February 21, 2022
One of the world’s best known and most enduring foundational psychological experiments does not appear to be as clear cut as we commonly think. It was back in 1961 that a team led by the American psychologist Stanley Milgram asked a number of ordinary people to administer what they believed to be increasingly high levels of electric shocks to a person in another room while listening to their responses. More →
February 15, 2022
Back in 2021 the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) put out a paper on the opportunities and challenges that new technologies are bringing to Anti-Money Laundering (AML) and counter-terrorist financing (CTF) efforts. If you are unaware of who the FATF is it may be worth your while to investigate farther into it. For now, though, let it be known that they are an independent inter-governmental body that defines the rules and procedures that need to be in place to prevent these two criminal activities. More →
February 9, 2022
Although the term ‘metaverse’ was coined in 1992 by science fiction novelist Neal Stephenson, it has only just entered the mainstream lexicon after Facebook changed its name to Meta to reflect its strategic focus on making this sci fi vision a reality. Given that there is no singular definition of what a metaverse is, and there will be many competing metaverses transforming our experience of social media, electronic commerce and how we collaborate and transact online, it is important that leaders start to understand the profound ways in which this new technological paradigm is set to radically impact on the future of work. More →
February 8, 2022
According to a new report from Instant Offices (registration), four in five employers whose staff are offered hybrid or remote work are already using employee monitoring tools to track work performance and activity. According to the study: 78 percent of companies report using employee monitoring software to track worker performance and online activity; 73 percent say stored recordings of calls, emails, and messages have affected team members’ performance reviews; over 50 percent say they are implementing non-traditional monitoring techniques; and 94 percent of employers track emails. More →
January 31, 2022
“Nobody knows anything”. William Goldman’s infamous summing up of the essential unknowability of the movie business also has a less quoted second part. “Not one person in the entire motion picture field knows for a certainty what’s going to work. Every time out it’s a guess and, if you’re lucky, an educated one.” It is a call for humility. That no matter how much we know about what we do and how good we are at it, we can’t always predict its outcomes. And that is clearly the case with the ongoing Great Workplace Conversation. More →
January 31, 2022
Flexible working has overtaken salary as the top benefit to employees (59 percent), highlighting that flexibility and autonomy over the working day is now more important than financial reward for most workers. This is according to a new report from Jabra; the Jabra Hybrid Ways of Working 2021 Global Report carried out amongst 5,000 knowledge workers in five countries worldwide, including the UK. However, the report also suggests that many business leaders have a false sense of confidence in their ability to implement hybrid working.
January 27, 2022
Innovation-oriented industries and talent concentration are driving urban and real estate recovery, with notable hot spots in parts of the US, Europe and Asia, according to JLL’s new report, Innovation Geographies (registration). The authors claim that cities that perform best on these measures will be best positioned for economic growth post-pandemic, demonstrating a strong link between innovation, talent ecosystems and real estate performance. More →
January 27, 2022
Chief Information Officers are spending more time on innovation than they ever have, with three quarters stating they have increased innovation efforts, according to the 2021 Global CIO Survey (registration) from Logicalis. The study, which questioned 1,000 CIOs from around the world, claims that despite a strong focus on innovation, just 27 percent of CIOs describe it as an essential part of their company culture. More →
January 26, 2022
Future Forum, a consortium launched by Slack with founding partners Boston Consulting Group, MillerKnoll and MLT has released the latest findings from its Pulse study, which shows that hybrid working has become the dominant work model for knowledge workers around the world. The report claims that the percentage of people working in hybrid arrangements has increased to 58 percent (from 46 percent in May 2021), as the share of workers who say their teams work exclusively either from home or from the office has declined sharply. More →
January 26, 2022
A new report claims that remote workers are growing more concerned about perceptions of an inequal and less productive meeting experience while apart from their colleagues, and many are going as far as to consider new opportunities at organisations where they believe they will be more included. The Barco ClickShare Hybrid Meeting Survey (includes promotion) claims that more than one-third (35 percent) of workers still have trouble fully engaging during hybrid meetings. More →
January 18, 2022
Just as businesses are starting to find their groove with hybrid working, the workplace has begun to evolve again with the emergence of the metaverse. New research from Lenovo claims that close to half of employees (44 percent) are willing to work in the metaverse and believe that it can deliver benefits like productivity to the workplace. The metaverse is primarily defined as a shared digital space with digital representations of people, places, and objects. In the future, the metaverse can be a highly immersive extension of the physical world, with its rich user interface. At the enterprise level, this opens up possibilities for businesses to create a more viable, interactive workplace. More →
February 23, 2022
We need a growth mindset for buildings to make them adaptable
by Matthias Rebellius • Comment, Environment, Property, Technology