Columnists
May 5, 2022
Flat organisations are handing out inflated job titles to hang on to staff
by Dan Huckle • Comment, Workplace
We’ve seen more talk of the glass ceiling in recent years than for some time, and part of the explanation is the way we’re creating false career ladders within businesses which don’t need to be there and don’t really lead anywhere. We are seeing companies trying to retain people in a time of skills shortages […]
May 3, 2022
Get ready for the artificial intelligence revolution
by Reece Akhtar • AI, Comment, Workplace
Behind every successful business strategy is a talented and motivated workforce that is ready to apply itself and achieve great things. A leader may have a flawless strategy, but if they cannot staff their teams with the most talented individuals, their vision will stay just that. A vision. Unfortunately, the tools organizations use to identify […]
April 29, 2022
Working from home can present particular challenges for women
by Rachel King • Comment, Flexible working
The pandemic has brought with it many different trials and tribulations over the course of the past few years. An area that has impacted teams across the country, and the world, has been working from home and other forms of remote work. Once a necessity imposed by the UK government to stop the spread in […]
April 28, 2022
We need to seize the chance to make our buildings far more intelligent
by William Poole-Wilson • Comment, Environment, Property, Workplace design
Even before the pandemic, statistics were making the case for workplaces to be made up of more intelligent buildings. This includes the fact that offices generally operate at around 55-60 percent utilisation, and as we return to the office are currently at 45 percent utilisation. From presenteeism to absenteeism and many other factors in between, […]
April 25, 2022
What Jacob Rees Mogg really got wrong about working from the office
by Mark Eltringham • Comment, Flexible working, Property
One of the challenges of taking part in The Great Work Conversation is swerving alignments with the wrong people. It’s easy enough to call out the crusty, passive aggressive notes apparently left by Lord Bufton Tufton on the desks of civil service drones. But it’s equally easy to find yourself tarred with the same brush […]
April 25, 2022
The studied carelessness of agile workplaces
by Mark Eltringham • Comment, Workplace design
In recent years we have grown very fond of borrowing foreign words to describe some of the more difficult to express ideas about wellbeing and the new era of agile, experiential and engaging work. We’ve adopted Eudaimonia from the Ancient Greek of Aristotle to describe the nuances of wellbeing, happiness and purpose. We went nuts […]
April 22, 2022
Hybrid working and how we escape the constraints of leadership
by John Higgins and Jennifer Bryan • Comment, Flexible working
Jennifer was at the ballet the other day, watching Acosta Danza, and there was a dance with ropes. In the movement of the relationship of the dancers, the mood, the emotion were all defined using the rope. It was very beautiful. Then towards the end the ropes were taken away and everything changed – the […]
April 20, 2022
The effects of workplace change may not be the ones we expect
by Mark Eltringham • Comment, Flexible working, Wellbeing
There’s a scene in the 1986 horror movie The Fly in which Seth Brundle (Jeff Goldblum) persuades the reporter Veronica Quaife (Geena Davis) to try two steaks, one of which Brundle has just sent between two teleportation pods in an effort to work out why the pods can’t process organic matter, including the organic matter […]
April 14, 2022
The lost art of office furniture peacocking
by Mark Eltringham • Comment, Workplace design
When Donald Trump was pictured at the tail-end of his tenure as President, sitting uncomfortably at a table that looked like it had been retrieved from a skip, it provoked the sort of sneering commentary about office furniture choices previously seen when Dominic Cummings popped in to the Downing Street garden to deliver some self-serving blather […]
April 13, 2022
The cargo cult of modern office design
by Mark Eltringham • Comment, Workplace design
The idea of the cargo cult derives from anthropological observations made about the behaviour of societies that encounter more technologically advanced societies. In particular it is rooted in those rituals and objects created by Pacific islanders in an attempt to attract modern goods and technology and generally earn favour with people who they thought […]
April 13, 2022
Experimentation is the name of the game
by Eugenia Anastassiou • Comment, Facilities management, Flexible working, Workplace design
Uncertain times call for different measures and approaches, the old rules and playbooks are no longer applicable – so what are you going to do? Sit around, stagnate, hanker after old solutions trying to manipulate and squeeze them into new, unknowable, untried paradigms? No! One thing human beings are fairly good at is evolving and […]
May 9, 2022
Human resources professionals should focus on boardroom partnerships
by Jeanette Wheeler • Comment, Workplace
The future of Human Resources remains a hotly debated topic, with conversations often focusing on whether the term is still accurate and how internal and external changes often put HR in a state of flux. As working models shift and new post-pandemic challenges emerge, the focus should be on what skills today’s HR leaders need […]