July 13, 2018
New research suggests that whilst young women are increasingly aware of the availability of careers in technology, half hold a belief that they are ‘unexciting’ and more than two-thirds think that roles in tech are predominately linked to gaming and IT consultancy; according to research commissioned by Yoox Net-a-Porter (YNAP) as part of their work to support digital education.
July 11, 2018
The British Council for Offices (BCO) today welcomes Katrina Kostic Samen as its new President. Katrina Kostic Samen, Founder and Managing Partner at KKS Strategy, formally takes over the position from Ken Shuttleworth, Founding Partner of Make Architects, at the BCO’s Annual General Meeting in London today, Wednesday 11th July. As Chair of the BCO Annual Conference held earlier this year in Berlin, Katrina set out the vision for her Presidential year, challenging delegates to look at the workplace from multiple occupier perspectives, and to ensure that they are designing and delivering offices which are inclusive and provide for a diverse workforce.
July 11, 2018
Liverpool’s Avenue HQ has been crowned ‘National Co-Working Space of the Year’ by The Association of Independent Professionals and the Self-Employed (IPSE). The award claims to ‘recognise and celebrate the important role coworking spaces play in creating a nurturing, inclusive and stimulating environment for the UK’s 4.8 million-strong self-employed workforce’. The coworking industry is booming globally as companies of all sizes recognise the importance of working environment on employee and business performance. Pioneered by start-ups, entrepreneurs and freelancers, a growing number of companies, large and small, are incorporating the concept and rapidly reaping the benefits.
July 6, 2018
In Shakespeare’s plays, the sky often goes dark and a storm starts to brew as a prelude to tragedy or violence creating a sense of foreboding. And so it was at today’s BIFM AGM in the lead-up to the special resolution to change the name of the institute from the British Institute of Facilities Management to the Institute of Workplace and Facilities Management. After a fire alarm test appositely kicked off the event, sun poured through the windows and ceiling panes of the Friends Meeting House in Manchester as BIFM chairman Steve Roots gave an update on the institute’s performance in 2017 and plans for 2018. As he introduced the format for the three ordinary resolutions, the sun dipped behind a cloud and the room was plunged into gloom causing murmurs of nervous laughter among the 80-strong audience. More →
July 5, 2018
The open plan office versus closed debate rages on, and rather than running out of steam in the face of all of the evidence and reasoned argument put forward one one side or the other by many industry thought-leaders, it seems to have nine lives. Those grand and ground-breaking new offices occupied by the world’s tech giants seem to be particularly popular examples of why highly open and transparent workplaces do, or don’t work, especially those headline-grabbing offices created around the world by Google. This public debate has led to some very interesting and insightful discussions in various forums (to which I have contributed), inspiring me to synthesise the key themes into four reasons why a Google office is not necessarily the right type of office for your organisation. Many thanks in particular are due to David Rostie and Kay Sargent for their valuable online contributions to the debates which inspired this article.
July 5, 2018
In 2017, a content creator called Oobah Butler decided that he wanted to do something with the experience he’d gained writing fake positive restaurant reviews on TripAdvisor. What if, he wondered, he set up an entirely fictitious restaurant based in the shed in his garden and then started to manipulate TripAdvisor ratings? What happened surpassed his wildest expectations. In just six months, The Shed at Dulwich became the top-rated restaurant in London, even though nobody had ever actually eaten there, based solely on fake reviews, fake pictures and the word of mouth created by a complete inability for anybody to book a table.
July 5, 2018
The International Facility Management Association UK Chapter has confirmed four new appointments to its Board of Directors, further strengthening its ties with the RICS FM Professional Group as part of the collaboration between what is claimed to be the world’s two largest organisations representing the profession. Joining the IFMA UK Board are four members of the RICS FM Professional Group Board including Rory Murphy FRICS, Commercial Director at VINCI Facilities and RICS World Regional Board Member for UK & Ireland. Murphy is joined by Dennis Markey FRICS, Chief Executive Officer at Gen2 Property, Paul Bagust, Global Property Standards Director for RICS and Stephen Shallcroft FRICS, Director Corporate Real Estate at ARCADIS.
June 29, 2018
The performance management needs of the changing workplace
The UK’s productivity problem: hub no spokes
Simple self-driving shuttles become first robot rides in Detroit
Automation rarely outright destroys jobs; it instead augments
People who think their opinions are better also overestimate their knowledge
Shut down business schools? Two professors debate
The Dunning Kruger Song from the Incompetence Opera
June 28, 2018
The science of the workplace has gained a lot of interest over the last few years, highlighting recurring patterns of human behaviour as well as how organisational behaviour relates to office design. In theory, knowledge from this growing body of research could be used to inform design. In practice, this is rarely the case. A survey of 420 architects and designers highlighted a large gap between research and practice: while 80 percent of respondents agreed that more evidence was needed on the impact of design, 68 percent admitted they never reviewed literature and 71 percent said they never engaged in any sort of post-occupancy evaluation. Only 5 percent undertake a formal POE and just 1 percent do so in a rigorous fashion. Not a single practitioner reported a report on the occupied scheme, despite its importance in understanding the impact of a design.
June 27, 2018
Spiceworks has announced the results of a new survey examining the use of web filtering in the workplace and the implications of restricting certain online behaviours. The results indicate among organisations that don’t restrict non-work related web use, most employees (58 percent) spend at least four hours per week, the equivalent of 26 workdays per year, on websites unrelated to their job. In other words, based on the median U.S. salary of $45,812, these organisations are paying full-time employees approximately $4,500 per year to spend 10 percent of their time consuming non-work-related web content.
June 26, 2018
A comprehensive study into global talent mobility claims that London is the most desirable city for overseas workers worldwide, beating New York, Berlin and Barcelona. In the four years since the first study conducted by The Boston Consulting Group (BCG) and totaljobs, the UK has dropped three places in overall attractiveness, from second to fifth in the country rankings. Decoding Global Talent 2018 (registration required), claims to be one of the most expansive studies every undertaken into workforce migration trends. Shining a spotlight on the UK’s attractiveness to global talent, the research reveals the world’s most desirable destinations for work.
July 11, 2018
Challenging some of the most commonly held misconceptions about coworking
by John Williams • Comment, Coworking
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