Columnists

Organisations are finally getting their heads around what the office is really good at

by • Comment, Workplace design

As 2020 came to a close, there was a palpable sense of hope that 2021 would bring with it a fresh slate with the horrors of COVID behind us. Alas, that has not happened and it seems we have more of the same, certainly for the next few months and with that the speculation about […]

The workplace industry needs to think outside its ever-shrinking boxes

by • Comment, Flexible working

Is the workplace industry stuck in the past, in a 20th century model of how and where work is done? The separation of work and the rest of life during the Industrial Age has shaped the structures of modern life: the houses we live in, the offices, factories and shops we work in, and the […]

The future of work will see profound changes in the way firms engage with customers

by • Comment, Technology

Businesses are managing a new work dynamic that’s made up of three parts, or three ‘types’ of employee. Some are keen to go back to the office, some want to stay working from home, and some want an entirely flexible arrangement so they can fit work around important personal commitments.

What’s a landlord to do when the office is a destination, not a routine?

by • Cities, Comment, Property, Workplace design

Every week a new survey is published or a statement from a CEO hits the press related to corporate occupier’s desire to adopt a form of hybrid working for the long-term post Covid 19. And as a result, the desire to occupy less space in their central office hub. Landlords are asking- What do we […]

The hybrid workplace sagas, part two. Valhalla

by • 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?”

The hybrid workplace sagas, part one. Ginnungagap

by • Comment, Flexible working

“Hi Dougie – how’s the new hybrid workplace going?” “Morning Clara. You mean the Team-Rostered Attendance Programme. It’s fantastic – we have control at last!” “Wow, I’m jealous. I guess you all just fell into it?” “Yeah. How did you know?” “Just a hunch. So how does it work?”

What are the limits of an employer’s duty of care to employees?

by • 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 […]

Hybrid working risks becoming a meaningless term

by • 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 […]

The digital world is not necessarily greener than the physical world

by • 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 […]

After a year of lockdowns, people are burnt-out but happier

by • 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 […]

The binary choices and multiple outcomes of flexible working

by • 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 […]

Finding a new sense of purpose in the way we all do business

by • 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 […]

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