Columnists
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 […]
July 9, 2020
Mental health and coronavirus: a human resources perspective
by Ian Caminsky • Comment, Flexible working, Wellbeing
In March, coronavirus presented a stark challenge to businesses attempting to cope with workplace absence. FirstCare statistics show that during Q1 2020, more than 98 percent of Covid-19-related absences were due to unconfirmed cases, self-quarantining as a precaution, or caring for dependents. This has resulted in huge financial pressure on businesses. Now though, as restrictions […]
July 7, 2020
Overcoming the fear of going out
by Michelle McQuaid • Comment, Wellbeing
Over the last several months, some workers have exhibited a new ailment that has got nothing to do with the COVID-19 pandemic that sent them scurrying home to set up virtual offices in the first place. It’s called FOGO, as coined by Forbes magazine contributing writer Jodie Cook, and it refers to a new phenomenon […]
July 3, 2020
Watch where you sit: new workplace setups could hit productivity
by Geoffroy de Lestrange • Comment, Wellbeing
Slowly, it seems we are seeing a gradual return to some sort of normality. Shops are opening up as well as restaurants and pubs and many of us are now also heading back into the office. But these aren’t the offices as we once knew them. Workspace layouts and seating plans are being completely overhauled […]
July 30, 2020
The golden age of procrastination and the tyranny of time keeping 0
by Mark Eltringham • Comment, Features, Wellbeing, Workplace
Many of us start each day with a long to-do list, a new set of goals and a commitment not to repeat the same mistakes we have in the past. It’s likely that we will have promised ourselves to stop putting things off. On our hit list of the foibles we most want to dispose […]