January 31, 2018

Creators of the Edge in Amsterdam to develop new generation of Smart buildings

by Sara Bean • Architecture, Facilities management, News, Property, Technology, Wellbeing, Workplace design

The creative team behind the development of the world’s most sustainable building – The Edge in Amsterdam – has announced the launch of a real estate technology company. EDGE Technologies, launched by OVG Real Estate CEO Coen van Oostrom will focus on creating a new generation of buildings which feature the latest innovations in sustainability and wellbeing. Whereas parent company OVG is focussed exclusively on the development of its existing portfolio, EDGE Technologies will focus on both the development and the long-term operations of this new generation of buildings, aiming for a cohesive experience across cities. Each EDGE building will be built and operated on the same technology platform and offer consistent user-centred design, created to serve the needs of today’s fast-changing and demanding workforce. To help achieve this the new company is launching a product that will capture and aggregate data across its properties in order to optimize, measure and inform both the user experience and the building’s environmental performance. More →

January 30, 2018

Harnessing serendipity in the workplace is about more than facilitating the unexpected

by Ilkka Kakko • Comment, Technology, Workplace design

What if your company had a great and more frequent ability to discover more valuable things than those for which it were usually looking? How would you then begin to describe your company’s overall level of awareness and sagacity? Does it make your company ’feel lucky’? Inspiring questions and understanding serendipity might give some answers to these and other questions. One of the challenges in answering them lies in the nebulous idea of serendipity in the first place. In many respects the idea of serendipity carries with it a mystical undercurrent and even researchers do not agree about a precise definition. However, serendipity is never a ’happy accident’, it’s much, much more than that. The key elements in the process of serendipity include: 1) a prepared mind 2) an unexpected event, encounter, result or contradiction 3) insight and 4) value creation. Not only is serendipity a process, but it is also a quality of mind.

January 29, 2018

Financial companies learning to better utilise office space to attract right talent

by Sara Bean • Flexible working, News, Property, Workplace, Workplace design

Financial services organisations are reducing the amount of commercial office space they require as they adopt more flexible work styles. This is according to a new report from HOK’s US team, The New Financial Workplace, an investigation into the threats and challenges facing the financial services industry, with a special focus on how new technologies like cryptocurrency, biometrics and blockchain are disrupting the sector. Financial services companies are being challenged by the emerging fintech industry, says the report, which is projected to grow to $8 billion in 2018. These traditional companies must adopt the cultures and workplace design practices of the technology industry to stay ahead.

January 22, 2018

People who work in an open plan office feel worse and are less satisfied

by Mark Eltringham • News, Wellbeing, Workplace design

The ongoing debate about the impact of open plan offices on people’s wellbeing and productivity continues to divide opinion. While there is a large amount of data from the likes of Leesman Index and workplace expert Nigel Oseland to suggest that an open plan office is the best solution when applied in the right way and right context, a new study from Karlstad University claims the opposite. The more co-workers that share of a workplace, the less satisfied employees are, and the more difficult they think it is to work collaboratively.

January 19, 2018

Seven of the best workplace stories from the last week (or so)

by Mark Eltringham • Facilities management, Features, Property, Technology, Workplace, Workplace design

The radical idea of a world without jobs

What AI can and can’t do (yet) for your business

WeWork harms 40 percent of coworking spaces in its vicinity

No blind spots in leopards’ eyes: five hopes for Workplace in 2018

Women and men in STEM at odds over workplace equity

Economists grapple with the future of the labour market

Forget Blockchain and Bitcoin, AI is where you should be focussing

January 19, 2018

You might be surprised at which nations work the longest and shortest hours

by Mark Eltringham • Workplace design

The stereotype of certain nationalities as feckless while others are industrious is upended by new data from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), which shows that Mexicans work significantly longer hours than anyone else in the world, the Greeks are the Europeans who spend most time at work while the Germans clock up the fewest hours of any of the 35 nations in the survey. In 2016, the average Mexican spent 2,255 hours at work, the equivalent of around 43 hours per week. Greeks worked the longest hours in Europe, at an average 2,035 hours per year with German workers putting in just 1,363 hours per year. The average UK worker, both employed and self-employed, put in an average of 1,676 hours.

January 9, 2018

The year we discover the elemental workplace

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

We love a survey. Not a week passes without another startling revelation of the poor condition of our workplace, the fragile state of our engagement, or the dearth of meaning at the heart of our daily pursuits. The data (and I use the term lightly) tells us we want to be productive, if only we could be productive. Our intent and motivation is never in question. We have become masters of realising and articulating that we have a problem, and so we ask ourselves over and over just to make absolutely sure. We bang the table, we sound enlightened when we declare “something must be done!” Unless, of course, you work in one of the 10 Coolest Workplaces in the World in which case you are okay and do not need to worry. Unless you worry that yours is not as cool as the others in the list, envy is a terrible thing. We are drowning in hastily-gathered, invariably sponsored survey data, yet suffer a poverty of solutions.

January 8, 2018

Seven stories to get your week (and 2018) off to a flying start

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

How PropTech will change in 2018

China’s supernova cities

Video: Capitalism without capital

The State of the (property management) nation

Ten workplace trends you’ll see in 2018

Deconstructing the high rise

The best ideas and inventions of 2017

Image: CCTV headquarters in Beijing by OMA

January 2, 2018

Seven stories that got us thinking over the holiday season

by Mark Eltringham • Architecture, Facilities management, Features, Property, Technology, Workplace design

Around the world in 80 architecture offices

If work dominated your every moment would life be worth living?

Ten years in and nobody has come up with a use for blockchain

The case against digital transformation

All the creepy, crazy and amazing things that happened in AI in 2017

The tyranny of competence: why it is bad for us to be ‘good enough’

The dangers of dark nudging

December 28, 2017

The most read workplace stories from the last twelve months

by Mark Eltringham • Architecture, Facilities management, Features, Technology, Workplace, Workplace design

One of the greatest joys of online publishing is the opportunity it offers to reflect on the demonstrable preoccupations and interests of an informed audience. We can see what professionals see as the most important issues they face by what they read in the UK’s most widely read publication in its field. It’s especially heartening to see that those do not include the usual glib misdirections about Millennials, gimmicky office design, robots, open plan and ‘trends’ that have been more or less commonplace for years. We can leave those to others. Instead you have been seeking out stories that challenge the lazy mainstream narratives, reflect the reality of the endlessly shifting landscape of work, understand the challenges involved and retain a focus on the human beings at the centre of it all. So, here are the ten most read pieces from Workplace Insight published over the past 365 days. More →

December 22, 2017

Seven workplace design and management stories that you must read this week

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

The jingle jangle of work non-work balance

Productive healthy ageing and musculoskeletal health

Understanding modern work in an age of insecurity

The death of employee engagement or a happy ending?

Is the era of management over?

The paradox of choice in the workplace

Ten workplace meta-trends for 2018 (really)

December 19, 2017

We need to have an honest conversation about presenteeism

by Steve Brewer • Comment, Flexible working, Workplace design

We have talked before about the risks of over thinking problems. It is not just something that consultants, designers and the workplace intelligentsia are guilty of – everyone does it. It is why we do not switch off when we are ill and still insist on going to work. We over think the consequences of not being in our workplace. Likewise, many traditional line managers simply cannot get their head around their teams working from home. After all, modern management mantras all talk about creating a great atmosphere in which teams all work together – in the same space at the same time? We all tend to over complicate most things and that is one of the main reasons in the UK we struggle with the concept of working from home. A consequence of this is the rise in presenteeism, which is mainly linked to illness, people ignoring how bad they feel and because of a perceived pressure, still turning up for work.