July 5, 2018

Responsible office fit-out toolkit published by Building Better Partnerships

by Neil Franklin • News, Property, Workplace design

Commercial property trade body Building Better Partnerships (BBP) has today published its latest free industry guidance – Responsible Fit-Out Toolkit: Offices. The Toolkit claims to provide guidance for owners and occupiers on how to integrate sustainability and wellbeing into an office fit-out. The authors claim that while workplace design plays a pivotal role in demonstrating a business’s values and can have an immense impact on the comfort and productivity of those working within and visiting a space, opportunities are rarely fully appreciated.

July 5, 2018

White paper: How the workplace is pioneering the use of data in organisations

by Anthony Brown • Briefing, Features, Premium Content, Technology, Workplace design

In 2017, a content creator called Oobah Butler decided that he wanted to do something with the experience he’d gained writing fake positive restaurant reviews on TripAdvisor. What if, he wondered, he set up an entirely fictitious restaurant based in the shed in his garden and then started to manipulate TripAdvisor ratings? What happened surpassed his wildest expectations. In just six months, The Shed at Dulwich became the top-rated restaurant in London, even though nobody had ever actually eaten there, based solely on fake reviews, fake pictures and the word of mouth created by a complete inability for anybody to book a table.

July 4, 2018

Podcast: The British new wave and the evolution of the workplace

by Mike Petrusky • Facilities management, Flexible working, Podcasts, Premium Content, Technology, Workplace design

In this podcast I talk to Mark Eltringham about British music, which leads to a discussion about bands from the early days of new wave in Liverpool, including Echo & The Bunnymen. The evolution of music serves as a metaphor which leads to a conversation about the history of the workplace where Mark shares his perspective on some of the founding thought leaders in our modern sector. I ask him about today’s places of work and Mark references a recent report from Chris Hood of AWA, Kate Lister of Global Workplace Analytics and Haworth while also sharing some research provided by Leesman Index. We talk about the blurring of the lines and need for collaboration across departments inside organizations, the relationship between facilities management and workplace as a whole, while also discussing the controversy in the UK about the future of the FM sector.

June 28, 2018

Ten demonstrable truths about the workplace you may not know

by Kerstin Sailer • Comment, Facilities management, Features, Workplace design

The science of the workplace has gained a lot of interest over the last few years, highlighting recurring patterns of human behaviour as well as how organisational behaviour relates to office design. In theory, knowledge from this growing body of research could be used to inform design. In practice, this is rarely the case. A survey of 420 architects and designers highlighted a large gap between research and practice: while 80 percent of respondents agreed that more evidence was needed on the impact of design, 68 percent admitted they never reviewed literature and 71 percent said they never engaged in any sort of post-occupancy evaluation. Only 5 percent undertake a formal POE and just 1 percent do so in a rigorous fashion. Not a single practitioner reported a report on the occupied scheme, despite its importance in understanding the impact of a design.

June 22, 2018

Organisations are easily distracted from the task of creating a great workplace strategy

by Chris Hood • Comment, Facilities management, Property, Workplace design

Earlier this month The Once Alternative Workplace Strategies 2018 workplace study was published. This study is the only known longitudinal workplace study and it was recently resurfaced by a group of volunteers to maintain a comparative thread of data on the evolution of workplace thought and practice now going back many years. Unfortunately, the results of this global study demonstrate that a high percentage of companies still see once alternative and now modern workplace strategies as a real estate initiative and not the opportunity to reinvent their businesses in deeper and more transformational ways. Workplace innovation is a litmus test for management quality and leadership. This isn’t about real estate, it’s actually about people and business outcomes.

June 21, 2018

The future of the workplace emerges from the mists at Neocon

by John Sacks • Features, Furniture, Workplace design

Chicago is one of the world’s great cities. Its dramatic lake and river setting, its magnificent architecture and its raw energy inspire the locals and businesses to achieve great things. People work and play very hard. Competition is fierce both in business as in the way the people relate to each other, and befits a city heavily influenced by waves of immigration down the ages. Apart from somewhat overly aggressive and noisy driving, if there is friction, you don’t sense it and it isn’t obvious. Most locals seem genuinely open and friendly, including to strangers, and happy to get on with their lives without troubling others. Perhaps they’re all being buoyed up by the great street music which is everywhere.

