June 11, 2020

The lessons learned under lockdown will help us grow and improve

by Alicia Michael • Features, Workplace design

As the global community navigates the Coronavirus crisis, the nature of the workplace will be more important than ever. We have been working remotely on an unprecedented scale, and the benefits are clear – flexibility, time with family, and reduced commuting as a start. In some form, working from home is here to stay, even as returning to the physical office becomes possible. However, we have also discovered the limitations to remote working. While teams have been able to stay connected virtually, this cannot substitute for face-to-face collaboration, which is essential to fostering innovation. More →

June 10, 2020

Firms should adopt a hybrid model as they return to work

by Neil Franklin • Flexible working, News

As mandatory working from home lifts, managers should be aware that employee expectations around how they work have evolved significantly. In a report (registration) published by Soldo in collaboration with several UK universities, management experts advise that companies need to radically redesign their business processes. Employees who worked productively at home throughout the lockdown will strongly resist managers enforcing limitations on where and when they do their work. More →

June 9, 2020

A thank you for the bitter knowledge offered by the lockdown

by Adam Burtt-Jones • Comment, Flexible working, Workplace design

With all challenges come opportunities. Covid-19 will most likely be the single largest challenge and disrupter of a generation. It has the potential to create the greatest significant shift in working behaviours and standards of the past hundred years. Workspace consultants, enlightened clients, designers, researchers and commentators have been hammering the agile / home/ remote working drum for the past twenty years or more, waiting patiently for this kind of opportunity. More →

June 3, 2020

Data is changing the role of the workplace and HR

by Shaun Guyver • Comment, Property, Workplace

Business leaders have been heavily dependent on HR, real estate, and technology functions working together to help their organisation adapts to this new world of work during the pandemic. Ensuring personal safety, promoting wellbeing, encouraging collaboration, and maintaining efficient service delivery will never be more important than in the coming months. The challenge facing CRE leaders is how to advise on the appropriate range of workspaces and hygiene standards to allow organisations and their people to thrive, and how to cut through the complexity of accessing and interpreting data to achieve this. More →

June 1, 2020

The new era of work will embrace an ecosystem of spaces

by Neil Franklin • Flexible working, News, Property, Workplace design

The results of a new survey on people’s experience of working from home during lockdown will accelerate the shift from primarily office-based work to a “total workplace ecosystem”, based on offices, homes and other locations including digital space. That is the conclusion of a new report from Cushman & Wakefield which analysed responses from more than 40,000 individuals from around thirty companies across nearly twenty sectors. More →

May 29, 2020

The role of workplace professionals in the new era of work

by Kelly Bream • Comment, Flexible working, Property

Many consequences of the COVID-19 crisis are immediately apparent to workplace managers and users. Potentially less obvious, are the fundamental changes to the job roles involved in managing commercial property, both within occupier businesses and property management teams alike. More →

May 26, 2020

The experience of working from home is not the same for everyone

by Anna Hern • Comment, Flexible working, Wellbeing

So we’ve demonstrated that we can work from home. But is it a permanent solution? We hear senior managers counting the numbers and working out just how much money will be saved if organisations no longer need their office space. It’s a seductive argument. So before we all settle down in our spare bedrooms with a sigh of relief, let’s just have a think about what that model would mean in the long term. More →

May 21, 2020

Firms need to embed lessons from pandemic in a new work culture

by Neil Franklin • News, Technology, Wellbeing

Organisations should build on the lessons they have learned about themselves and their employees during the pandemic and embed them into their work culture. That is the main claim of the tenth annual Global Human Capital Trends report from Deloitte. More →

May 19, 2020

Getting beyond the hype of technological innovation and productivity

by Prof Henry Chesbrough • Comment, Technology

Not long ago, innovation was a largely internal affair. The journey from the laboratory to the marketplace took place largely within the four walls of the firm. Think of Bell Labs, IBM Research, or Xerox PARC. Each of them created important technological breakthroughs. And each breakthrough was commercialized through the company’s own businesses. More →

May 13, 2020

Pandemic threatens the transition to clean energy

by Jayne Smith • Environment, News

The coronavirus pandemic risks cancelling out recent progress in transitioning to clean energy, with unprecedented falls in demand, price volatility and pressure to quickly mitigate socioeconomic costs placing the near-term trajectory of the transition in doubt. Policies, roadmaps and governance frameworks for energy transition at national, regional, and global levels need to be more robust and resilient against external shocks, according to the latest edition of World Economic Forum’s Fos tering Effective Energy Transition 2020 report published today. More →

May 7, 2020

Remote working has a number of hidden risks

by Dave Cook • Features, Flexible working, Wellbeing

Many of us have had little choice but to resort to remote working in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic. It is just days since Google, Apple and Twitter were making headlines by ordering their employees to work from home, but you could now say the same about lots of companies. More →

May 6, 2020

Organisations think empowering people is the route to success (but only a few act)

by Neil Franklin • News

Nearly 90 percent of organisations say their success depends on empowering frontline employees to make decisions in real, but only 7 percent offer people the tools they need, according to a new report from Harvard Business Review Analytic Services, sponsored by ThoughtSpot. The report, The New Decision Makers: Equipping Frontline Workers For Success, analyses the sentiments of 464 business executives from 16 industry sectors in North America, Europe and Asia Pacific. Only one-fifth of organisations say they currently have a truly empowered and digitally equipped workforce while 86 percent agree their frontline workers need better technology and more insight to be able to make good decisions in the moment. More →