October 1, 2020

EDGE adds building software to its portfolio of innovations

by Freddie Steele • Company news, Technology

Sustainable tech-led real estate pioneers EDGE have built upon their already impressive reputation as an innovator with the launch of a software platform that offers what the firm claims is a “seamless solution for optimising any office building’s performance”. It claims that EDGE Next allows “tenants and owners to transform their offices into smarter, healthier and more sustainable spaces in which people and companies can truly thrive”. The EDGE Next platform also sets out to ensure the wellbeing of employees by monitoring air quality and the numbers of people in a spaces, which it claims will make offices safer for work during the COVID-19 outbreak and beyond. (more…)

September 26, 2020

The world of work explored in all its glory in Issue 3 of IN Magazine

by Mark Eltringham • Case studies, Cities, Features, Flexible working, Premium Content, Technology, Wellbeing, Workplace design

Some things will never change. IN Magazine continues to offer the best content you can find on the changing world of work. The digital edition of Issue 3 is now available and print copies will be posted out later in the week. (more…)

September 23, 2020

The stage is set for the next phase of working life

by Mark Eltringham • Comment, Flexible working, Technology, Wellbeing, Working lives

The debate about the effects of the pandemic on working life appears to have entered its next phase. Don’t ask me to define it precisely because I’m still coming to terms with the others. But here it is. (more…)

September 21, 2020

Singapore, Helsinki and Zurich are top of the world`s smart cities

by Neil Franklin • Cities, News, Technology

Singapore, Helsinki and Zurich have taken the top three places positions in the 2020 IMD-SUTD Smart City Index Report, a collaboration between IMD and Singapore University of Technology and Design (SUTD). The 2020 Index ranked 109 cities, 7 more than in last year’s inaugural edition, by using both economic and technological data, taken together with citizens’ perceptions of how “smart” their cities were. It is published under the aegis of the IMD Smart City Observatory (SCO). (more…)

September 18, 2020

The value of tech and talent investment through COVID-19

by Jayne Smith • News, Technology, Working lives

For middle-market and small businesses, the COVID-19 pandemic is highlighting the vital importance of investing in new technology, facilitating remote work, and maintaining the tech-savvy workforce needed to make it all happen, according to a survey conducted by The Harris Poll for CIT Group Inc. (NYSE: CIT). (more…)

September 17, 2020

Second cities safeguard the UK from future economic crises

by Jayne Smith • Environment, News, Technology

Singapore, Helsinki and Zurich have come top in the 2020 Smart City Index, a study carried out by the Institute for Management Development (IMD). In a year that saw many European cities fall in the rankings, London, managed to jump five places compared to 2019, though it still stayed well outside of the global top 10 at 15, followed closely by the UKs second cities. (more…)

September 8, 2020

Frontline and front of mind; communicating with employees away from HQ

by Julien Lesaicherre • Comment, Flexible working, Technology

It has been a rough year for business. Many organisations have had to evolve their operating models overnight, go to great lengths to keep their people safe and build entirely new ways of working to ensure they can stay afloat. A lot have had to fast forward five years into the future in a few months – and that’s no mean feat. (more…)

September 8, 2020

Artificial Intelligence is critical to organisations, but many unprepared

by Jayne Smith • News, Technology

A new report from information technology company Wipro Limited claims that enterprises of the future will be built on a foundation of Artificial Intelligence (AI), Analytics, Machine Learning, Deep Learning and Automation. According to the ‘State of Intelligent Enterprises’ report, these technologies are central to solving business problems and driving innovation. Most businesses consider AI to be critical to improve operational efficiency, reduce employee time on manual tasks, and enhance the employee and customer experience. (more…)

September 2, 2020

Video call fatigue amounts to millions of unproductive businesses hours

by Jayne Smith • News, Technology, Wellbeing

A recent study, which was commissioned by Bayfields Opticians & Audiologists and questioned 2000 people, claims people spent an average of three hours and 12 minutes each week on video calls – an increase of 120 percent compared to before lockdown. Connected Brits admit to spending hours getting ready for work-related video calls during lockdown and struggling to get back into the zone once the call is over, leading to millions of hours of ‘wasted’ work time since lockdown.

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August 20, 2020

Working from home and the future of work. How quaint

by Mark Eltringham • Comment, Flexible working, Technology

In 1962, a professor of communication studies called Everett Rogers came up with the principle we call diffusion of innovation. It’s a familiar enough notion, widely taught and works by plotting the adoption of new ideas and products over time as a bell curve, before categorising groups of people along its length as innovators, early adopters, early majority, late majority, and laggards. It’s a principle bound up with human capital theory and so its influence has endured for over 50 years, albeit in a form compressed by our accelerated proliferation of ideas. It may be useful, but it lacks a third dimension in the modern era. That is, a way of describing the numbers of people who are in one category but think they are in another.

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August 20, 2020

Half of British workers associate new tech with business growth

by Neil Franklin • News, Technology

British workers are much more positive about the impact of new technologies on job creation and business growth compared to employees based in Belgium, Germany, France or the Netherlands. This is according to a large-scale survey conducted by payroll and HR services provider SD Worx in collaboration with the Antwerp Management School. 44.7 percent of Brits have seen the number of jobs rise thanks to tech innovation, compared to 44.4 percent of the French, 38.4 percent of the Dutch, 35.6 percent of the Belgian and 25.7 percent of the German workers. The data looks at organisations in the past three years. (more…)

August 12, 2020

Casting a spell on the future of work and workplaces

by Mark Eltringham • Comment, Flexible working, Technology, Workplace design

There was a time we used to talk with dismay about the Japanese phenomenon of intense social distancing known as hikikomori. We would consider with horror the isolation, lack of engagement with society, poor mental health and loneliness of the people who had almost completely withdrawn to their rooms. Those poor bastards locked up in enclosed spaces linked to the outside world only by screens. (more…)