March 7, 2018

Google is the gold standard employer in UK tech sector but small brands can still compete

by Sara Bean • Company news, Facilities management, News, Technology, Wellbeing, Workplace design

Google has been named the Ideal Employer among tech professionals in the 2018 Dice UK Ideal Employer Report. While market leaders including Microsoft, Apple, Amazon, Facebook and IBM are placed highly, the report suggests that smaller tech brands can also attract the top talent through benefits including yoga, in-house cafeterias and more. For many technology professionals, Google is the gold standard employer, with a perfect mix of competitive salary, perks, benefits and interesting work, something smaller companies can learn from. The survey of 464 tech professionals found that simple office upgrades including yoga, colourful furniture and other positive innovative cultural perks can help smaller companies attract the best talent, even if smaller in size. Good work/life balances, open communications and manageable working hours also ranked highly. (more…)

March 6, 2018

How to reboot an activity based working project that has ground to a halt

by Karin Stahl • Comment, Flexible working, Technology, Workplace design

We moved and then nothing happened, is one of the typical problems while evaluating the ups and downs of an activity based working (ABW) journey. The key to success is to kick off and re-start a change that has stopped. A second problem is that the layout of the office not quite meets up to expectations and needs, and a third is that too few feel engagement. It doesn’t necessary work badly, but something itches. What and how to do then? Clearly showing to those in charge what is not working or not has been carried out as it was meant, and showing the arisen consequences due to that, is one of the things that must be done to enable a re-start. But that will not be enough. (more…)

March 5, 2018

About time we simply accepted that coworking and flexible working are the new normal

by Sarah King • Comment, Coworking, Flexible working, Workplace design

Ask someone to list innovative companies which have become notable disruptors in their market and they invariably respond with two names – Uber and Airbnb. That is because both brands are positioned squarely and successfully at the retail consumer: for people who use a taxi or take an occasional short break in a foreign city, they have become the automatic default options. But there is another equally successful business targeting the corporate space, aimed particularly at small businesses and millennial tech start-ups: WeWork. Just like Uber and Airbnb, it is less than a decade old. In that time, WeWork’s ambition of being the world’s leading coworking company has been realised. Championing itself as a disruption revolutionary, it has succeeded more prosaically by ‘creating environments that increase productivity, innovation, and collaboration,’ according to its website. WeWork’s model involves renting office space cheaply via long-term lease contracts. Small units are then re-rented at higher rates to start up companies which are happy to pay a premium because they need very little space.

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March 2, 2018

Seven workplace stories that made us think this week

by Mark Eltringham • Features, Flexible working, Property, Technology, Wellbeing, Workplace design

IBM gives services staff until 2019 to get agile

White collar workers are fleeing their desks to craft a life

The future of real estate tech and how we got here

McMindfulness: Buddhism as sold to you by neoliberals

Why our jobs matter more now than ever before

A psychologist noticed this cool chair illusion in his workplace

How to think about artificial intelligence in real estate

March 1, 2018

Standing desks may not be the wellbeing panacea we’ve been led to believe

by Mark Eltringham • News, Wellbeing, Workplace design

Regular readers will know that we’ve been banging this particular drum for some time (see below), but new research confirms that sitting may not actually be the ‘new smoking’ and standing desks may not be the panacea we’ve been led to believe. A new study published in the journal Ergonomics confirms that standing at a workstation for prolonged periods of computer work can lead to ‘discomfort and deteriorating mental reactiveness’ which in turn can lead to a range of health problems and reduced productivity. As usual, the nuances and limitations of this research have been ignored in the reporting of the study so that now standing desks are seen as a problem when instead they’re a good potential solution as part of a workplace culture that encourages people to move and shift posture more frequently.

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February 28, 2018

Workplace health and wellbeing initiatives do not go far enough say staff

by Sara Bean • News, Wellbeing, Workplace, Workplace design

Employers’ efforts in the US to improve staff health and wellbeing are falling short of employees’ expectations, claims a new report. Nearly two-thirds of employees (65 percent) in a report from Willis Towers Watson agree that managing their health is a top priority, but while the majority of employers (56 percent) believe their wellbeing programmes have encouraged employees to live a healthier lifestyle, only 32 percent of employees agree. Eighty-seven percent of employers who participated in the 22nd annual Best Practices in Health Care Employer Survey say increasing employee engagement in health and well-being is a top priority and the research warns that employees in poor health are twice as likely to be disengaged at work and take almost three times as many days off as employees who are in very good health. Employers can improve health behaviour through designing the workplace environment to make it easier for employees to stay fit, eat well, breathe fresh air and address stress adds the report.

