April 30, 2019

Best workplaces in London honoured at BCO annual Regional Awards

by Mark Eltringham • News, Property, Workplace design

Six London businesses celebrated success at the BCO Annual Regional Awards earlier today, with Facebook, 2TVC, Deloitte, Boden, Project North and Fora Borough all recognised as the capital’s best workplaces. The prestigious BCO Awards programme recognises the highest quality developments in the UK and sets the standard for excellence in the regional and national office sector. Today’s ceremony marked the third of the BCO Regional Property Awards dedicated to London, celebrating the best office space in the country. London winners will compete with those from other regions at the BCO National Awards in October this year.

April 30, 2019

Workplace design in tech sector out of step with demands of modern work

by Neil Franklin • News, Technology, Workplace design

HOK has released the second volume of HOK Forward, its annual report exploring a crucial issue in workplace design. HOK Forward: Tech Workplace Takes Center Stage investigates the distinct threats and challenges facing the tech sector and explores how these same challenges are affecting all companies, regardless of the industry in which they operate. More →

April 29, 2019

UK productivity slump linked to employee experience and lack of meaning, claims Deloitte report

by Mark Eltringham • News, Technology, Workplace, Workplace design

Only half of UK employees consider their organisations to be effective at creating a positive work environment and only two fifths consider their employer to be effective at creating meaningful work. With 84 percent of workers stating that employee engagement and productivity are linked and 68 percent say their organisations do not measure the correlation between employee engagement and productivity – suggests UK business leaders need to think differently to prevent productivity slumps. The findings are from the Deloitte Human Capital Trends 2019 survey, which tracks the top trends shaping the agenda for HR and business leaders both in the UK and globally. Employee experience, leadership and learning, respectively, led this year’s top 10 UK trends.

April 25, 2019

Lies about work, the limits of wellness programmes, sleepwalking architects and some other shoes

by Mark Eltringham • Architecture, Features, Flexible working, Wellbeing, Workplace design

There are lots of reasons to worry about where the World might be taking us, or perhaps where we are taking it. You can take your pick but for me one of the most worrying aspects of contemporary discourse is the obvious dearth of empathy. We might like to think of this as an innate characteristic of human beings, but it really isn’t. It’s something that we also need to learn. This idea is explored in this piece by Hanna Rosin who centres her argument around an analysis by Sara Konrath, an associate professor and researcher at Indiana University who has discovered that our willingness to empathise with people is eroding rapidly, especially for those who we see as ‘other’ or irrelevant. If you want an example of lack of empathy, you can see it in this footage of a banker being taken to task for it in a US committee hearing.

April 24, 2019

The meteor strike of coworking and the beasts that will remain

by Mark Eltringham • Comment, Flexible working, Property, Workplace design

The concept of coworking has only been with us for a short time, but there are already signs that it is evolving into something rather different. The most common misperception about the way evolution works is that it is based on some steady progression, driven by the merciless principle of survival of the fittest, with the best adapted climbing towards the top of an evolutionary tree. This gives rise to one of the most common questions posed by sceptics: if we evolved from apes, why are there still apes?

April 23, 2019

The flexible solution to workplace loneliness

by Guzman de Yarza Blache • Comment, Flexible working, Wellbeing, Workplace design

For years, the word ‘office’ would doubtless conjure images of the traditional individual cubicle. However, times have changed, and where the cubicle once ruled the roost, a flexible working revolution is already disrupting the office market and reshaping the world of work.

April 18, 2019

Vast majority of stress not caused by work but home life

by George Eltringham • News, Wellbeing, Workplace

Stress can be caused by numerous factors, but work often isn’t the main culprit, according to a report from The Health Insurance Group. The company runs regular forums for their staff to discuss their mental wellbeing, and life outside work consistently ranks as the biggest cause of stress. As businesses look to support the mental wellbeing of their staff, it’s important they recognise that support needs to extend to home life too – not just work. More →

April 18, 2019

Stress in legal profession widely misunderstood, research paper claims

by Neil Franklin • News, Wellbeing

The latest Bellwether research paper titled, ‘Stress in the Legal Profession: Problematic or Inevitable’, published by LexisNexis UK claims that stress is an endemic issue in the legal profession with two thirds of respondents currently experiencing high levels of stress despite the confident ‘business as usual’ industry outlook. Almost 1 in 4 solicitors feel that more could be done to support them in the workplace although 4 in 5 report high levels of job satisfaction and 5 out of 10 consider they have a positive state of mind.

April 17, 2019

London leads Siemens Atlas of Digitalization as most digitally ready global city

by Neil Franklin • Cities, News, Technology

Siemens has launched a new web-based application which reveals the readiness and potential of six major cities to embrace digitalization and develop new ways of living, working and interacting. The Atlas of Digitalization is based around the interconnected themes of Expo 2020 Dubai – Mobility, Sustainability and Opportunity – and assesses how the fourth industrial revolution has already impacted urban life around the world, and the potential it could have in the future. More →

April 17, 2019

What to expect and not to expect from an Office 365 intranet

by Sergey Golubenko • Company news, Technology

According to the latest report by Nielsen Norman Group, Office 365 is one of the most popular platforms for intranets. Providing a rich toolset, it helps to build multifunctional and eye-catching corporate intranets that improve employee collaboration and communication and streamline business processes. Let’s see whether an Office 365 intranet is as good as described and try to look through its reported benefits with a cool head. More →

April 16, 2019

BW: Workplace Experts completes new GAM London office

by Freddie Steele • Company news, Workplace design

BW: Workplace Experts has completed the new London headquarters for GAM, an independent global asset management firm. Located at the BREEAM Excellent rated building 8 Finsbury Circus, London, the new location consolidates the business from three separate locations into one. GAM occupies four floors totalling 48,500 sq. ft in order to accommodate its London employees under one roof, further strengthening the culture and operations of the business. More →

April 16, 2019

UK architectural firm claims global sustainability first

by George Eltringham • Environment, News

UK-based Bennetts Associates is the first architecture practice in the world to achieve approved Science Based Targets and commit to the UN’s Climate Neutral Now campaign. This commitment builds on the practice’s track record of sustainability within the built environment by taking a leadership position on climate change.

Climate Neutral Now is an initiative launched by the UN Climate Change in 2015 to encourage and support all levels of society to take climate action to achieve a climate neutral world by mid-century, as enshrined in the Paris Agreement. The scheme requires companies to measure and offset carbon footprints across three elements of the business. More →