Columnists
June 9, 2020
A thank you for the bitter knowledge offered by the lockdown
by Adam Burtt-Jones • Comment, Flexible working, Workplace design
With all challenges come opportunities. Covid-19 will most likely be the single largest challenge and disrupter of a generation. It has the potential to create the greatest significant shift in working behaviours and standards of the past hundred years. Workspace consultants, enlightened clients, designers, researchers and commentators have been hammering the agile / home/ remote […]
June 8, 2020
The paradox of how routines can help us be more productive and creative
by Nick Chater • Comment, Flexible working
Former US president Barack Obama famously had a wardrobe full of identical suits. As a world leader, life presents more than enough big decisions – Obama’s reasoning was that it made sense to minimise the complexity of the small decisions. Artists are often thought of as rather different. Francis Bacon, for example, had a tempestuous personal […]
June 4, 2020
Right, said Fred. Here I am again
by Mark Eltringham • Comment, Technology, Wellbeing
If there has been an underlying driver of workplace thinking over the past several decades, it has been a rejection of the principles of scientific management. These begat the idea of the office as a factory, subject to the same rigid times and places of work and the same culture of process, efficiency and productivity. […]
June 3, 2020
Data is changing the role of the workplace and HR
by Shaun Guyver • Comment, Property, Workplace
Business leaders have been heavily dependent on HR, real estate, and technology functions working together to help their organisation adapts to this new world of work during the pandemic. Ensuring personal safety, promoting wellbeing, encouraging collaboration, and maintaining efficient service delivery will never be more important than in the coming months. The challenge facing CRE […]
June 2, 2020
Embracing emotion and empathy to drive us beyond this crisis
by Riccarda Zezza • Comment, Workplace
We’re currently living and working through some of the most intense, challenging conditions many of us will have had to endure – and we all will empathise that it can be particularly difficult to manage your working life. A recent study in Harvard Business Review found that tiredness, fear and panic all reduce our ability […]
June 1, 2020
Zoom fatigue and the new era of online meetings
by Mark Eltringham • Comment, Technology
When it comes to that annual announcement the publishers of dictionaries like to make about their Word of the Year, 2020 will have only one candidate. But if there were a shortlist, you can bet that Zoom would be on it. The uptake of Zoom and other apps to help people connect during the lockdown […]
May 26, 2020
The experience of working from home is not the same for everyone
by Anna Hern • Comment, Flexible working, Wellbeing
So we’ve demonstrated that we can work from home. But is it a permanent solution? We hear senior managers counting the numbers and working out just how much money will be saved if organisations no longer need their office space. It’s a seductive argument. So before we all settle down in our spare bedrooms with […]
May 22, 2020
Doing the homework on home-work
by Tim Oldman • Comment, Flexible working
COVID-19 will change the world in innumerable ways. It is already affecting how we think about disease transmission, consumption, labour, travel, and even space and distance. And it will change how we think about work. Almost immediately, however, designers, architects and everyone else with a stake in the future of workplace have spotted an opportunity […]
May 19, 2020
People working from home have the same legal protections as they do in offices
by Chris Salmon • Comment, Legal news, Wellbeing
Even as the COVID-19 lockdown eases, it is predicted that many people will continue to work remotely for the foreseeable future. Government advice remains that those who can work from home should do so. This throws up a key question for employers both in the current circumstances and going forward. Namely, what are employers’ ongoing […]
May 19, 2020
Getting beyond the hype of technological innovation and productivity
by Prof Henry Chesbrough • Comment, Technology
Not long ago, innovation was a largely internal affair. The journey from the laboratory to the marketplace took place largely within the four walls of the firm. Think of Bell Labs, IBM Research, or Xerox PARC. Each of them created important technological breakthroughs. And each breakthrough was commercialized through the company’s own businesses.
June 12, 2020
Building a culture of trust has never been more important
by Jonathan Richards • Comment, Workplace
Trust is a concept we often find hard to describe. It’s sticky, intangible and difficult to pinpoint but we know when trust is absent. When it’s missing from a workforce, a culture can unravel. According to the Culture Economy Report 2020, 43 percent of employees in UK SME’s don’t trust their employer to do the […]