September 17, 2018
Why it’s so hard to be a working mom. Even at Facebook
Let’s bring back the Sabbath as a radical act against ‘total work’
What Starbucks gets that architects don’t
Silicon Valley’s company towns are doomed
Complexity & chaos — the new normal
The price of regeneration in London
To restore civil society, start with the Library
September 13, 2018
Nearly half of people in the EU work in their free time to meet work demands, and a third often or always work at high speed, according to recent estimates. If you are one of them, have you ever wondered whether all the effort is really worth it? Employees who invest more effort in their work report higher levels of stress and fatigue, along with lower job satisfaction. But they also report receiving less recognition and fewer growth opportunities. And they experience less job security. So increased work effort not only predicts reduced wellbeing, it even predicts inferior career-related outcomes.
September 12, 2018
The new issue of Work&Place has been published and is free to read on the journal’s new website. Its overall readership is now around 100,000, including in the new Spanish language edition, so it’s not just more accessible, it is even more influential. The journal continues to explore the most cutting-edge ideas surrounding the physical, digital and cultural domains in which we work. The convergence of these elements of the workplace define the greatest challenges we face in the workplace of the early 21st Century. Some of these are addressed in the features included in this edition.
September 7, 2018
In recent years, the concept of biophilia and the inclusion of greenery in the working environment has captured the media’s attention, which has depicted it as an important aspect of wellbeing in the workplace, seemingly the crucial indicator of a great office. For this reason, and beyond the superficial or cosmetic use of plants in the office, I would like to analyse the relationship between nature and the corporate world from a historical perspective in an effort to understand the role of greenery within the architecture of the corporate headquarters.
September 7, 2018
The great tech paradox for flexible workspaces
The number one office perk? Natural light
The personality test that conned the world
The insecure nature of work is a result of decisions by corporations and policymakers
Landlords up their game to help occupiers attract staff (paywall)
An architect’s defense of open plan offices
September 3, 2018
August 24, 2018
We are often told that one of the main objectives of workplace design these days is to help people become more creative. Now, there are all sorts of complications bound up in this, not least the assumption that you can help or even will people to become more creative, especially in an environment that still wants, in some way at least, to supervise what they do and when and where they do it. A working environment designed for creativity only works in the context of a culture that facilitates it. And here’s where the problem lies. more…
August 13, 2018
How blue light from screens literally blinds us
Physical closeness makes people and things more desirable
Non-monetary incentives and the implications of work as a source of meaning
How clean is your desk? The unwelcome reality of office hygiene
The utter uselessness of the Cat A habit
UK can thrive post-Brexit, but only with design
New Zealand firm’s four-day week an unmitigated success
Real Estate and technological denial
Biophilic design for the workplace is so much more than plants
Image: Hunt of the Unicorn (tapestry circa 1500) housed at Stirling Castle
August 3, 2018
This piece is a sample chapter from the book Creating the Productive Workplace: Places to Work Creatively, now available to order. However much we know about the forces we expect to come into play in our time and however much we understand the various social, commercial, legislative, cultural and economic parameters we expect to direct them, most predictions of the future tend to come out as refractions or extrapolations of the present. This is a fact tacitly acknowledged by George Orwell’s title for 1984, written in 1948, and is always the pinch of salt we can apply to science fiction and most of the predictions we come across. more…
July 20, 2018
A sizeable majority of us are in jobs that don’t fit our occupational interests
Does workplace design really matter?
The most productive meetings have fewer than eight people
Stories from experts about the impact of digital life
Workplace interventions for reducing sitting at work
The AI revolution will be led by toasters, not droids
If you’re going open-plan for costs, you’re doing it wrong
July 19, 2018
21st Century organisations are under constant pressure to evolve. They are beset by a number of forces that demand they change constantly. These include the need to restructure the organisation, adapt to new technologies, respond to competitors and changes in the economy and legislative environment. Inevitably, this constant need to change affects both people and the built environment in very profound ways. However, according to a study of Culture and Change Management published by the Katzenbach Center, only around half of all transformation initiatives meet their objects over time. Among the biggest obstacles to successful change management cited by the study is change fatigue, which is characterised by a lack of empathy and a widespread failure to engage with the change process.
July 16, 2018
A bunch of coworking startups saying the same things about how different they are
Mass incompetency in business: the way we promote people is dead wrong
Want to discover (or re-discover) your sense of purpose at work?
Is stress at work always a bad thing?
Augmented space planning: Using procedural generation to automate desk layouts
A Stanford researcher says we shouldn’t start working full time until age 40
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The truth about all those workplace trends lists
Are open plan workspaces truly evil or is this just fake news?
The ten most read stories on Workplace Insight for 2018
As we enter our darkest hours, quality of office lighting needs attention
Lack of understanding continues to compromise employee wellbeing
Decline in new UK commercial property construction work within private sector
By Bailey and Insidesource merge to form global furniture dealership
Survey claims increased levels of productivity amongst flexible workers
Getting a better handle on the psychology of office design
No more blank slate, lots more workplace choice and some other stuff
