Columnists
April 27, 2021
The hybrid workplace sagas, part one. Ginnungagap
April 26, 2021
What are the limits of an employer’s duty of care to employees?
by Helen Jamieson • Comment, Wellbeing
Earlier this month the ONS (Office for National Statistics) released a rather dismal map of the UK charting our population’s soaring levels of loneliness. Perhaps surprisingly, it is young people and those living in urban areas reporting the highest levels of aloneness. It really does go to show that the ‘social’ in social media doesn’t […]
April 16, 2021
Hybrid working risks becoming a meaningless term
by Ben Gillam • Comment, Flexible working, Workplace design
Hybrid working runs the risk of becoming a blanket term, interpreted on a very surface level, when it has the potential to offer a much greater opportunity for businesses to open up and re-examine the culture and experience of their staff, alongside where they want to take their business in the future, as well as […]
April 14, 2021
The digital world is not necessarily greener than the physical world
by Neil Franklin • Comment, Environment, Technology
No sooner had the world learned about the existence of non-fungible tokens (NFTs) than we also learned how much of a problem they could be for the environment. An NFT is digital token in a similar way to Bitcoin, except there’s only one of each NFT. It is associated with a piece of content, guaranteed unique and so is worth whatever somebody will pay for it. In the case of […]
April 13, 2021
After a year of lockdowns, people are burnt-out but happier
by Steven Buck • Comment, Wellbeing
Glint’s latest insights report shows that there is a worrying increase in employees experiencing challenges with their mental health, with burnout risk trending upwards year-over-year. That spiked in late March 2020 and climbed by nearly 4 percent between August and December 2020. That’s not a big surprise, given the first challenging months of the global […]
April 7, 2021
The binary choices and multiple outcomes of flexible working
by Mark Eltringham • Comment, Flexible working
A year of unnecessarily binary conversation about work leads inevitably to this. A stupid question. Is Big Tech going off work from home? Betteridge’s Law takes care of that, just as it did another question from 12 months ago. Even though the article is slightly better than the headline, the insistence that the only two […]
April 1, 2021
Finding a new sense of purpose in the way we all do business
by David Lineen • Comment, Environment, Property, Wellbeing
It is now a truism that society expects more of business than merely maximising shareholder value. Milton Friedman’s conviction that unswerving commitment to this single goal would ensure that business and society would prosper has come to be seen as blinkered, unfit for the twenty-first century and enabling of corporate greed. Instead of shareholder value […]
March 31, 2021
From the archive: A new approach to office design is redefining property 0
by Gary Chandler • Comment, Facilities management, Property, Workplace design
At the end of the 18th Century it was becoming apparent that overpopulation was something the human race would need to address for perhaps the first time. Advances in technology and the urbanisation that followed the Industrial Revolution had created a new set of challenges. These were most famously laid out in a 1798 book […]
March 29, 2021
Mental health transparency at the top is the key to workplace wellbeing
by Elaine Carnegie • Comment, Wellbeing
As the world emerges from the grip of the pandemic, the mental health crisis continues to worsen. One thing is for certain as we look to rebuild – the business community must put the mental health of all employees as top priority. But is there something that’s missing in the current conversation around workplace mental […]
March 23, 2021
Sustainable office design will not be possible until we are clear about a few things
by Joanna Knight • Comment, Environment, Furniture, JK, Workplace design
Many organisations make bold claims about their zero carbon ambitions. Even if they don’t, most have sustainability statements. Yet the environmental impact of office furniture and sophisticated approaches to sustainable office design seem to be way down the ‘pecking order’. During the last year, we have read considerable commentary about the office – starting with […]
March 22, 2021
The era of work personalisation is upon us
by Gary Chandler • Comment, Workplace design
You may have heard it said that any idea repeated often enough develops some form of legitimacy. We’ve had plenty of reason to reflect on whether this notion is true or nor over the past year, especially as all-encompassing pronouncements about the future of work have proliferated and intensified. The problem is exacerbated by the […]
April 28, 2021
The hybrid workplace sagas, part two. Valhalla
by Neil Usher • Comment, Flexible working
“Wow, Dougie, they’ve remodelled our office while we were away!” “Fantastic. Did you know about it?” “No, they said the surprise was a key part of the change programme.” “So what’s different?”