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February 22, 2018

Occupiers incorporating third-party agile space into their real estate strategy

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

Corporate real estate departments need to become more effective partners in the agile transformation of their broader organizations., claims a new survey conducted by CBRE, in partnership with CoreNet Global. When describing Portfolio Agility, i.e. the ability to rapidly adapt, scale and reposition the organization’s real estate portfolio to support shifting enterprise needs, 67 percent consider portfolio agility as the most important type of agility for business success, yet only 14 percent consider themselves highly agile in this area. The most prevalent portfolio agility practices included negotiating flexible space options in the lease, seeking shorter and/or more flexible lease terms, supporting an enterprise-wide flex-work program and delivering free address work environments. The report states that new workplace guidelines for efficiency have altered the way companies plan for density and more occupiers are incorporating third-party ‘agile space’ into their overall real estate strategy.

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February 20, 2018

Open plan offices are distracting and reduce rather than improve productivity, says report

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

Open, collaborative work environments have been hailed as a boost to collaboration and performance, but since individual tasks that require high levels of concentration and minimum disruption still account for over half of the typical working day, noise and distraction within open plan workplaces prevent employees from focusing properly and may reduce productivity, claims a new report. According to research by Unispace, 60 percent of the average working day is devoted to individual task-focused work; 25 percent to collaboration, 7 percent to socialising and the same for learning. The research found that the issue of noise has actually become much worse over the last 12 months, with more workers complaining compared to the same research conducted in 2016. Survey respondents flagged noise (15 percent) as the primary cause of inefficiency during the working week, a number that has risen by four per cent in just 12 months. Second to this was a lack of quiet areas (13 percent), a lack of privacy (9 percent) and 7 percent felt that the temperature and air quality of their office was also a factor. The findings come as part of Unispace’s research of more than 11,000 workers in a global study of working practices and workplace design.

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February 16, 2018

Pearls of elemental wisdom about workplace design and management

by Mark Eltringham • Comment, Facilities management, Workplace design

The greatest conundrum in the endless debate about whether the workplace affects people’s wellbeing and productivity is that it’s still going on at all. We’ve known for decades that people are affected in profound and meaningful ways by their surroundings and the culture in which they work. We know which factors are most important and which work in the absence of others. We know how these factors have shifted in response to changing working cultures and technological advances. And we know which are glib distractions from the real deal.

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February 12, 2018

Luther, Marx, Engels and a nailed-on manifesto for workplace change

by Mark Eltringham • Comment, Facilities management, Workplace design

In October 1517 Martin Luther nailed his Ninety-Five Theses to a church door in Wittenberg, thereby setting in motion the process that we know now as the Reformation. At least since that time, it has been apparent that a revolutionary manifesto needs to be laid at somebody’s door – or nailed to it – at the right moment for it to achieve its aims. Revolutionary manifestos are easy enough to set out, but the tract is nothing without traction.

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February 5, 2018

Developing a cultured nose for what makes workplace design great

by Steve Brewer • Comment, Workplace design

Workplace people are at risk of obsessing about productivity. The idea of what is or is not effective and even the notion of wellbeing, has almost been done to death. We overthink stuff. As Neil Usher might say, there are a few bandwagons people are leaping on a little too eagerly. So, let’s keep it simple. Yes, we need a ‘space’ to work in (or just do stuff), but mostly we need a reason for using it in the first place. One thing most people agree on – even the media and flinty-eyed consultants – is that we need a motivation, a reason to do the things asked of us and a belief or intrinsic connection to do those ‘things’ well.

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February 2, 2018

Every company should champion design and creativity at board level

by Colin Watson • Comment, Products, Workplace design

All business and life are about selling. Well that’s what Mark Price (Lord Price) the previous Managing Director of Waitrose and former Minister with the Department for International Trade said in a recent book, Workplace Fables: 147 True Life Stories. I like Mark Price and his writings but certainly don’t agree with his view about selling. To me business and life are about design. Just close your eyes and imagine life without it. If your imagination could handle this, and when you opened your eyes you would be standing in a field stark naked, because nothing apart from nature would exist. If you had bad eyesight things would be blurred and any illnesses could not be medicated. You may even have trouble eating unless you found some palatable vegetation or a creature willing to be caught, unless of course it did not eat you first.