Columnists
April 5, 2023
Do you have a crystal ball when it comes to leading change?
by Jennifer Bryan • Comment, JB, Workplace
March 31, 2023
Are we asking the right questions about the workplace?
by George Muir • Comment, Everything Omni, Facilities management, Property
In 1989, Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie, performed a TV sketch called Information. You can watch it below. It featured Stephen Fry sitting at a desk with a placard displaying the word “INFORMATION”. He asks, “Can I help you?” to which Hugh Laurie replies, “Oh, I would like some information, please”. Though, in the discussion, […]
March 30, 2023
Every workplace innovation contains the seeds of its opposite
by Mark Eltringham • 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 […]
March 29, 2023
People have to create great leadership in the face of unrealistic expectations
by Karen Meager • 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 […]
March 28, 2023
MIPIM 2023 confirms that green sells. But is commercial real estate buying?
by Anna King • 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 […]
March 24, 2023
What Studs Terkel can teach us about how we talk about work
by Mark Eltringham • 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 […]
March 24, 2023
Company culture is one of the hardest but most valuable things to get right after a merger
by Siobhan Byrnes • 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 […]
March 23, 2023
Getting back to basics in The Great Workplace Conversation
by Mark Eltringham • 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 […]
March 9, 2023
Progress depends on heterodox thought and difficult questions
by Mark Eltringham • 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 […]
March 6, 2023
The six skills managers will need for the future of work
by Lea Kimpele • 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 […]
March 3, 2023
Artificial intelligence could mean we all do more work, not less
by Barbara Ribeiro • 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 […]
April 7, 2023
The need for reimagination in an age of uncertainty
by Eugenia Anastassiou • Comment, Everything Omni
Since we are now very much in the age of uncertainty being the new certainty, with all the old playbooks out the window and no cookie cutter approach in the ways we work, since one size doesn’t fit all – what the hell do we do? Curl up in a ball and die? Go into […]