Columnists

The unshocking truth about work and workplaces

by • Comment, Workplace design

I recently read an interesting little book called Office by Sheila Liming. It’s a small book, easy to read in a sitting and linked to a series of essays in The Atlantic. The author is a Professor of English so it’s no surprise to find that it’s beautifully written and draws on a range of […]

Is it time for a carbon tax?

by • Comment, Environment, JK, Workplace design

Most people now recognise that we are facing a climate emergency – the record breaking temperatures in the US are, perhaps, another reminder. Many would agree that economic and legislative change is the only way forward to achieve a sustainable change in behaviour. Who should pay for greater environmental responsibility? Is it time for a […]

The weird science of personal creativity

by • Comment, Wellbeing, Workplace design

Perhaps the most famous single act of personal creativity – with apologies to Archimedes – is Mary Godwin’s moment of inspiration for the story of Frankenstein in 1816. It was born from a wet summer in a villa on the shores of Lake Geneva, largely spent with her future husband Percy Shelley, John Polidori and […]

Time to get real on what companies need from their real estate

by • Comment, Property, Wellbeing, Workplace design

As businesses return to their offices they are faced with a challenge – how do they reappraise their space requirements post-Covid? Social and technological advancements are changing real estate from being a fixed physical product, into flexible, employee-centric spaces that enable new models of hybrid working and business operations. These have a significant impact on […]

Yoga is not a wellbeing strategy

by • Comment, Wellbeing

One of the problems facing businesses right now isn’t the so-called mental health pandemic, it’s that no one seems to know what to do about it. The increased focus on employee mental health and wellbeing has seen progressive leaps in the conversation that were unimaginable 10 years ago. Even the most cynical manager has had […]

Indoor air quality needs to be talked about far more than it is

by • Comment, Environment, Wellbeing, Workplace design

One of the unintended consequences of the pandemic has been to focus attention on the issue of indoor air quality. But as Sarah Zhang points out in a recent piece in The Atlantic, this is an issue that we have long understood, and not just as a way to reduce the risks of infection. It […]

Not waving, but drowning: why we need to take languishing more seriously

by • Comment, Wellbeing

The word ‘languishing’ is being bandied around in the media as the world tries to recover from the pandemic and is experiencing many struggles resuming a semblance of ‘normal life’. Recent articles in The New York Times and The Guardian have detailed languishing as an inability to focus, being off peak performance, feeling joyless and […]

Setting out the known unknowns about work

by • Comment, Flexible working, Workplace design

With the majority of COVID-19 restrictions in England due to be lifted later this month, it is understandable that many are limbering up, ready for some grand ‘return to the office’.  Yet, unlike the pubs, hairdressers, and gyms we are not going back to what we left. This was an inevitability. The workplace was, and remains, an ever evolving […]

If you’re certain about the changing world of work, you’re certainly wrong

by • Comment, Working culture

If you click on the first link in any article on Wikipedia and keep repeating the process, eventually you will land on the Philosophy page. Or you will 97 percent of the time, according to Wikipedia itself. There’s a dry explanation for this involving the site’s classification system, as explained by the mathematician Hannah Fry […]

The new era of flexible working and knowing when to lie flat

by • Comment, Flexible working, Wellbeing

When people first started working from home in large numbers for the first time in the Spring of 2020, one of the most talked about issues was how the productivity of most stayed the same or improved. This shouldn’t have been that surprising given all that we have learned about remote and flexible working over […]

Trees can’t solve the climate change problem. That’s our job

by • Comment, Environment, Facilities management

To address the climate change challenge, the UK became the first, major, world economy to pass law committing us to reducing all greenhouse gas emissions to Net Zero by 2050. It was a strong signal to organisations and individuals across the UK that it was now time to stop talking and start acting. And start […]

The office sector needs to face up to its landfill issue

by • Comment, Environment, JK, Workplace design

Over the past ten years, reuse of furniture and furnishings has been extremely limited. Most redundant assets have been discarded to landfill. It’s a brutal fact that it is the easy and less expensive option. Many products sent for recycling often end up in landfill or incineration and so still contributing to carbon emissions. As […]

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