December 3, 2018

Ten UK employment law changes to look out for in 2019

From gender pay gap reporting to widespread claims of workplace sexual harassment, 2018 has been a busy year in employment law. Although employers may hope for a quieter 2019, it’s looking likely that there will be a number of issues that are prevalent throughout the year, amid the ongoing uncertainty of Brexit. Below are just ten changes employers need to look out for. Whilst there are sure to be other new developments introduced throughout next year, employers would do well to keep a close eye on these particular topics and put plans in place to ensure their business complies with any new requirements.

November 30, 2018

How the way we interact with technology is changing the way we think

by Charles Marks • Comment, Technology, Workplace design

We are all familiar with the emoticon, the little symbol we use to strengthen whatever it is we really mean or would like to convey in a text, chat, message or email. The symbols have become more important as these forms of communication have supplanted some forms of face to face contact. Researchers have now learned that our brains no longer treat emoticons as a form of punctuation, but have started to respond to it as if it were a real face. A study published in the journal Social Neuroscience found that the part of the brain that is activated when we look at real faces is now triggered by smileys too. It’s yet another example of how our brains are adapting to the changing demands placed on them by technology, a subject that not only has profound implications for the way we relate to technology but also the way we work and the ways we design and manage our surroundings and especially how we maintain focus and interact with our colleagues.

November 28, 2018

Government treading carefully with proposed plans for gig workers

by Neil Tonks • Comment, Flexible working, Legal news

Leaked government plans to protect the working rights of people operating in the gig economy will help to stop unscrupulous employers from exploiting low-paid workers by stamping out false self-employment. But it is questionable whether this goes far enough. More →

November 23, 2018

Communities are the key factor to rapid growth of coworking

by Petr Boruta • Comment, Coworking, Property, Workplace design

London, New York, Los Angeles. These are top three cities in number of coworking centres globally. But as coworking map is evolving rapidly, you might as well read about Warsaw and Prague as new hotbeds for shared offices soon. And the surprising reason behind that is not flexibility, but the power of communities.

November 19, 2018

A cheap day return to Farringdon, please

by Neil Usher • Comment, Facilities management

Timing is everything. Re-launching a professional body while the country’s politics unceremoniously implode could not have been foreseen, but the vacuous space was full of the registered and invited, many with a trail of string going back a few decades or more. What a lovely gathering of old friends it was. On Monday 12th The BIFM formally changed its name to the Institute of Workplace and Facilities Management. This event was to reveal the new creative collateral and celebrate the optimism/excitement/apprehension (delete as applicable).

November 18, 2018

What The Midwich Cuckoos can teach us about Millennials

by Mark Eltringham • Comment, Workplace

John Wyndham’s 1957 novel The Midwich Cuckoos is the story of a fictional English village in which, following an unexplained event that causes everybody within Midwich to fall unconscious, all of the women in the village fall pregnant and 61 children are subsequently born all at the same time. The children bear absolutely no physical resemblance to their parents, with pale skin, blond hair and piercing eyes. As they grow older it also becomes apparent that they are strange, emotionless and have a telepathic bond with each other. It’s not much of a spoiler to tell you that things don’t go well. The only rationale for what had happened to create the children in the first place is an unexplained incident of xenogenesis – the birth of offspring unlike their parents. Something similar must have happened on a global scale from the beginning of the 1980s onwards, at least based on what we are told about Millennials.

November 15, 2018

Are you ready for the world of agile working we will experience in the 2020s?

by John Eary and Paul Allsopp • Comment, Facilities management, Workplace design

Some organisations believe they have ‘done’ Agile Working. They have increased the ratio of people to desks and achieved a saving in accommodation costs. They have provided flexible working arrangements across the organisation and have enabled their people to work at home for part of their working week. Staff surveys show employees are pleased with the opportunities and benefits this provides them. But organisations cannot afford to become comfortable or complacent, there are greater opportunities to grasp. As in any transformation initiative, Agile Working is more than a project it is a cultural journey involving continuing change to achieve continuous improvement. Agile Working is moving on.

November 13, 2018

Fostering creativity within organisations through space and culture

by Serena Borghero • Comment, Workplace design

In organisations around the world, hierarchical structures are breaking down, replaced by deeply interconnected, constantly shifting networks, linked by innovative technology. Meanwhile, huge leaps forward in artificial intelligence promise to fundamentally change the nature of work, either by enhancing or replacing human-beings. Research by McKinsey suggests that half of today’s work activities could be automated by 2055, with repetitive and process-based roles the first to go. For employees, this looks likely to mean a greater focus on creative skills, where humans retain an advantage. These skills are not restricted to being purely artistic, as creativity describes the process of problem-solving in a new way. The rise of creativity is also being driven by new generations entering the workplace with different demands and expectations than those before them.

November 8, 2018

Your relationship with your boss may be playing a role in your stress levels

by Martin Turner and Matthew Slater • Comment, Wellbeing

Everybody knows how horrible it is to be stressed out at work. Sadly, across the world, employees are being subjected to increasing work demands and, as a result, work stress is on the rise. As we try to understand the root of the problem, we often end up blaming our boss. But is that really fair? Our new study, published in The Leadership Quarterly, suggests that your relationship with your boss does influence how you respond to stress.

November 7, 2018

Will technology prove a threat or a godsend in the new workplace?

by Matt Weston • Comment, Technology, Workplace

In the past decade, the business landscape has fundamentally shifted with the emergence of companies like Uber and Netflix, in addition to the rapid growth of large technology companies such as Apple and Amazon. Underlying this shift is the constant evolution and implementation of technology into the workplace. In a recent report, the World Economic Forum stated that digitisation could add a staggering $100 trillion to businesses by 2025.

November 5, 2018

An intersectional approach to trends in workplace design at Orgatec 2018

by Mark Eltringham • Comment, Workplace design

There are perhaps three characteristics that ensure the European office furniture and workplace design fair Orgatec continues to attract so many exhibitors and visitors to Cologne. Firstly, it takes place every two years, so offers a snapshot of a sector, framing the most important workplace developments in a particular time and place. For those of us who’ve been attending the shows for any length of time (in my case 26 years), we can track the evolution of workplace thought in a measured way, noting key developments like the launch of the Aeron chair (1994), Vitra’s Alcove (2006) and in 2018 – what?

November 2, 2018

Happiness at work: Lessons from home

by Dr Tracy Brower • Comment, Facilities management, Wellbeing, Workplace, Workplace design

Thanks to technology and mobility, our work has come home with us. So it’s only fair that home should come to work, right? It would seem logical that if people sit in front of a TV on the sofa at home while they work remotely, employees would be thrilled to have a similar set up within their office. However, in the workplaces where we’ve seen companies install couches and big screen TVs, those work spaces are almost never used by employees. Those companies missed the bigger picture. Home is as much an emotional experience as a physical one.