Columnists
August 4, 2020
Boardroom heroes needed to transform working cultures
by Alex Fleming • Comment, Flexible working
Even as the UK starts to open back up following the COVID-19 enforced lockdown, there are still many unanswered questions about how almost every aspect of our lives will be impacted. What is certain though, is that we will continue to see a paradigm shift take place across all areas of the workplace. Employers must […]
August 3, 2020
Isaac Asimov’s remarkable 1964 predictions about life and work in the 21st Century
by Mark Eltringham • Comment, Technology, Wellbeing, Workplace design
Making predictions about the future can leave people hostages to fortune. Just ask the Decca record executive Dick Rowe who in 1962 rejected a contract with The Beatles confidently asserting that “guitar groups are on their way out, Mr Epstein” or even multi-billionaire Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer who declared in 2007 that “there’s no chance […]
July 31, 2020
Return to work offers us a unique opportunity to change everything
by Simone Fenton-Jarvis • Comment, Facilities management
The way we worked before covid was fundamentally broken; our wellbeing, our climate and our business efficiency. The genie is out of the bottle; going back just simply isn’t an option. When considering the return to work, there are organisations making knee-jerk decisions trying to avoid a complex minefield of potential missteps which could impact […]
July 28, 2020
Containing office costs in the post-lockdown era
by Guy Brett • Comment, Property
As companies transition back to the office and set out on the road to economic recovery, business leaders are focussed on developing resilient and sustainable strategies. Faced with a new business environment, companies are looking for opportunities to contain office costs, both in the short-term and in the future. Some who have been immune from […]
July 23, 2020
Balancing the rights and responsibilities of employee wellbeing
by Nathan Berkley • Comment, Wellbeing
Health and wellbeing has been at the top of the agenda for HR departments for a long, long time, but there’s nothing like a global health emergency to catalyse a fundamental rethink of how you approach your responsibilities as an employer. Corporate healthcare has moved from the remedial approach to curing existing ills, to the […]
July 22, 2020
Don’t be a commute Canute, Boris
by Andrew Mawson • Comment, Flexible working
So, Prime Minister Boris Johnson has told the British people to get back to work by Christmas. This means that millions would be renewing their season tickets, getting up in darkness to dress up for work, crowding onto those trains, buses and tubes while swaddled in facemasks and battling their way into the office (which […]
July 21, 2020
Workplace design in a new age of reason
by Mark Eltringham • Comment, Facilities management, Workplace design
The enduring but changing struggle to improve the working conditions and performance of people through workplace design and management has more than a whiff of the Enlightenment of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries about it. The Enlightenment marked a new era in which the old superstitions and dogmas were to be overthrown by pure reason.
July 17, 2020
Your working day is never finished, merely abandoned
July 16, 2020
We need to include disabled people in our conversations about diversity
by Toby Mildon • Comment, Working lives
This sounds really obvious but when organisations talk about diversity and inclusion they often forget to include disability. They talk about the importance of women in leadership and the gender pay gap, the need to include people from an ethnic minority background especially following the Black Lives Matter movement. And June just gone was dedicated […]
July 15, 2020
Some brutal realities about the future of work
by Mark Eltringham • Comment, Flexible working, Wellbeing
No author uses the built environment like J G Ballard. In his 1975 novel High-Rise, the eponymous structure is both a way of isolating the group of people who live and compete inside it and a metaphor for their personal isolation and inner struggles. Over the course of three months, the building’s services begin to […]
August 6, 2020
Cycling might be about to change our lives and offices permanently
by Eugene Tavyev • Cities, Comment, Workplace design
According to the latest data from the Cycle to Work Alliance, June 2020 saw a 120 per cent increase in the number of people joining the government Cycle to Work scheme. Introduced in 1999 as part of a series of measures under the government’s Green Transport Plan, it is now undergoing a revival as thousands […]