July 7, 2020
London has once again been declared the smartest city in the world, according to the seventh edition of the IESE Cities in Motion Index 2020. New York takes the second spot, followed by Paris. The top 10 list is rounded out by Tokyo, Reykjavik, Copenhagen, Berlin, Amsterdam, Singapore and Hong Kong. (more…)
July 5, 2020
However much we know about the forces we expect to come into play in our time and however much we understand the various social, commercial, legislative, cultural and economic parameters we expect to direct them, most predictions of the future tend to come out as refractions or extrapolations of the present. This is a fact tacitly acknowledged by George Orwell’s title for Nineteen Eighty-Four, written in 1948, and is always the pinch of salt we can apply to science fiction and most of the predictions we come across. (more…)
July 3, 2020
Slowly, it seems we are seeing a gradual return to some sort of normality. Shops are opening up as well as restaurants and pubs and many of us are now also heading back into the office. But these aren’t the offices as we once knew them. Workspace layouts and seating plans are being completely overhauled to bring in new social distancing and safety measures. Beyond just the physical changes this incurs, this could also have a wider impact on how we work – and businesses need to be prepared and ready for that too. (more…)
July 2, 2020
Everything has taken a hit in 2020. Nothing has gone unscathed or unchanged – and the same goes for leadership. From boardrooms to living rooms, meeting rooms to spare rooms, leadership has moved away from face-to-face interactions to digital communications. Meanwhile, forward-thinking initiatives, spurred on by continuing diversity imbalances and widening gender pay gaps, have been put on hold. Following government guidance, only half of businesses published their 2018-19 gender pay gap report – which could reportedly push gender equality back a whole generation. We are risking losing sight of what’s important to us – and unless we’re intentional about how we make systemic, much-needed organisational changes, they’re not going to happen if we only focus on more ‘critical’ things, or keeping the lights on. (more…)
June 30, 2020
In the face of unprecedented health and economic disruption caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, ‘millennials’ and ‘Gen Zs’ express resolve and a vision to build a better future, a new Deloitte survey claims. The 2020 Deloitte Global Millennial Survey, now in its ninth year, suggests that both generations remain resilient in the face of adversity and are determined to drive positive change in their communities and around the world. (more…)
June 30, 2020
Around 6 in 10 London commuters will change the way they travel when the return to work begins, research by Addison Lee claims, with COVID-19 safety concerns changing transport demand patterns. (more…)
June 30, 2020
Lenovo has published a new study which claims that organisations are placing business and shareholder goals above employee needs during their digital transformation. The research, conducted among 1,000 IT managers across EMEA, suggests that just 6 percent of IT managers consider users as their top priority when making technology investments. (more…)
June 29, 2020
The winners of the annual KI Award, now in its fifth year, were announced in the lead up to the upcoming digital graduation show. The awards and cash prizes are given to final year students selected from the RCA’s ‘Design Products’ and the RCA/Imperial College London’s ‘Innovation Design Engineering’ double masters course. The winning projects showed an outstanding approach to functionality, durability, sustainability and enhancement to user experience for our future working or learning experiences. A summary of each award winner is included below. (more…)
June 26, 2020
New research released by Globalization Partners and CFO Research, suggests that most businesses are undeterred by the impact of COVID-19 and are still moving forward with plans for new or expanded international operations. More than half of the respondents expressed interest in expanding or adding operations in the Asia-Pacific region. The findings also claim that 83 percent of respondents said they are looking into a remote, global workforce model as a solution to the changes brought about by COVID-19. (more…)
June 24, 2020
The BBC recently published a piece on its website to commemorate the 40th Anniversary of Ridley Scott’s movie Alien and what it could tell us about office design and the workplace (of whatever sort). One of the interesting points raised in the piece was how the depiction of the conditions on board the spaceship Nostromo did away with the gloss and swish of previous visions of the future, replaced by grime, exposed services and strictly utilitarian interiors. The environment was one of the characters, a trick Ridley Scott later repeated in Bladerunner. (more…)
June 24, 2020
New research suggests that almost half (44 percent) of working carers in England and Wales, equivalent to around 1.6 million people, are struggling to cope with the pressures of balancing their work and caring responsibilities – and that a quarter (24 percent) have considered giving up their job entirely. These are the findings in a newly published report, titled “Supporting working carers: How employers and employees can benefit”, from the CIPD and The University of Sheffield. (more…)
July 6, 2020
For the love of procrastination
by Mark Eltringham • Comment, Wellbeing