August 10, 2023
Zoom has opened a new London ‘Engagement Hub’ which the firm claims will spearhead the shift from traditional office spaces to ‘experiential working hubs’. With the demand for hybrid working and remote capabilities giving rise to unconventional ways of operating, Zoom says it has designed its new office to support the changing nature of the employee experience, marking a new era of modern work. (more…)
August 8, 2023
The UK government has announced it will be scaling back plans for thirty office ‘hubs’ outside of London by 25 percent and letting out surplus floor space to other departments as more civil service workers are choosing to work from home. In 2022 the government’s property strategy highlighted plans to relocate 22,000 posts out of London by 2030, creating 30 new regional ‘government hubs’ as it closes its older offices across the UK. However, currently just over half of that figure have been relocated. (more…)
August 7, 2023
As organizations adopt hybrid work, reduce their real estate footprint and redesign floor plans, space planners are running into a slew of new challenges. Yesterday’s antiquated tools can’t handle these challenges, because they were built for the old, relatively static world of work. (more…)
August 2, 2023
A new study commissioned by Great Western Railway claims to reveal striking generational differences in attitudes towards remote working and its impact on mental health. The research, which explored the effects of remote working on different age groups, highlights a growing concern regarding the isolation experienced by older employees compared to their younger counterparts. (more…)
August 1, 2023
Caleb Parker’s award-winning #WorkBold Podcast returned for an industry-leading ninth season, which took the podcast to over 100,000 downloads (117,000 at the time of publishing this article) with an audience from 90+ countries. The only podcast dedicated to Space-as-a-Service (SPaaS), #WorkBold Podcast is in the top one percent of business podcasts globally. Its host, entrepreneur Caleb Parker, is the founder of Bold – a joint venture with NewFlex. (more…)
July 25, 2023
Responding to reports from property management platform, Re-Leased, that UK office lease lengths has fallen to the lowest on record and that vacancies rates had soared, office designers Unispace are suggesting firms should be wary of making ‘rash decisions’ regarding their office footprint over the long term. A study published by the firm – Returning for Good – which surveyed 9,500 employees and 6,650 employers from 17 countries worldwide – claims that while employees in the UK spend the least amount of time in the office compared to any other country, there is an expectation that this will increase as workers face limited access to career progression opportunities while working remotely. (more…)
July 25, 2023
A new poll from IE University, the WorkAnywhere campaign and Remote claims that office workers are experiencing the highest levels of burnout and lowest levels of happiness and job satisfaction when compared to remote and hybrid workers. The team behind the survey say this indicates that the office environment isn’t the effective separator between life and work that many believe it to be. According to findings from The Global Life-Work Survey, in the past month alone, 41 percent of full-time office workers experienced signs of burnout compared to 26 percent of fully remote workers and 34 percent of hybrid workers. (more…)
July 21, 2023
A new report claims that rising numbers of the people in the UK are choosing to shop and work from home to make every penny count as the cost-of-living crisis continues. These insights mark the launch of the second Virgin Media O2 Business Movers Index – a quarterly barometer that combines anonymised and aggregated UK movement data from O2 Motion, with national polling findings to reveal key trends relating to the behaviour of 2,000 British businesses and 1,000 UK consumers. Together, the data paints a picture of movement patterns and the trends behind them. The second quarter of this year reveals a more cash-conscious image of Britain as more of the UK public change their behaviours to cope with a tough economic backdrop. (more…)
July 14, 2023
Despina Katsikakis, Executive Partner & Global Lead, Total Workplace at Cushman & Wakefield, has been elected as President of the British Council for Offices (BCO) with immediate effect. She succeeds Mark Kowal, Partner at Sheppard Robson. Peter Crowther, Managing Director at Bruntwood, becomes Senior Vice President. (more…)
July 12, 2023
If there were an algorithm to create a word cloud in response to searches for ‘What millennials want in the workplace?’, you’d expect to see Google spew out terms such as ‘flexibility’, ‘meaning’, ‘fairness’, ‘equality’, ‘inclusivity’, ‘opportunity’, ‘connections’, ‘socialising’ and ‘experience’. Do the same with ‘Gen Z’ replacing ‘millennials’ and – guess what – you’ll see the exact same word cloud, although perhaps in a different colour and order so you don’t think it’s based on the same homogeneous assumptions about younger generations. (more…)
July 5, 2023
A new poll of people aged between 35 and 55 suggests that most workers expect to retire at around 62 years old, four years earlier than the UK state pension age of 66. The report called Providing for tomorrow today: understanding an ageing workforce was commissioned by law firm Osborne Clarke. It surveyed employees aged 35-55 working in seven industry sectors across the UK. The report claims to identify workers’ current and future employment and retirement expectations and the impact these may have, not only on the shape of the future UK workforce, but also on employers in the industry sectors surveyed. (more…)
August 1, 2023
How many fingers am I holding up?
by Mark Eltringham • Comment