July 17, 2019

Companies should respect their historic identity to thrive in the future

Revisiting a company motto or philosophy is necessary in an ever-changing world, but it can disrupt people’s sense of “who we are” and should be carefully managed to ensure the firm continues to thrive in the future, according to new research from UCL School of Management. The study was based on the study of a large database of corporate mottos of long-established Japanese firms. It focused on 25 cases still in operation today, using a combination of archival and interview data to investigate when, why, and how they had revised their historical mottos in times of change. The findings are reported in an article forthcoming in the Strategic Management Journal. More →

July 16, 2019

New BCO specification guide addresses “exponential times”

by Neil Franklin • News, Property, Technology, Wellbeing, Workplace design

The British Council for Offices (BCO) has published its new Guide to Specification, which provides guidance on industry standards for workplaces across the UK. The Specification Guide, last published in 2014, sets out to help office developers address the key issues for the UK workforce in the coming decades, namely wellbeing, technology and sustainability. The authors claim that the new edition addresses the “exponential times” in which we now live, with sections focusing on wellbeing, the Fourth Industrial Revolution and sustainability. More →

July 16, 2019

The workplace of tomorrow redefined by learning and AI

by Jayne Smith • Flexible working, News, Technology, Workplace

Unily has released a report analysing the trends and issues shaping the workplace of tomorrow. The report, ‘Future of the Workplace 2030+’, has been co-created with the futurist Anne Lise Kjaer, a regular on the TED Talks circuit best known for the book The Trend Management Toolkit. Looking at the transformation of our working lives over the next 10 years and beyond, the report explores both the challenges and the opportunities as companies prepare for a new wave of technological advances and a new generation of workers. It sets out specific challenges including how to incorporate Generation Z in the workplace, integrate new technology and face greater scrutiny of organisational values. It also suggests that new jobs will emerge such as ‘Vice President of No’, ‘Professional Rebel’ and ‘Ideas Broker’. More →

July 12, 2019

A life after carbon for the built environment

by Peter Plastrik and John Cleveland • Cities, Environment, Features, Technology

A new urban model is emerging worldwide – transforming the way cities design and use physical space, generate economic wealth, consume and dispose of resources, exploit and sustain the natural ecosystems they need, and prepare for the future. This emerging new urban paradigm has profound implications for players who care about and depend on the design of a city’s built infrastructure – including architects, engineers, builders, real estate developers, and office building tenants. More →

July 12, 2019

Firms can overplay the war for talent, researchers find

by Mark Eltringham • News, Workplace

Firms often put great effort in retaining good employees because they fear the loss of talent and knowledge spillover to rival companies. However, new research published in the Academy of Management journal by Stefan Wagner, Professor of Strategy at ESMT Berlin, and Martin Goossen from Tilburg University suggests that losing key employees to a competitor can actually be a benefit to companies and so the war for talent may be futile or even counterproductive. To assess the impact of mobile employees the researchers focused on R&D alliances in the pharmaceutical industry, where partnerships are a common mode of innovation as they diffuse the burden of costly drug development. They collected data on alliance formation amongst the 55 largest pharmaceutical firms over a 16-year period, identifying all scientists that moved between these firms. Of the 130,000 scientists the researchers tracked, more than 8,200 moved from one firm to another. More →

July 10, 2019

Vast majority of workers want more flexible hours

by Neil Franklin • Flexible working, News, Wellbeing

The overwhelming majority (84 percent of workers) would like their organisations to offer more flexible hours of work, whether that’s time to suit personal needs, or the occasional early finish, according to a new report from Totaljobs. While employees have the legal right to request flexible working from their employer regardless of their existing contract, some companies have already built greater flexibility into their employer offering. Some go one step further with “agile working”, whereby employees can work from any location, at any time, by utilising appropriate technology. More →

July 8, 2019

Companies need to be more honest about employer branding

by Jayne Smith • News, Workplace

Almost a third of employees have left a job because the culture wasn’t what they expected so firms need to address their employer branding. The research from pre-hire assessment specialists, ThriveMap, claims that 32 percent of employees have left a job because the culture wasn’t what they thought it would be when they joined the organisation. When asked what was different from what they expected, 56 percent said it was the behaviour of senior leaders, 53 percent said it was the behaviour of colleagues and 51 percent cited everyday management. These figures indicate that a significant proportion of companies are not being completely honest around their employer brand and selling candidates an untruthful picture of what their organisation is really like.

July 2, 2019

A Turing Test for the workplace ⁰

by Mark Eltringham • Comment, Facilities management, Technology, Workplace, Workplace design

One of the ideas we’re going to hear about a lot over the next few years is the Turing Test. It describes the point at which a machine’s behaviour becomes indistinguishable from a human’s, so that a typical person is unable to work out if he or she is interacting with a machine or an individual. This matters for lots of reasons; functional, philosophical and ethical. More →

July 1, 2019

The biggest problem with open plan offices is how they are used

by Prof Dr Alexander Brem • Features, Workplace design

For decades the trend among workplaces has seen employees moving out of individual offices and into open plan spaces. This has not always been successful, with the open-plan approach receiving significant criticism. The key issues are distraction and noise, which apparently leads to uncooperative behaviour, distrust and negative personal relationships, and the lack of privacy and sense of being universally observed. Now that the internet connectivity is available almost everywhere and thus allows much more flexible working, the question arises: What might the set-up of an ideal workplace environment look like today? More →

July 1, 2019

Modern comms tools can shut out workers

by Neil Franklin • Technology

The use of technology to support communication and collaborative working in an increasingly digital and flexible world is something many of us recognise. However, a global study released today by Avast Business claims this technology is potentially causing a divide in the workplace, with 40 percent of UK respondents concerned that less tech literate employees will be ‘shut out’ unless they embrace the latest chat, collaboration and digital project management tools. More →

June 28, 2019

Office taxonomy and an increasingly diverse workplace ecosystem ⁰

by Mark Eltringham • Comment, Facilities management, Workplace design

It is perhaps the most common misconception of evolutionary theory that all animals are somehow evolving towards some end point – meaning us. This notion is perhaps best summed up when a sceptic asks: “If we have evolved from monkeys, why are there still monkeys?” The lesser of the two problems with this is its solipsistic assumption that humans are the pinnacles of life and that, if evolution were true, all species would eventually evolve into people. More →

June 25, 2019

The difference between office design and FM is the difference between sex and parenthood

by Mark Eltringham • Comment, Facilities management, Workplace design

There is an ongoing feeling within the facilities management discipline that when it comes to office design, facilities managers are not consulted early enough or well enough or consistently enough to ensure that the end result is a workplace that is as functional and as effective as it could be. The reason this feeling persists is that in many cases it is true. Or at least is true to a greater or lesser extent depending on how you view these things. More →