Columnists
January 23, 2019
Work’s not working; to be productive we need to get creative
by Zoe Humphries • Comment, Workplace design
Productivity in the UK workforce is dropping; output per hour fell 0.4 per cent in the last quarter of 2018 compared with the previous and grew just 0.2 per cent on the third quarter of 2017, according to the Office for National Statistics. Yet the UK workforce log the longest hours in Europe, working 42.3 […]
January 22, 2019
A four hundred year old guide to ergonomics that still rings true today
by Mark Eltringham • Comment, Workplace design
Changes to the nature of work, where it takes place and the things we use to complete it are always constrained by one particular eternally fixed element; the human being. The unchanging individual at the centre of it all is the thing that makes us return to old ideas time and again and ensures that whatever we […]
January 14, 2019
Tackling mental ill health in the workplace requires changes at the top
by Patrick Watt • Comment, Wellbeing, Workplace
The collective effort to improve mental health awareness has gained real momentum in recent years and in the workplace there’s growing recognition that mental wellbeing among employees is good for business. But the way we’re working – the ‘always on’ culture, innovation moving at breakneck speed, and a global workforce operating 24/7 – is creating […]
January 9, 2019
Digital transformation and an uncharted future for workplace design in 2019
by Cherie Johnson and Julie Yonehara • Comment, Technology, Workplace design
In some way, humans have touched every single thing on this planet. We’re stepping into unknown territory. We’re changing everything. Think about that. Now, think about digital transformation. New technologies are changing how we interact with our environment, how we work, how we play and how we live. Tech tools are being more readily adopted […]
January 8, 2019
From nudge tech to listening tools, Gartner makes some workplace predictions for 2019
by Brian Kropp • AI, Comment, Technology, Workplace
Last year we saw businesses reporting their gender pay gap, General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) taking effect, speculation on how Brexit will impact jobs and further impact on how technology is changing the way we work. Looking forward to the year ahead, Gartner has pulled together a fresh set of workplace predictions for the coming […]
January 7, 2019
What Leonardo da Vinci can teach us about the six hour working day 0
by Mark Eltringham • Comment, Flexible working, Technology, Wellbeing
The latest idea to grip the sometimes limited imagination of the world’s workplace chatterers is that of the six hour working day or the four day working week. This has its original roots in a Swedish experiment designed to limit the hours people work in an attempt to improve their work-life balance and possibly even […]
January 4, 2019
Why new technology can still make employees happier, healthier and more efficient
by Elaine Rossall • AI, Comment, Flexible working, Lighting, Technology, Wellbeing
For many years, we became used to new technology being treated with excitement. Essentially, people thought technology made their lives better. More recently this consensus has been tested. On a very practical level, there is growing concern about the impact of everyday technology. ‘Screen-time’ has become a byword for anxiety and disengagement from the real […]
January 3, 2019
Anti-team legislation can make us slaves to individual rights
by Helen Jamieson • Comment, Flexible working, Workplace
Society is becoming more selfish. At least that’s what the most commonly held view on the issue suggests, and it’s only set to get worse. Whether or not you believe the headlines, my 20 plus years’ experience as an HR consultant has led me to believe the hype. Increasingly many (I stress, not all) employees no […]
December 17, 2018
Don’t be a turkey, get on the commercial property gravy train
by Jo Sutherland • Comment, Property
Last week, the RICS Commercial Property conference tackled the biggest issues impacting the built environment sector, arming delegates with fragments of the formula for future success. The morning CEO Question Time panel put a trio of CEOs in the spotlight. In addition to airing concerns about the current political climate, rapidly shifting societal attitudes, diversity […]
December 14, 2018
Getting a better handle on the psychology of office design
by Paul Goodchild • Architecture, Comment, Workplace design
It was the Finnish architect Juhani Pallasmaa who described the door handle as ‘the handshake of the building’ in his book The Eyes of the Skin: Architecture and the Senses. Buildings greet us in other ways too and we respond to those greetings in very human ways. So much so, in fact, that when we […]
December 13, 2018
Flexible working should not mean employers ask people to work all the time
by Oliver Shaw • Comment, Flexible working, Wellbeing
Talking about the role of technology within the flexible working arena is hardly ground-breaking. For decades, technological advancements have been hailed as pivotal to developments within the employment landscape. But this year, conversation appears to have reached another level. In an article for Open Access Government in June 2018, for instance, Richard Morris, UK CEO […]
January 24, 2019
Australian designers are fundamentally reshaping workplaces around the world
by Bronte Turner • Comment, Workplace design
Earlier this year, the QS World University Rankings revealed that the University of Melbourne, the University of Sydney and the University of New South Wales are better places to study architecture and the built environment than some Ivy League universities. The Asia-Pacific region accounted for eight of the top 20 architecture schools from the region. […]