June 19, 2018

We should not be quite so quick to demonise the open plan office

by Nigel Oseland • Facilities management, Features, Furniture, Workplace design

There is a witch hunt on in the workplace. “Open plan” has become a dirty word and the national press are leading the mob in vilifying this so-called scourge. The Guardian, The Independent, The Telegraph, The Daily Mail and Business Week have all reported that “we can’t get anything done in an open-plan office” as it affects our concentration, our performance and our health. These news items are all damning, but perhaps not as damming as the Wikipedia entry on open plan which states: “A systematic survey of research upon the effects of open plan offices found frequent negative effects in some traditional workplaces: high levels of noise, stress, conflict, high blood pressure and a high staff turnover… Most people prefer closed offices… there is a dearth of studies confirming positive impacts on productivity from open plan office designs”.

June 15, 2018

Noise pollution in offices is worsening and people are leaving jobs as a result

by Sara Bean • Facilities management, Flexible working, News, Wellbeing, Workplace, Workplace design

The majority of executives and employees report near-constant noise in their workplace and many say they lack quiet space for meetings or to focus, a new report from Oxford Economics, commissioned by Plantronics has claimed. According to the report, conditions are much worse now than three years ago when Oxford Economics conducted its first study. The report polled senior executives and non-manager employees in the UK and across the globe to learn more about productivity and collaboration as it relates to the open office. It found that open offices aren’t delivering on collaboration and productivity goals. Instead, employees are finding alternative ways to find quiet space and focus. In fact three quarters of employees say they need to take walks outside and 32 percent listen to headphones to focus and block out distraction, while employees in the noisiest office environments are more likely to say they’ll leave their job in the next six months.

June 15, 2018

The week in seven stories about work, technology and people

by Mark Eltringham • Features, Technology, Workplace, Workplace design

Digital addiction: how technology keeps us hooked

Plumber wins gig workers’ rights battle

Why exhaustion is not unique to our overstimulated age

Ten red flags signalling your analytics program will fail

The CEO society and our culture of metric fixation

The bottom line on coworking spaces

It’s time we value our data – as people and society

June 12, 2018

Keeping people at the heart of the modern workplace

by Ryan Anderson • Comment, Technology, Workplace design

The modern workplace is undergoing significant change, and it’s no surprise that many of these changes are driven by the adoption of new technologies. However, unlike previous eras of technological change, most of the technologies being adopted by organizations today have the potential to offer more autonomy, choice and flexibility to their employees. This can cause disconnects (literally) with the built environment, but it’s also possible for those who design and manage work spaces to adopt a new mindset to stay in lockstep with technological change and to ensure the creation of positive workplace experiences.

June 12, 2018

BCO to provide definitive guidance on enabling wellbeing in the office

by Sara Bean • Facilities management, Flexible working, News, Wellbeing, Workplace design

A major research study “Wellness Matters: Health and Wellbeing in offices and what to do about it” by The British Council for Offices (BCO) is being launched today. The study critiques existing Health and Wellbeing measurement and certification, identifies the most recent and relevant medical evidence justifying a proactive approach to Health and Wellbeing in the built environment, and articulates the business case for investment in this space beyond simply improving productivity. More →

June 11, 2018

Coworking is breaking away from its cultural and geographical stereotypes

by Gary Chandler • Comment, Property, Technology, Workplace design

There is a persistent image of a coworking space as a sort of glorified serviced office for tech and creative startups who can’t afford the eye-watering rents in the areas they need to be. This is usually in the technology hothouses of the world’s major cities where they can work alongside the corporate giants and fellow innovators that thrive there. The reason such perceptions exist is because they are largely true. It’s no coincidence that coworking spaces have thrived up till now in the world’s most expensive property markets – in London, Hong Kong and New York, serving exactly the sorts of start-ups and freelancers who rely on proximity to their potential clients.