Columnists
September 24, 2015
Weighing up the pros and cons of the BREEAM environmental standard 0
by Charles Marks • Comment, Environment, Facilities management, Workplace design
For some years there has been a growing awareness of the need to improve the environmental performance of buildings. This is closely linked to both the Government’s own international commitments to reduce carbon emissions by 80 percent over the next 35 years and the need of organisations to act ethically and cut costs while they’re […]
September 22, 2015
John Fogarty reflects on a career in office furniture spanning five decades 0
by John Fogarty • Comment, Furniture, Workplace design
I was lucky to enter the office furniture industry in 1971, at the beginning of a decade shaped by the explosive advent of new office technology. What had gone before would not have looked that different to anyone who’d worked a corporate office in the 1890s: serried ranks of desks occupied by clerical staff bashing away on manual typewriters […]
September 21, 2015
Five essential office design trends to look for in the near future 0
by Tom Brialey • Comment, Facilities management, Flexible working, Workplace design
Since the early Twentieth Century, business leaders have been experimenting with office design in an attempt to improve productivity. From the sea of forward-facing desks imagined by Frederick Taylor, to the infamous cubicle of the late 1960s, to today’s open-plan office, each innovation has said something about our changing relationship to work. In a Gensler survey […]
September 18, 2015
Majority of workers go into the workplace when they should be off sick 0
by Sara Bean • Comment, News, Wellbeing, Workplace
Debates around presenteeism tend to revolve around staff checking their emails while on holiday, but another potentially more destructive behaviour is that of the worker who reckons they’re so indispensable they insist on coming into the workplace when they’re ill. In a recent survey, 89 percent of workers said they had gone into work when they were not well, […]
September 18, 2015
What Robert Frost can teach us about the changing workplace
by Mark Eltringham • Comment, Facilities management, Flexible working, Technology
The great Twentieth Century American poet Robert Frost is arguably best known these days for two quotations that have – usually in bastardised versions – entered into common usage. The first is the final verse of his poem The Road Not Taken, and especially the final three lines: “Two roads diverged in a wood, and I […]
September 17, 2015
Growth of on demand economy is transforming work and workplaces 0
by Mark Eltringham • Comment, Flexible working, News, Technology, Workplace design
Some of the key characteristics of the workplace of the near future are starting to crystallise pretty rapidly. In many ways, employees are aware of this to a greater extent than employers, legislators and politicians. For example, this week and over recent weeks Uber has been arguing in courts around the world that its drivers are […]
September 15, 2015
Considerable minority of working women report gender discrimination 0
by Sara Bean • Comment, News, Workplace
Whether the new Shadow Cabinet is or isn’t representative of women (there are no women in senior roles on the Labour front bench, but half of the total posts went to women) was a major talking point about the new Labour Party line-up yesterday. Meanwhile, on the other side of the Atlantic, despite numerous policy and […]
September 10, 2015
Five ways in which your colleagues might be driving you completely nuts 0
by Mark Eltringham • Comment, News, Wellbeing, Workplace
It’s always worth reminding ourselves that while a well designed workplace and favourable working conditions are very desirable prerequisites of a good job, what really makes work enjoyable and what really makes a great culture are the people with whom we work. This simple fact is one reason why some people are happy in poorly […]
September 8, 2015
Over a fifth of working mothers denied flexible hours are forced to quit 0
by Sara Bean • Comment, Flexible working, News, Workplace
Discussions about the gender pay gap and increasing the number of women on Boards need to acknowledge that the greatest obstacle to female empowerment in the UK is balancing home and family. Just last week the TUC revealed that many women felt compelled to take time out of work to care for young children while another survey found over […]
September 2, 2015
Flexible working key to counteracting female workers’ ‘baby shame’ 0
by Sara Bean • Comment, Flexible working, News, Workplace
Whether the gender pay gap is more of a motherhood gap is an ongoing debate, but now a new survey has found that when even planning to have children, one in five (18 percent) working women hide their family plans from their employers. In an interview with the BBC yesterday, Labour Party leader candidate Yvette Cooper revealed that when she took […]
September 28, 2015
A review of the CIFF office design show 2015 in Shanghai 0
by John Sacks • Comment, Events, Furniture, Workplace design
Shanghai’s population is reported to be in the region of twenty six million, more than double that of London, and the city continues to creep outwards inexorably, attracting even greater numbers. For the casual visitor however, its vast size does somehow seem to be manageable, just. The traffic is very heavy of course, but it […]