June 2, 2024

A brief history of the future of work

by Mark Eltringham • Features, Flexible working, Technology, Working culture

The past few years and our current predicaments should serves as a reminder of that tragic, unchangeable feature of the human condition, best expressed by Kierkegaard, that we are doomed to live our lives forwards but only understand them backwards. Retrospect is particularly important when we look back on sudden, large changes that knock us off our normal path. It’s important to remember this as we continue to grapple with the nature of the present and future of work in the wake of the pandemic. More →

May 22, 2024

Some questions about AI, a world drowning in content and the human centipede of creativity

by Mark Eltringham • AI, Comment, Technology

One unintended but welcome result of the new fixation with AI is that many of the people who became experts on the workplace in 2020 are now experts on AI. You’ll find them on social media and they’ll have written a book about it by May to sit on the shelf alongside the one about hybrid working and The Great Resignation. So, if you want some certainty about where generative AI taking us, go talk to one of them because people who know about the subject seem to have little or no idea or raise even more questions. More →

April 5, 2024

A just in time lesson about office design

by Mark Eltringham • Comment, Workplace design

The nascent years of new ways of working in the late 80s and early 90s coincided with a widely held but soon to be discarded belief that the Japanese had cracked management practices. So it was perhaps inevitable that the principles of a process called just in time manufacturing – most famously applied in the factories of Toyota – should migrate to new forms of office design and the rapidly developing practice of flexible working.

March 7, 2024

There never was a new normal

by Nick Gold • Comment, Flexible working, Wellbeing

Four years ago this month, we were all given our first ‘work from home’ mandate. A clear, unambiguous instruction from the UK government that, in the grip of a quickly spreading global pandemic, we should all work from home where possible. And amid the biggest seismic shift of our lifetime, it was an easy instruction to follow. Hunker down and wait patiently until we find a ‘new normal.’ But four years on, the question remains – are we nearly there yet? Are we ever going to find a ’new normal’? More →

February 27, 2024

Where are the iconic office furniture products of yesterday?

by Mark Eltringham • Comment, Workplace design

Late last year, this image went viral on social media. It is of a group of Bauhaus design students from around 1927. They are called Martha Erps, Katt Both and Ruth Hellos. The full image (reproduced below) shows them with legendary office furniture designer Marcel Breuer, who Erps would later marry. The story of the photograph can be found here. On social media, though, the standard response from people of a certain vintage – my vintage admittedly – is to suggest that they were last seen supporting Echo and the Bunnymen at the Barrowland Glasgow in 1984. More →

February 2, 2024

Life at the coalface: How the agile workplace first appeared in the mid 20th Century

by Mark Eltringham • Comment, Wellbeing, Workplace design

The idea of diffusion of innovation has become so embedded in our culture, and most recently so associated with the adoption of new technology, that we might assume it happens in predictable ways. The steps between innovators, early adopters, early majority, late majority, and laggards seem intuitive and certain even when their peaks might be unsure. And yet history teaches us that sometimes new ideas can take years or even decades to take hold, even when they are potentially world-changing and relevant for the era in which they were formulated. More →

December 18, 2023

A bit of alien thinking on coffee and some other BS

by Mark Eltringham • Facilities management, Features, Technology, Wellbeing, Workplace design

I’ve sometimes highlighted how our perceptions of the workplace are subject to an apex fallacy. The daily consumption of narratives about campuses, tech palaces and ‘cool’ design can obscure the fact that most people don’t experience this stuff in their daily lives. They work in adequate or possibly nice offices. Some in shabby offices or horrible offices. Many travel into work at the same time each day and sit with roughly the same people and do roughly the same things. They may work from home more frequently now, but they have a routine there too. Most will work in a mundane or nice home that mirrors the mundane office that awaits at the other end of the commute. More →

December 7, 2023

Has digital transformation led to an upsurge in workplace disinformation?

by Garry Paxinos • Comment, Technology

You don’t have to look far to find misinformation. Just a few weeks ago, amid the aftermath of the coup in Niger, online platforms were being inundated with false information, intensifying tensions surrounding the nation’s future. This included erroneous videos on TikTok and Twitter suggesting the presence of Wagner Group (Russian state-funded) fighters, false claims about Algeria’s military involvement, and inaccurate assertions about banning uranium export to France. More →

October 17, 2023

Successful startup founders exhibit similar personality traits, but they rely on variety in teams

by Neil Franklin • Business, News

New research from the Oxford Internet Institute, University of Oxford, University of Technology Sydney (UTS) and the University of Melbourne suggests that start-up founders have distinct personality traits, and they’re more important to the success of their companies than previously thought. While good fortune and circumstances can play a part, new research reveals that when it comes to start-up success, a founder’s personality – or the combined personalities of the founding team – is paramount. More →

April 18, 2023

Remote workers have a few favourite excuses for not doing any work

by Jayne Smith • Flexible working, News

A new poll claims that technical difficulties are among the most common excuses for not working by remote workers. Unexpected family events, sick family members, and other family emergencies come second with 18 percent. Other work obligations like attending a virtual meeting, or urgent tasks that require immediate attention are at the end of the list with 10 percent. More →

April 10, 2023

IF AI can replace what you do without anybody noticing, the problem isn’t with the technology

by Mark Eltringham • Comment, Technology, Wellbeing

Perhaps the least surprising news from the current AI media frenzy is that Buzzfeed has already been using the tech to publish a lot of its stories. There’s an obvious response to this and it’s not about how amazing the AI is. If an artificial intelligence can write vast quantities of formulaic clickbait stories on your website without anybody noticing, then the problem is with your original approach to ‘content’ and how it’s consumed. More →

April 10, 2023

The allure of workplace bullshit

by Mark Eltringham • Comment, Wellbeing, Workplace design

Although the legend of Faust is one of the Germanic world’s foundational narratives, its archetypes and themes were already established by the time Goethe codified them in his 1808 play. They have since become universal. The idea that somebody would sell their soul to the Devil to gain something or rid themselves of unhappiness is as resonant now as it was in Renaissance Europe. It has inspired books films and artists to such an extent that its derivatives now have their own Wikipedia page.