Columnists
July 30, 2015
Far from dying out, the office is becoming more essential than ever
by Luke Finch • Comment, Technology, Workplace design
Samsung recently released a new report which explores how our offices might look in the year 2025. The death of the office has been predicted over and over again, however the Samsung Smarter Futures Report goes against the grain and predicts that the office could actually become more important than ever. Driven by the adoption of smart technology the […]
July 28, 2015
Beyond branding – how workplace design can express a firm’s culture
by Gary Chandler • Comment, Facilities management, Workplace, Workplace design
When it comes to the incorporation of branding and identity into a workplace, there is a simple option, which is to produce a design that faithfully incorporates the firm’s logos, colours and straplines in the interior. There’s nothing wrong with this, except for the fact that it is literally superficial and so may miss the […]
July 21, 2015
Neocon highlights four of the world’s most important office design trends
by Neil Franklin • Comment, Events, Workplace design
We live in the Global Village, Marshall McLuhan’s idea from 1962 of an electronically contracted world in which attitudes, cultures and our political, business and legislative framework begin to pull together. Yet each nation is shaped by little differences. That is why the comedy programme The Office found an audience on both sides of the […]
July 17, 2015
Do we really think the future of work involves our replacement by robots?
by Simon Heath • Comment, Flexible working, Technology, Workplace
A report published recently by my former colleagues at CBRE called “Fast Forward 2030: The Future of Work and the Workplace” claims that by 2025 so many people will be more interested in being happy and having creative roles that up to 50 percent of current occupations will be defunct. 35 years elapsed between the release of Orwell’s […]
July 15, 2015
The standard gender pay gap narrative is a myth, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t problems
by Mark Eltringham • Comment, Flexible working, Knowledge, Workplace
It is one of the great ironies of modern life that in a world drowning in data, a great deal of public discourse is driven by narratives that have little or no factual basis. If anything, the substitution of baseless and questionable stories. Sometimes these narratives are based on outdated realities. Sometimes on assumptions. Sometimes […]
July 14, 2015
Homeworkers left to fund their own technology by stingy bosses
by Sara Bean • Comment, Facilities management, Flexible working, News
Last week we learnt that for some employers, homeworking is only to be encouraged when it’s out of hours. Now new research from Regus suggests that only around a third of people encouraged by their employers to work from home (35 percent) receive any contributions from their firm to fund the fit-out. The survey of over […]
July 9, 2015
London transport shuts down ….. agile workers unaffected …..
by Paul Carder • Cities, Comment, Flexible working, Wellbeing
London’s Financial Times reported this morning, “The worst London Underground strike in more than a decade saw millions of Londoners struggle to get to work”. It is chaos, here in the UK capital – the top global city in PwC’s Cities of Opportunity ranking. It is a sorry state of affairs, as in a scene […]
July 9, 2015
Many employers discourage home working, unless it is out of hours
by Sara Bean • Comment, Flexible working, News, Wellbeing, Workplace
A combination of tube and rail strikes causing travel disruption in London today, means many businesses will accede to requests to work from home. Yet a large number of UK employers are still reluctant to encourage home working. According to a recent report by Redcentric, despite the fact that that just under a third of UK office […]
July 9, 2015
Wind tunnels and Beyoncé’s backside added to tall buildings charge sheet
by Mark Eltringham • Architecture, Cities, Comment, Property
As if there aren’t enough reasons to dislike tall buildings already, two news stories drop into our inbox this week which add to the growing charge sheet against these phallic assaults on our senses and sensibilities. According to the first story, it appears that the recent proliferation of towers in London not only means that […]
July 6, 2015
Humans will remain at the heart of the emerging digital workplace
by Maciej Markowski • Comment, Flexible working, Technology, Workplace design
The speed of technological development over the last 30 years has been pretty mind blowing. Of course, some technologies came and went, for instance you would struggle finding fax machines in your office nowadays or people using Pagers to contact one another. It’s no wonder that in the early nineties futurologists predicted the death of […]
July 1, 2015
Three ways in which the business case for green building design is moving on
by Dan Callegari • Architecture, Comment, Environment, Facilities management, Workplace design
The case for sustainable building design used to be based on two straightforward principles. The first was that buildings had to offer up some sustainable features to comply with the ethical standards of their occupiers. The second was that there was some financial benefit. Often these principles went hand in hand, especially when it came to […]
August 2, 2015
Female bosses enhance workforce engagement and motivation
by Gill Buchanan • Comment, Flexible working, Wellbeing, Workplace
As businesses begin to ease out of recession they are starting to feel more confident in the economy and look at how they can increase spend. But while companies adjust to their new found growth they must ensure that their employees are reassured that they have a voice and, more importantly, are listened to. At […]