February 8, 2022

The office sector needs to develop better arguments for its products

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

The distillation of every received and laundered idea of the past two years leads us here. A claim from Gallup that in future just over a third of the desks in offices will be empty. Whatever Gallup thinks, this is great news for the office sector. One of the truths the office sector hasn’t always liked to talk about too much over the last few decades is that in a typical office over that period, around half of the desks have already been empty. More →

February 4, 2022

Want people to return to the office? Then create the best office in the world

by Mike Hills • Features, Wellbeing, Workplace design

More obituaries have been written for the office in the past two years than at any time in history. It has often seemed like even the best office in the world couldn’t preserve the idea of the office. And it’s not like the obituaries were all that rare even before the pandemic forced us to reappraise our relationship with work and the times and places we do it. While all these death notices were being served, one particularly well-informed organisation was making some more interesting observations about it all. In particular, it constantly raised the most fundamental question of all. More →

February 3, 2022

Working from home fuels concerns for energy consumption

by Sara Bean • Environment, Features, Flexible working

Back in February 2020, consulting firm WSP UK published some interesting research that revealed those working from home during the summer saved around 400kg of carbon emissions, the equivalent of 5 percent of a typical British commuter’s annual carbon footprint. The catch was that it was just a seasonal benefit. If an average employee worked at home all year round, they would produce 2.5 tonnes of carbon per year – around 80 percent more than an office worker. This is because, during the winter, most heating systems in Britain heat the whole house, which produces far more carbon emissions than would be produced from the commute. More →

February 3, 2022

Workplace culture needs a rethink in line with employees’ changing priorities

by Jayne Smith • Flexible working, News, Workplace

Considerable job insecurity and uncertainty has pushed companies to rethink their workplace culture to meet employees’ new needs, priorities, and expectations, according to the annual Fjord Trends report from Accenture. According to the report, nearly two years of social, economic and employment disruption has resulted in a collective shift in people’s relationships with work and employees are re-assessing what they want and expect from a company culture and employee value proposition. This means enhancing workplace flexibility, benefits packages, and greater employee care and compassion will continue to be notable trends in 2022, creating both challenges and opportunities for businesses looking to retain and recruit talent. More →

January 31, 2022

The great workplace conversation (still) needs to be held with a great deal more humility

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

“Nobody knows anything”. William Goldman’s infamous summing up of the essential unknowability of the movie business also has a less quoted second part. “Not one person in the entire motion picture field knows for a certainty what’s going to work. Every time out it’s a guess and, if you’re lucky, an educated one.” It is a call for humility. That no matter how much we know about what we do and how good we are at it, we can’t always predict its outcomes. And that is clearly the case with the ongoing Great Workplace Conversation. More →

January 31, 2022

Business leaders have undue confidence in the idea of hybrid working

by Jayne Smith • Flexible working, News, Technology

Flexible working has overtaken salary as the top benefit to employees (59 percent), highlighting that flexibility and autonomy over the working day is now more important than financial reward for most workers. This is according to a new report from Jabra; the Jabra Hybrid Ways of Working 2021 Global Report carried out amongst 5,000 knowledge workers in five countries worldwide, including the UK. However, the report also suggests that many business leaders have a false sense of confidence in their ability to implement hybrid working.

January 26, 2022

Hybrid working is now the dominant business model for knowledge workers

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

Future Forum, a consortium launched by Slack with founding partners Boston Consulting Group, MillerKnoll and MLT has released the latest findings from its Pulse study, which shows that hybrid working has become the dominant work model for knowledge workers around the world. The report claims that the percentage of people working in hybrid arrangements has increased to 58 percent (from 46 percent in May 2021), as the share of workers who say their teams work exclusively either from home or from the office has declined sharply. More →

January 18, 2022

Employees are ready for work in the metaverse but sceptical about ability of firms to deliver

by Jayne Smith • News, Technology

Just as businesses are starting to find their groove with hybrid working, the workplace has begun to evolve again with the emergence of the metaverse. New research from Lenovo claims that close to half of employees (44 percent) are willing to work in the metaverse and believe that it can deliver benefits like productivity to the workplace. The metaverse is primarily defined as a shared digital space with digital representations of people, places, and objects. In the future, the metaverse can be a highly immersive extension of the physical world, with its rich user interface. At the enterprise level, this opens up possibilities for businesses to create a more viable, interactive workplace. More →

January 18, 2022

Firms need to do more to engage, attract and retain staff

by Neil Franklin • Flexible working, News, Workplace

Over 40 percent of employers are finding it more difficult to retain and recruit staff, according to Aon’s Benefits and Trends Survey 2022 (registration). The report claims that many employers have adjusted their benefits strategies to address an intense labour market, in which employee work motivations have shifted in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. Forty-one percent of employers said they have found it more difficult to retain staff in the last year, while 44 percent have found it more difficult to recruit new staff. Many employers anecdotally expressed in the survey that they need to pay higher salaries or sign-on bonuses to entice new recruits. More →

January 18, 2022

How to provide a great place to work for remote workers

by Richard Guy • Company news, Flexible working

Remote working swiftly evolved from a stopgap lockdown solution into a globally successful workstyle – and it’s set to stay. According to research quoted by CityAM, “84 per cent of UK businesses plan on having a hybrid, flexible or remote workforce following the pandemic”. Some companies, like Deloitte, have placed all bets on remote in closing their offices and basing employees from home, enjoying a vast reduction in operational costs. This flexibility has offered immediate benefits for remote workers, ranging from lifestyle and financial to positive influences on wellbeing. Workers in particular social groups have experienced life-changing situations, securing work in previously inaccessible geographic locations. More →

January 17, 2022

Is your office worth the journey it takes to get to it?

by Despina Katsikakis • Comment, Flexible working, Property

A couple of years ago, in the wake of a surge in self-care start-ups and viral diet fads, Forbes declared 2019 as the year of the “wellness revolution”. Three years and a global pandemic later, the revolution appears to have swept our offices. Why? Quite simply, we have woken up to the fact that we could be productive remotely, while also realising the risks of not accommodating employee wellbeing in the office. More →

January 12, 2022

Are we witnessing the demise of the knowledge worker?

by Anthony Brown • Comment, Flexible working, Technology, Workplace

While the debate about working from home versus working in the office continues, should the real conversation focus on the implications for a typical knowledge worker? ‘Knowledge work’ is a term that dates back over sixty years. It’s said to be first coined by Peter Drucker in his 1958 book The Landmarks of Tomorrow. The business guru went on to talk about knowledge workers in a later book, The Effective Executive, in 1966. He defined them as ‘high-level workers who apply theoretical and analytical knowledge acquired through formal training, to develop products and services’. More →