June 16, 2023
Remote workers feel “policed” by unpredictable managers
Daily monitoring can lead to remote workers feeling that their managers have less trust in them, research from NEOMA Business School reveals. Birgit Schyns, Distinguished Professor of People and Organisations at NEOMA, co-authored a study analysing survey data on 450 employees at UK-based firms. According to the researchers, when working from home, employees can feel that they have less autonomy and are under constant surveillance if monitored too frequently. These feelings can be exacerbated if managers’ behaviour is unpredictable, they say. More →
All of humanity’s problems,” the French scientist and philosopher Blaise Pascal wrote in 1654, “stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone.” He may have been right, but then again, sitting in a room alone isn’t necessarily a great state of permanent being either. There was a time we used to talk with dismay about the Japanese phenomenon of intense social distancing known as hikikomori. We would consider with horror the isolation, lack of engagement with society, poor mental health and loneliness of the people who had almost completely withdrawn to their rooms. Those poor bastards locked up in enclosed spaces linked to the outside world only by screens. 
An idea that has never really gone away, but which seems to be enjoying a new lease of life is the tabula rasa. The conception of people as a blank slate is something a that has crept back into mainstream political and social thought for a variety of reasons. Arguably, it is also behind many of the most misleading notions about work and workplace design, perhaps most importantly that a change to some single element or characteristic of a working environment will lead to a specific outcome in the behaviour of people. 
March 9, 2023
Progress depends on heterodox thought and difficult questions
by Mark Eltringham • Comment, Facilities management, Wellbeing, Workplace design
More →