps to improve or nuture those within the organisation will be futile. More →

January 22, 2020

We might spot patterns in office design, but a global picture is beyond us

by Mark Eltringham • Comment, Facilities management, Workplace design

The ongoing evolution in the design of the places we work has much in common with evolution in the natural world. But whereas natural selection is dependent on its ‘Blind Watchmaker’ to indirectly shape creatures in response to the constantly changing forces in their environment own, office design is anything but blind – at least it is when done intelligently and with insight. More →

January 21, 2020

The vaguery of workplace serendipity

by Neil Usher • Comment, Facilities management, Technology, Workplace design

It has become vogue to refer to the workplace as being ‘all about people’. It points in all directions at once. Organisations need fit, healthy, happy, skilled, motivated, engaged and purposeful people being (and feeling) productive and doing their best work every day. They want their people working closely together – they’ve spent a lot of time and money drawing in those they feel can contribute to a whole that is other than the sum of the parts. More →

January 20, 2020

Digital culture is key to attracting contingent workforce

by Mike Ryan • Comment, Workplace

Over the past decade, we’ve witnessed a radical change in the makeup of workforces in the UK and globally. The rise of flexible workforces continues unabated, to the point where contingent workers are a significant and vital part of the employment fabric. Demonstrating this point, recent research by the City & Guilds Group found that 84 percent of UK employers use contingent workers, and 35 percent anticipate they will rely on them more in the next 3-5 years. More →

January 16, 2020

What Baloo can teach us about our suspicion of tall buildings

by Mark Eltringham • Architecture, Cities, Comment

“What Baloo had said about the monkeys was perfectly true. They belonged to the tree-tops, and as beasts very seldom look up, there was no occasion for the monkeys and the Jungle-People to cross each other’s path.” Of course, Rudyard Kipling meant this figuratively but there is a clear link between ‘up’ in the figurative sense and ‘up’ in the physical sense. The executives at Omnicorp don’t lease the most expensive offices in a tower in so they can sit around on the ground floor watching the hoi polloi pass by at street level. They need to be at the top of the building looking down on them. More →

January 14, 2020

The Fourth Industrial Revolution is upon us and we`re not ready for it

by Jamie Morgan • Comment, Technology

Cast your mind back a decade or so and consider how the future looked then. A public horizon of Obama-imbued “yes we can” and a high tide of hope and tolerance expressed in the London Olympics provides one narrative theme; underlying austerity-induced pressure another. Neither speaks directly to our current world of divisive partisan politics, toxic social media use, competing facts and readily believed fictions. More →

January 9, 2020

Putting the responsibility into personal and corporate social responsibility ⁰

by Mark Eltringham • Comment, Environment, Wellbeing

You’re probably aware of the experiment performed by Stanley Milgram in which volunteers were asked by men in white coats to administer what they believed to be electric shocks to another person, who they could not see, but could hear, from behind a screen. Around two-thirds of the volunteers agreed to deliver what they were told to be potentially fatal shocks to the subject, who they could hear screaming and begging them to stop. What they didn’t know was the person they were agreeing to inflict this on was in fact an actor. Although now questioned, Milgram’s findings remain the famous of a series of studies that have attempted to highlight the willingness of humans to bow to authority figures and comply with group norms irrespective of what their own morals might tell them.

January 7, 2020

The culling of freelancers with IR35 is a really, really bad idea

by Dean Sadler • Comment, Flexible working

Imagine a world with no freelancers, holiday cover workers, or people to help fill the hiring gaps on projects. With IR35 extending into the private sector, this could be a reality; and we should be worried that a skilled and flexible workforce of freelancers could soon be extinct. Instead of dealing with the headache of the new regulations, 20 percent of UK businesses said they plan to axe contract workers. Freelancers themselves might be worried about how the new iteration of IR35, due to come into force in April next year, will affect their ability to work, and hastily take on permanent positions. More →