April 8, 2024

New issue of IN Magazine + All you need to know about new flexible working rights + A warning from history about office design

Insight Weekly includes a round up of the best stories and commentary from the past seven days. It includes free premium content including features, podcasts, supplements and a link to the digital editions of IN Magazine and Works Magazine. In this week’s issue: it now costs more to commute by train than car in the UK; everything you need to know about flexible working rights and other new legislation; the new issue of IN Magazine; what remote work is doing to people’s pay and careers; and a thirty year old take about an office design that has lessons for today; our Events diary; and much more. You can subscribe to this and our magazines here.

March 29, 2024

FAANGs for the memories: how tech palaces lost their lustre

by Helen Parton • Features, Flexible working, IN Magazine, Premium Content, Technology, Workplace design

I was alerted by the great Jack Pringle during a presentation course he was giving to an unforgettable YouTube clip of Steve Jobs speaking to the local council as part of a planning application for his Apple Park in California, one of the great tech palaces that sprang up in the wake of the digital revolution. Jobs, in familiar black polo neck jumper and wire-rimmed spectacles, took the officials of Cupertino City Council on a journey of opportunity, awe and inspiration. More →

March 19, 2024

New issue of Works magazine focuses on sustainable office design

by Mick Jordan • Environment, Premium Content, Workplace design, Works Magazine

As you’ll see as you make your way through this new issue of Works magazine, we’ve spent even more time than usual discussing and learning about sustainable office design – and in particular how the interiors industry is determined to keep sustainable products, business practices and processes at the forefront of our thinking. More →

March 12, 2024

No more zero sum games … the Workplace Cocktail Hour with Joe Croft

by Neil Franklin • Environment, Podcasts, Premium Content, Workplace Cocktail Hour

For the second week running, the football talk takes place off mike. Joe Croft shares a coffee and a chat with Mark Eltringham. Instead of the mixed fortunes of Middlesbrough and Stoke City, they talk about everything to do with sustainability in office fitout and construction. They discuss the limit of accreditations and standards, the need to get beyond box ticking and greenwash and what best practice really looks like. They also discuss what might happen when our favoured recycled materials become scarce, and also how resource hungry the online and digital world is. More →

March 5, 2024

Finding the spark of creativity in the routine and boredom of every day

by Mark Eltringham • Features, Premium Content

Every day, after a leisurely breakfast in bed and the opening of his post, Roald Dahl would wander down his garden to the grubby little hut crammed with personal paraphernalia he had created. There he would sharpen the six yellow pencils that were always by his side while he worked, settle into an armchair, put his feet up on an old suitcase filled with logs, place an American yellow legal pad of paper onto a makeshift board on his lap and work for two hours. More →

March 1, 2024

The only way is ethics … the Workplace Cocktail Hour with David Sharp

by Neil Franklin • AI, Facilities management, Podcasts, Premium Content, Technology, Wellbeing, Workplace Cocktail Hour

David Sharp joins Mark Eltringham on the Workplace Cocktail Hour to share a bourbon, discuss a wide range of issues – and avoid one that won’t help either of them. They discuss the ethics of artificial intelligence, why we need more friction in our lives (and less seamlessness), the philosophy of work, how to deal with social media, the importance of making your own life more difficult on purpose, and the pleasures of finding out you are wrong about something.
More →

March 1, 2024

They call it mellow yellow. Issue 19 of IN Magazine lands

by Mark Eltringham • Environment, Flexible working, IN Magazine, Premium Content, Property, Technology, Workplace design

The new issue of IN Magazine has been published online today. In this issue: we ask why firms are so reluctant to change what they do; a dream of the past and future of work; Andy Lake talks about his new, visionary book; how AI might make cities worse; what inclusive design means; a panel of experts discuss what changing work practices mean for major business districts; why we must rethink how we light our streets and squares; how to strike the right balance when it comes to creating meetings in offices; and we take a grand tour through the Bucharest HQ of the world’s biggest travel group. More →

February 19, 2024

Going with the flow … with Domino Risch

by Neil Franklin • Flexible working, Podcasts, Premium Content, Workplace Cocktail Hour, Workplace design

Domino Risch uses her new found freedom to discuss the limitations of relying on a single place to get work done. Sharing a hot drink separated by numerous time zones, she chats with Mark Eltringham about what firms get wrong about hybrid and in-office work, the best places to have ideas and how hard the modern world makes it to achieve flow states. They discuss the potential of anthropology to change the way we work. And what the current news about Deutsche Bank’s insistence people come into the office on Mondays and Fridays tells us about the avoidable tensions that exist in the tedious debate about remote work and so-called return to office mandates. More →

February 13, 2024

Raising the bar (and hell) with Antony Slumbers

by Neil Franklin • News, Podcasts, Premium Content, Workplace Cocktail Hour

Over a well-earned but unseasonable G&T, Antony Slumbers and Mark Eltringham discuss what makes work and workplaces great, and why bosses aren’t doing all they can to make them so. They also riff on the origins and wisdom of determining how much time people should spend in an office and how we escape the interminable binary loop of headlines about whether the home or the office is a better place to work. Antony talks about the role of AI in the future of work and property and what people should focus on in their changing lives. More →

January 29, 2024

Lab rats – how the UK life sciences sector is struggling to find space to work

by Chris Barlow • Features, Premium Content, Property

In November 2023, plans to turn part of a golf course next to a motorway into a £340 million science park were refused by South Oxfordshire District Council. Although now classified as greenbelt, the location was the site of a landfill as recently as the 1990s and is just a stone’s throw from both the A40 trunk road and M40 motorway. The developers are expected to appeal. Whatever the details of this story, it is an example of how challenging it can be to meet demand for lab and life sciences space in the so-called Golden Triangle of London, Oxford and Cambridge in the South of England. This lack of supply is acting as a brake on the UK Government’s dream of making the country a “science superpower”. More →

January 19, 2024

A hazy shade of Winter: Nigel Oseland sounds off on the Workplace Cocktail Hour

by Mark Eltringham • News, Podcasts, Premium Content, Wellbeing, Workplace Cocktail Hour

It’s bitterly cold outside but over a glass of hazy IPA, Nigel Oseland and Mark Eltringham warm to a conversation about fish guts, the sounds that make us cringe, what comfort means to different people and what it would really take to get them to spend more time in the office. And it’s not free fruit, corporate sanctioned togetherness or quirky office features. Nigel also explains why firms might be getting it wrong when it comes to managing which people use which spaces in agile environments. We also discuss how people overestimate their own productivity and underestimate that of their colleagues and what that means for the way we organise. More →