Columnists
February 28, 2024
The hybrid working office: ushering in a new era for the workspace
by Jeni Taylor • Comment, Flexible working, Workplace design
February 27, 2024
Where are the iconic office furniture products of yesterday?
by Mark Eltringham • Comment, Workplace design
Late last year, this image went viral on social media. It is of a group of Bauhaus design students from around 1927. They are called Martha Erps, Katt Both and Ruth Hellos. The full image (reproduced below) shows them with legendary office furniture designer Marcel Breuer, who Erps would later marry. The story of the […]
February 24, 2024
Thoughts of hybrid working should now turn to productivity and trust
by Nathan Peart • Comment, Flexible working
Businesses now face the huge challenge of managing office returns and addressing the underlying generational divides and mistrust that have surfaced as a result of the pandemic years. With the Office for National Statistics (ONS) having released new data on UK productivity levels that show productivity remains sluggish, the impact of hybrid working models on […]
February 23, 2024
Rejection of flexible working request shouldn’t blind employers to their legal duties
by Amy Leech • Comment, Flexible working
Flexible working has continued in many workforces since the pandemic. The most common pattern is a hybrid one where employees split their time between the office and home. However some employees are now looking to work remotely on a permanent basis. This is what happened in Wilson v Financial Conduct Authority 2302739/2023. The Claimant submitted […]
February 16, 2024
Why changing with the seasons is key to the all-weather workplace
February 7, 2024
Whenever I hear the future of work, I reach for my pistol
by Mark Eltringham • Comment, Flexible working, Workplace design
February 7, 2024
Of mice and men
by Mark Eltringham • Comment, Flexible working, Technology
The history of the humble computer mouse dates back to the 1960s and engineer Douglas Engelbart’s work on improving the way people and computers interact. He initially called the device he envisaged a ‘bug’ but the first prototype he created with Bill English was so unmistakeably a rodent that there was only one thing they […]
February 4, 2024
The Kafka trap of return to office arguments
by Mark Eltringham • Comment, Flexible working
Recently, I bemoaned how Orwell is often invoked in support of an argument by people who haven’t read him. They are usually drawing on some laundered misperception of his work, and especially Nineteen Eighty-Four. Well, just a few days ago, I witnessed somebody misapplying the work of Kafka in a similar attempt to make a […]
February 2, 2024
Life at the coalface: How the agile workplace first appeared in the mid 20th Century
by Mark Eltringham • Comment, Wellbeing, Workplace design
The idea of diffusion of innovation has become so embedded in our culture, and most recently so associated with the adoption of new technology, that we might assume it happens in predictable ways. The steps between innovators, early adopters, early majority, late majority, and laggards seem intuitive and certain even when their peaks might be […]
February 1, 2024
Underutilised office space? I just can’t be bothered with it
by Mark Eltringham • Comment, Flexible working, Workplace design
A while ago, Antony Slumbers asked me why I thought firms had never done anything much about the underutilisation of their offices. This was in the first throes of lockdown-driven remote work hysteria, prompted by one of those headlines about how offices being half empty was some signifier of hatred for them.
January 31, 2024
The three biggest disruptors of our time
by Jennifer Bryan • AI, Business, Comment, Environment, JB, Technology
When we look at the context for change, we many times just look internally at what we think needs to change for whatever reason and then set about making that happen. Rarely do we think about what is going on for the people within the organisation and just how ready they and the organisation itself […]
February 28, 2024
What do we need offices for anyway? The Greeks had a word for it
by Mark Eltringham • Comment, Workplace design
The Greek word anagnorisis describes the sense of having just caught up with a truth that was always waiting for you. It’s a common literary and artistic device found in the plots of everything from Oedipus Rex to Macbeth, Star Wars and Fight Club, but it’s also a word that conveys a useful, complex idea […]