Columnists
January 31, 2019
Get ready for the next wave of technological innovation, or get left behind
by Bruce Barclay • Comment, Facilities management, Property, Technology
The natural world is a story of constant change and evolution. Animals, plants, insects and micro-organisms exist in an ecosystem, adapting to relentless changes in their environment, influenced by habitat, climate and their cohabitors. They respond to change faster than the human world, because they are not tied by the same restraints and conventions. They […]
January 25, 2019
The state of the workplace right now? Everywhere and nowhere, baby 0
by Paul Carder • Comment, Facilities management, Features, Premium Content, Property, Workplace design
My trade is to ask questions about the workplace then make sense of the answers. That has been a particular challenge with the question, ‘what are offices today?’ What seems clear is that the various actors in the workplace ecosystem look at offices through very different eyes. Urban planning and development professionals still view offices […]
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. […]
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 […]
February 4, 2019
Getting back to environmental basics in the Anthropocene era 0
by Alison Kitchingman • Comment, Environment, Facilities management, Workplace design
A new word has recently entered the public discourse on the environment. It describes the current epoch of geological time as the period in which humans have had an impact on the world’s climate, geology and ecosystems. Although yet to be formally recognised by the mainstream scientific community, it has been in existence for a […]