Columnists
August 21, 2018
How do you make your company culture work for everyone?
by Jonathan Richards • Comment, Workplace
Company culture is the bedrock of any business. And it has been thrown into sharp focus in recent months with many high-profile scandals hitting the headlines such as the discrimination case at Uber. In light of this, many businesses are now investing in – even living and breathing – their company culture. This is of course, […]
August 16, 2018
The office will always live on because nothing propinks like propinquity
by Mark Eltringham • Comment, Property, Workplace design
Perhaps the most pervasive and enduring myth about the office is that it is somehow dying off. It’s a blast of guff originally farted out at the dawn of the technological revolution in the early 1990s, which has somehow lingered and been stinking the place out ever since. The essential premise behind the idea of […]
August 15, 2018
The global problem of overwork and the right to disconnect
by Aki Stamatis • Comment, Flexible working, Technology, Wellbeing
Anybody who doubts the importance of work and working culture to people’s lives should look at the resistance to President Macron’s mooted changes to labour laws. His attempts to modernise and liberalise French workplace legislation marked the first cracks in his reputation and brought millions of French workers to the streets as part of a […]
August 9, 2018
How will Crossrail impact the office landscape of London and beyond?
by Lars Brown • Comment, Property
We are now just a few months away from the grand opening of the central section of Crossrail, the 118km long railway line spanning London and the South East which will, once completed, will deliver a direct connection between all of London’s main employment centres; linking Heathrow with Paddington, the West End, the City and […]
August 9, 2018
Is driver behind the widening parental leave gap a lack of rights in the gig economy?
by Sara Bean • Comment, Flexible working, Legal news, News, Workplace
The already low number of fathers claiming paternity leave has fallen for the first time in five years, to 213,500, down 3 percent from 221,000 last year an analysis by law firm EMW has revealed. To help encourage more men to take paternity leave, the Government launched the shared parental leave scheme in 2015. However, […]
July 31, 2018
How Charles Eames came to have mixed feelings for his most famous chair
by Mark Eltringham • Comment, Furniture, Workplace design
As any honest smartphone user would attest, the things we own sometimes end up owning us. Equally, the things we create can end up owning us. The most famous item designed by Charles Eames is a moulded plywood, leather upholstered lounge chair and matching ottoman that are timelessly iconic, have spawned thousands of rip-off versions, […]
July 31, 2018
Google should be an example to all when it come to interactive workplace design
by Alice Porter • Comment, Workplace design
Google is known to be a wonderland for tech professionals everywhere. It is a sought after and coveted workplace, which is designed to cater to the individual. Comparably has recently named Google as the “tech company with the best corporate culture”, but how does this culture work beyond the realms of the Google institute? The […]
July 23, 2018
New report on the future of work argues we are at an inflection point on the journey
by Mark Eltringham • Comment, Technology, Workplace design
Whatever you make of the Brexit vote, the idea put forward by Jacob Rees-Mogg in a Channel 4 interview that it will take 50 years before we can judge its benefits is extraordinary. No doubt, people will be making those judgements in half a century, but long term predictions of this kind are invariably foolish. […]
July 17, 2018
Video: Arthur C Clarke predicts remote and flexible working in 1964
by Mark Eltringham • Comment, Technology, Workplace, Workplace design
Some people foresaw the virtualisation of work, flexible working and the erosion of the workplace over 50 years ago. Scientist and author Arthur C Clarke appeared on the BBC’s Horizon programme in 1964 to apply his foresight and clipped vowels to the question of what future technological advances would mean for the way we work […]
July 11, 2018
Challenging some of the most commonly held misconceptions about coworking
by John Williams • Comment, Coworking
There are a number of misconceptions that dominate much of the writing around flexible workspace, despite all the press coverage and discussion around coworking over the last two years. Yet even in this comparatively short space of time, a number of misconceptions about the market have managed to take hold. Some of them are intuitive […]
July 11, 2018
A beauty industry veteran makes the case for corporate wellness
by Leena Jain • Comment, Wellbeing, Workplace design
Wellness is a term that today transcends the consumer and business worlds, but it is so much more than a buzzword. Today, the wellbeing of employees is essential for organisations to flourish, so much so that the term has in many ways replaced ‘productivity’ as the way to measure the success of an organisation. Both the […]
August 22, 2018
Why early intervention matters for workplace mental health
by Liz Walker • Comment, Wellbeing, Workplace
Last year alone, poor mental health was the primary cause of long-term absence for 22 percent of organisations, with employees feeling too stressed or anxious to face going in to work. This was up from 13 percent in 2016. However, 45 percent of those who take time off for mental health reasons give their employers […]