January 15, 2021
Employee engagement levels may have actually improved during the COVID-19 pandemic, claims a recent survey undertaken by intermediary Howden Employee Benefits & Wellbeing. More →
January 14, 2021
Mace has announced that it has achieved its ambition to be a net zero carbon business in 2020. Following the statement in January 2020 that the company had committed to the ambitious target, the executive board has confirmed that after driving down its carbon emissions as far as possible across its developments and operations it has offset the remaining emissions. More →
January 8, 2021
As companies struggle to motivate teams working remotely, new research by the charity Education and Employers and the CIPD, claims that employers who support their staff with volunteering in schools and colleges has found employees to be more motivated, more productive and have a better sense of well-being. More →
January 4, 2021
The way in which we work has changed in a way no one would have ever predicted as a result of last year’s pandemic. Consequently, many businesses have chosen to adopt to an agile working practise. This coupled with the rapid evolution of the hybrid workplace has allowed more employees than ever the flexibility to work from home, many people however still crave that interaction with colleagues, and the ‘corridor conversations’ that cannot be replicated via Zoom and can only happen with workplace collaboration. More →
December 18, 2020
Originally published in March, right at the start of all this. Makes me wonder how far we’ve come in nine months. In Dorian Lynskey’s The Ministry of Truth, a “biography” of Nineteen Eighty-Four, the author describes how Orwell’s book was the end point of an obsession with utopian (and ultimately dystopian) fiction that characterised the first half of the Twentieth Century, and reflected the competing political, social and economic ideologies of the era. More →
December 18, 2020
No-one could have predicted what 2020 would deliver. A pandemic, lockdown, moving the workplace into the home. We are in uncharted waters. The Oxford English Dictionary defines resilience as being able to withstand or recover quickly from difficult conditions. Resilience is an almost stoic quality, and a pandemic a time of crisis. It almost feels like they are a match made in heaven. But how does this affect organisations? What can be done? Is it really that important to build employees’ resilience? More →
December 17, 2020
Avison Young, realestateworks and HLM Architects have launched a new report that assesses the impact of this year’s pandemic on workplace and corporate real estate strategies in the longer-term. Over 100 private and public sector companies were asked about their evolving approach to working culture, office design and portfolio strategies in the context of multiple forces of change, including greater resilience, the decarbonisation agenda, personalisation, remote working and the integration of the physical and virtual workspaces. More →
December 16, 2020
The pandemic has shaken up business priorities and many predict that it will continue to have lasting influence on the future direction of organisations. It is predicted that innovation and more compassionate leadership will take centre stage, according to a new study by ‘Future Trends in Leadership & Management – shifting priorities’, from The Institute of Leadership & Management. More →
December 11, 2020
Employee monitoring is an emotive topic. Businesses may wish to monitor their staff for a variety of reasons. For instance, they may wish to prevent the unauthorised disclosure of confidential or sensitive information, or detect attempts to steal valuable intellectual property. In the current conditions, dominated by the coronavirus pandemic, many businesses have opted to use automated means to monitor staff productivity. However, from an employee’s perspective, the use of monitoring software may be intrusive if not distressing. Further, if it has been implemented without regard to data protection law, it is potentially illegal. More →
December 10, 2020
From the archive. First published in October 
2015. 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 →
Organisations face a crisis of trust this year if they continue to make workplace decisions in the dark, according to employee experience platform,
January 13, 2021
Office design will respond to the events of the past year as it always has – by getting better
by Oliver Ronald • Comment, Workplace design