September 24, 2018

It is not particularly easy to change human behaviour by design

by Mark Eltringham • Comment, Facilities management, Workplace, Workplace design

Many of the techniques employed by modern illusionists rely on a thorough grounding in the research of psychologists. They’re not alone in standing on the shoulders of academics to bend people to their will. Many of our beliefs about the workings of our society and workplaces and their design are based on this sort of manipulation. It’s telling that the growth of consumerism in the 20th Century, especially after the War when we first began to move from a needs based economy to one fuelled by desire, was driven by the ideas of Sigmund Freud’s nephew. Edward Bernays became the ‘father of PR’ by popularising his uncle’s theories in the US then applying them to mould the subconscious desires of the American masses. He did this not just in the name of commerce but also in that of politics because he believed that society was becoming increasingly irrational, immoral and dangerous.

September 18, 2018

Building a culture of creativity that unites the physical and digital workplace

by Serena Borghero • Comment, Technology, Workplace design

Agreeing on the definition of creativity is no easy task, as it can mean a whole range of different things to different people. To some, creativity means painting a beautiful picture or creating a unique sculpture, while for others it might mean writing a catchy tagline, developing a new business model, or building an innovative online tool. The fact is, creativity can be found in all walks of life, not just those we traditionally see as creative, such as art, design or music. And furthermore, it’s playing an increasingly pivotal role in the growth, development and success of all types of organisations, and the employees working for them.

September 14, 2018

All those workplace trends lists that you see? We’ve been there before ⁰

by Mark Eltringham • Comment, Facilities management, Furniture, Workplace design

Conference and show season looms and with it arrives the annual swarm of workplace trend forecasts. These are often presented as groundbreaking but many of them are indistinguishable from each other and based on some very familiar tropes and assumptions. These days such things tend to be shaped into lists, because that’s how the Internet likes it. That is all perfectly natural and we are free to make our own mind up which of these features are meaningful and which are hack jobs. No football pundit was ever fired for stringing together clichés rather than thinking and talking, and no marketing person has ever lost their job for publishing a list of Ten Trends.

September 13, 2018

You should not expect the coworking bubble to burst anytime soon

by Kathryn O'Callaghan-Mills • Comment, Coworking, Property, Workplace design

Coworking is not the norm yet, but it is headed that direction. In fact, a sign of its success is the fact that it has moved from being labelled a fad to asking if it is a bubble about to burst. Here’s a short answer: it is not going to go pop, fizzle out or run out of steam anytime soon. Why would it? Coworking is not something driven by real estate and developers. It reflects how our society is changing.

September 12, 2018

Reinventing jobs for an automated future workplace

by Ravin Jesuthasan • AI, Comment, Technology

Earlier this year, the European Commission announced it will invest €20 billion in Artificial Intelligence (AI) research and development by 2020 to boost the adoption of AI and robotics across multiple industries, which will have a significant impact on the way work across sectors gets done. Facing demographic deficits, Europe and Japan – and to an extent the US and China – are highly motivated to continue investment into AI, which is growing at an annual rate of 15 percent, and set to reach $1 trillion globally by 2050, according to Morgan Stanley.

September 10, 2018

The evolution of the workplace conversation in ten graphs

by Mark Eltringham • Comment, Facilities management, Technology, Workplace design

Based on Google Trends data since 2004 and without comment.

Main image: Herman Miller Living Office

September 7, 2018

How Thomas Jefferson came to invent the swivel chair and laptop ⁰

by Mark Eltringham • Comment, Furniture, Technology, Workplace design

In 1775, Thomas Jefferson was a busy man. As part of the Committee of Five men and at the tender age of 33, he had been charged with drafting the Declaration of Independence that was to be presented to Congress the following Summer. By all accounts, Jefferson was a self-contained and self-sufficient man and, like many great people, a mass of contradictions.

September 6, 2018

Creating a productive workplace for people is all about context

by Mark Eltringham • Comment, Facilities management, Workplace, Workplace design

The quest for a proper understanding of the links between the places we work, the things with which we fill them and our wellbeing and productivity has been ongoing for a very long time. It predates our current thinking on productive workplace design and the facilities management discipline as we now know it by decades and has its roots in the design of early landmark offices such as Frank Lloyd Wright’s Larkin building and research such as that carried out at the Hawthorne Works in Chicago in the late 1920s. Yet the constantly evolving nature of work means that we are forever tantalised by an idea that we can never fully grasp and makes established ideas seem like revelations.

September 4, 2018

Don’t stand so close to me: why personal space matters in the workplace ⁰

by Paul Goodchild • Comment, Wellbeing, Workplace design

As successive BCO Specification Guides and the research of organisations like CoreNet Global have proved, the spatial dynamics of offices have changed dramatically in recent years. Put simply, the modern office serves significantly more people per square foot than ever before. Originally this tightening was largely down to the growing ubiquity of flat screen and the mobile devices, but more recently the major driver of change appears to be the gradual disappearance of personal workstations in favour of more shared space.

August 22, 2018

Why early intervention matters for workplace mental health

by Liz Walker • Comment, Wellbeing, Workplace

Last year alone, poor mental health was the primary cause of long-term absence for 22 percent of organisations, with employees feeling too stressed or anxious to face going in to work. This was up from 13 percent in 2016. However, 45 percent of those who take time off for mental health reasons give their employers another excuse for their absence. Symptoms of mental health can build up when not properly recognised or assessed, but they’re hard to combat when so many employees don’t feel confident enough to open-up about how they’re feeling.

August 21, 2018

How do you make your company culture work for everyone?

by Jonathan Richards • Comment, Workplace

Company culture is the bedrock of any business. And it has been thrown into sharp focus in recent months with many high-profile scandals hitting the headlines such as the discrimination case at Uber. In light of this, many businesses are now investing in – even living and breathing – their company culture. This is of course, great news for employees. Shouting about how your company culture is like being part of a family and how everyone mucks in together may have swayed a new recruits’ decision during their interview. However, have you stopped to think how accessible your culture will be to new team members? Close-knit can often translate to the ‘in-crowd’ and office politics can get in the way of a pleasant working environment if the culture is too close.

August 16, 2018

The office will always live on because nothing propinks like propinquity

by Mark Eltringham • Comment, Property, Workplace design

Perhaps the most pervasive and enduring myth about the office is that it is somehow dying off. It’s a blast of guff originally farted out at the dawn of the technological revolution in the early 1990s, which has somehow lingered and been stinking the place out ever since. The essential premise behind the idea of the death of the office is that mobile technology makes it possible for us to work from ‘anywhere’ and so that must mean ‘somewhere’ is no longer needed. More →