Columnists

Thoughts of hybrid working should now turn to productivity and trust

by • Comment, Flexible working

Businesses now face the huge challenge of managing office returns and addressing the underlying generational divides and mistrust that have surfaced as a result of the pandemic years. With the Office for National Statistics (ONS) having released new data on UK productivity levels that show productivity remains sluggish, the impact of hybrid working models on […]

Rejection of flexible working request shouldn’t blind employers to their legal duties

by • Comment, Flexible working

Flexible working has continued in many workforces since the pandemic. The most common pattern is a hybrid one where employees split their time between the office and home. However some employees are now looking to work remotely on a permanent basis. This is what happened in Wilson v Financial Conduct Authority 2302739/2023. The Claimant submitted […]

Why changing with the seasons is key to the all-weather workplace

by • Comment, Wellbeing, Workplace design

Love it or hate it, weather chat is part of Britain’s day to day – yet in the world of work it’s not just casual small talk. In fact, the seasons have a real impact on how we feel and perform. The change in seasonal characteristics influences what employees need from where they work. Looking […]

Whenever I hear the future of work, I reach for my pistol

by • Comment, Flexible working, Workplace design

For years it has been evident that there is no ‘future of work’. There is only a journey with no destination and no single way of not getting to it. That hasn’t stopped people talking about it all endlessly. And each time they have, I’ve reached for my pistol.

Of mice and men

by • Comment, Flexible working, Technology

The history of the humble computer mouse dates back to the 1960s and engineer Douglas Engelbart’s work on improving the way people and computers interact. He initially called the device he envisaged a ‘bug’ but the first prototype he created with Bill English was so unmistakeably a rodent that there was only one thing they […]

The Kafka trap of return to office arguments

by • Comment, Flexible working

Recently, I bemoaned how Orwell is often invoked in support of an argument by people who haven’t read him. They are usually drawing on some laundered misperception of his work, and especially Nineteen Eighty-Four. Well, just a few days ago, I witnessed somebody misapplying the work of Kafka in a similar attempt to make a […]

Life at the coalface: How the agile workplace first appeared in the mid 20th Century

by • Comment, Wellbeing, Workplace design

The idea of diffusion of innovation has become so embedded in our culture, and most recently so associated with the adoption of new technology, that we might assume it happens in predictable ways. The steps between innovators, early adopters, early majority, late majority, and laggards seem intuitive and certain even when their peaks might be […]

Underutilised office space? I just can’t be bothered with it

by • Comment, Flexible working, Workplace design

A while ago, Antony Slumbers asked me why I thought firms had never done anything much about the underutilisation of their offices. This was in the first throes of lockdown-driven remote work hysteria, prompted by one of those headlines about how offices being half empty was some signifier of hatred for them.

The three biggest disruptors of our time

by • AI, Business, Comment, Environment, JB, Technology

When we look at the context for change, we many times just look internally at what we think needs to change for whatever reason and then set about making that happen. Rarely do we think about what is going on for the people within the organisation and just how ready they and the organisation itself […]

Workplace design and the corrective force of rediscovery

by • Comment, Workplace design

It has become something of a preoccupation of mine to consider why so many of the conversations we hold about workplace design are largely about the rediscovery of old ideas. It may be because there are constants about how people interact with their surroundings and each other and the truisms underlying those interactions. Although these […]

The final word on … responsibility

by • Business, Comment

There have been many experiments  over the years that expose the darker aspects of human nature. One of the most telling of these was carried out by two American researchers called John Darley and Bibb Latane in 1968. The two men’s work was partly inspired by a notorious 1964 murder in which a woman called […]

The final word on workplace wellbeing

by • Comment, Wellbeing

The final word? Of course not. Nearly six years ago, we published an article that described how the quest for productivity had been supplanted almost entirely by a new emphasis on workplace wellbeing. It was the final nail in the coffin of scientific management and its central notion of the office as a factory, subject […]

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