Columnists

Every workplace innovation contains the seeds of its opposite

by • Comment, Flexible working, Technology

The announcement by Apple that it wanted its employees to work in an office for three days a week sparked the usual, tedious pile-on about how many days people should spend in a physical workplace each week. This included the columnist at Grazia who joins the tens of millions of people around the world who […]

People have to create great leadership in the face of unrealistic expectations

by • Business, Comment

While modern business leaders are still expected to provide strategic thinking, leadership and make business decisions, their effectiveness is no longer just about profits. These days leaders are also being held responsible for employees’ mental health and wellbeing, psychological safety, as well as diversity and inclusion. They are expected to be decisive yet flexible, empathetic […]

MIPIM 2023 confirms that green sells. But is commercial real estate buying?

by • Comment, Environment, Property

MIPIM may have returned last year, but 2023 was the year it felt back. That was despite widespread concerns over the rising costs of refinancing and a banking crisis that started with the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank in the US and quickly moved to Europe, with Swiss financial regulators beginning to put together during MIPIM […]

What Studs Terkel can teach us about how we talk about work

by • Comment, Workplace, Workplace design

Studs Terkel is a particular hero of mine. I like his name, his style, his association with jazz but also the way he wrote. His characteristic approach was marked by interviews with ordinary Americans about their jobs and how they felt about them. He did lots of other stuff but that was his work. What […]

Company culture is one of the hardest but most valuable things to get right after a merger

by • Business, Comment

Like never before, 2021 saw record-breaking levels of mergers and acquisitions (M&A) activity globally, a trend that continued into 2022 until a challenging macroeconomic landscape resulted in a sharp decline in activity. This was mainly because businesses waited to see what the coming months would bring. Whilst experts believe that M&A activity won’t return to […]

Getting back to basics in The Great Workplace Conversation

by • Comment, Flexible working, Technology, Wellbeing

There’s nowhere near enough talk about our base instincts in the Great Workplace Conversation. Objectively speaking, we remain relatively highly evolved, communal and intelligent primates. And so we are driven by things we like to admit to – love, empathy and the Golden Rule. But also things we don’t care to admit to in quite […]

Progress depends on heterodox thought and difficult questions

by • Comment, Facilities management, Wellbeing, Workplace design

Between the 9th and 13th Centuries, the world’s intellectual centre and the source of much of its progress, discovery and achievement was Baghdad. This was the Muslim Golden Age and at its core was the House of Wisdom, established by the Caliph Harun al-Rashid. At one point, this library housed the largest collection of books on Earth […]

The six skills managers will need for the future of work

by • Comment, Flexible working, Technology

Conversations around how work and leadership will change in the coming years have inevitably been accelerated by the pandemic. Companies all over the world have been urged to seek new digital tools, solutions and methods for communicating, making decisions, and activating projects remotely. The companies that emerged most successfully from the Covid era were those […]

Artificial intelligence could mean we all do more work, not less

by • Comment, Technology

There’s a common perception that artificial intelligence will help streamline our work. There are even fears that it could wipe out the need for some jobs altogether. But in a study of science laboratories I carried out with three colleagues at the University of Manchester, the introduction of automated processes that aim to simplify work […]

The rise of the pods shows how the workplace pendulum swings

by • Comment, Workplace design

Long before the office died (I read its obituary in several publications) there were hotly contested debates about open plan offices. That is of course before those debates were eclipsed by more current workplace rantings (ask the editor). Skimming through the open-plan office timeline, Herman Miller launched action office, L-shaped desks with screens became shared […]

UK businesses are out of touch with the real sources of employee stress

by • Comment, Wellbeing

The cost-of-living crisis is driving a wedge between employers and their staff. In a recent research report, we surveyed 500 employers to discover what they believe causes their staff the most stress. Surprisingly, an overwhelming 96 percent did not believe that employee salaries are a major stress factor for staff during the cost-of-living crisis. Instead, […]

Working parents are resilient, and a resilient team is good for business

by • Comment, Wellbeing

Last week, Parent Mental Health Day renewed our focus on working parents and their resilience, the ability to adapt to change, deal with stress, and foster optimism despite difficulty. From a business perspective, resilience is the way that employees recognise and respond to challenges as opportunities to develop rather than as a threat or setback. […]

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