Let battle commence. Here’s Works magazine issue 3

Let battle commence. Here’s Works magazine issue 3

A picture of a great office from Works magazine 3Without wishing to sound overly dramatic, welcome to the greatest workplace battle of the decade. (And one we’ll continue to cover on Insight, IN Magazine and Works, issue three of which you can find here – and very nice it is too.) When Elon Musk recently called on all Twitter employees to ready themselves for ‘long hours at high intensity’ or to leave, he basically – in his own inimitable style – dispensed with the niceties but said what some others really would like to say to their own people. More →

IN Magazine Supplement: internal communications for hybrid working cultures

IN Magazine Supplement: internal communications for hybrid working cultures

hybrid working supplementOne of the many important talking points of The Great Workplace Conversation and the widespread adoption of hybrid working over the past three years has been how we talk about change. Whenever anybody refers to people ‘returning to work’, they can expect to be corrected by somebody else pointing out that most people never stopped working during the various lockdowns. They’d stopped going into work. In the same way, people are increasingly likely to point out that the office and the workplace are often two different things. Words matter. Precision matters. Shared ideas matter. Engagement matters. More →

The four day week and a case of less is more

The four day week and a case of less is more

four day weekWhen a pilot programme for a four day week was announced in the UK early in the New Year, #4dayweek trended for days on twitter, with jokey comments on how employees taking part in the trial should do everything not to ‘f*** it up for the rest of us.’ But behind the humour there’s a real issue with productivity in the UK. Recent Office for National Statistics reveals that while productivity grew across all G7 countries during the pandemic, the UK experienced the largest falls in GDP growth and an increase in the number of hours worked. More →

Issue 2 of Works magazine continues to shake things up

Issue 2 of Works magazine continues to shake things up

works magazineWe’ve received plenty of messages over the past few weeks, asking when we’re going to see the first full publication of Works – the new workplace design magazine (and sister title to IN) following the successful launch of its pilot issue. Well, we’re delighted to announce that the printer’s big red button has been pushed and said issue is on its way. And the digital edition is available to read free now. More →

Confidence, capability and capacity: The state of HR in 2021 with Perry Timms

Confidence, capability and capacity: The state of HR in 2021 with Perry Timms

In this final episode of the current season of Workplace Geeks, Chris and Ian welcome the inimitable Perry Timms, HR magazine’s most influential thinker of 2022. Perry heads up PTHR, a B Corp-certified organisational design, performance and change consultancy that most definitely walks its talk, has written two books, and holds various academic positions. The discussion takes ‘The state of HR: 2021’, a report he wrote last year with Anna Hobson and Katy Stanley for HRZone as a starting point, and explores current and future themes for HR, workplace professionals and business more broadly. More →

Exploring the best current thinking about work and the workplace

Exploring the best current thinking about work and the workplace

Issue 12 of IN Magazine is in production, but in the meantime Issue 11 explores the best and latest thinking from the world of work. In this issue: we talk to Joanna Frank about active design; visit the offices of Drees and Sommer in Stuttgart; consider the role of routines in creativity; argue that we need to understand the past before we can shape the future; discover Iceland’s new Science City; hear about the changing nature of workplace experiences; and much more. Includes our latest supplement, exploring the role of internal comms in hybrid work cultures, published in association with Magenta. Print copies will be mailed out in the next few days. More →

Post-occupancy what? Evaluating active workplace design, with Jo Yarker

Post-occupancy what? Evaluating active workplace design, with Jo Yarker

Different workplace experts are interested in different elements of workplace, so it follows that workplace change projects featuring interdisciplinary teams can yield innovative methods and diverse insights. In episode 11 of Workplace Geeks, Chris and Ian are joined by health and wellbeing expert Dr Jo Yarker, Reader in Occupational Psychology at Birkbeck, University of London, and Managing Partner of Affinity Health at Work. More →

Coworking secret sauce: Experience unbound with Imogen Privett

Coworking secret sauce: Experience unbound with Imogen Privett

coworking workplace geeksEpisode 10 of Workplace Geeks sees Chris Moriarty and Ian Ellison talking with workplace innovation consultant and senior research associate at UnWork/WORKTECH Academy, Dr. Imogen Privett, discussing the fascinating content and findings from her recent doctoral thesis, Experience Unbound: The Effects of Coworking on Workplace Design Practice. Imogen’s research offers a cautionary tale for interested organisations – merely adopting the spatial strategies or aesthetics of coworking without acknowledging the careful curation of space and relationships is unlikely to yield positive results. More →

Simone Fenton-Jarvis on the new era of human-centric workplaces

Simone Fenton-Jarvis on the new era of human-centric workplaces

Simone Fenton-JarvisPlain speaking doesn’t always go down well, especially on social media and especially when cultural differences come into play. I recently had a friend intervene on my behalf to explain to an increasingly exasperated LinkedIn adversary that I wasn’t being rude, I was just ‘Northern’. This may well be a stereotypical Northern trait. If so, it is one that is shared by Simone Fenton-Jarvis, although then again it is one of the very few stereotypical things about her. More →

Humanity’s omni-fear or meta-opportunity? Uncertainty Experts (with Sam Conniff)

Humanity’s omni-fear or meta-opportunity? Uncertainty Experts (with Sam Conniff)

In the latest episode of Workplace Geeks, Chris and Ian interview serial entrepreneur and purpose-driven pirate Sam Conniff, to explore his new project Uncertainty Experts. Described by Sam as an ‘interactive learning documentary’, their discussions explore the motivations behind his latest venture (with collaborators Katherine Templar Lewis, Dr Avri Bilovich and Dr Vivienne Ming), its inventive design, and Sam’s commitment to academically evaluate its impact. More →

The Workplace Geeks on what we need to learn about the office now that everything’s changed

The Workplace Geeks on what we need to learn about the office now that everything’s changed

The Workplace Geeks are out and about for their very first LIVE episode, recorded at The Workplace Event, Birmingham NEC, UK in April 2022. For this special show they’re joined by Dan Pilling, workplace strategy consultant at TSK Group. Their discussion explores the scope and value of practical workplace research pre and post pandemic, with some great questions from the audience (thanks to Brock James from iOtSpace, Stuart Watts from the GPA, and Steve Henigan from HCG). More →

Do organisations actually know what their people do?

Do organisations actually know what their people do?

Do organisations truly understand how their people work? A big question that needed some unpacking and was explored at a recent Workplace Evolutionaries event, led by Tim Allen and Mark Eltringham. This is raw audio from the event so includes a brief chat about dogs and some other stuff. More →

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