January 18, 2022
How to provide a great place to work for remote workers
Remote working swiftly evolved from a stopgap lockdown solution into a globally successful workstyle – and it’s set to stay. According to research quoted by CityAM, “84 per cent of UK businesses plan on having a hybrid, flexible or remote workforce following the pandemic”. Some companies, like Deloitte, have placed all bets on remote in closing their offices and basing employees from home, enjoying a vast reduction in operational costs. This flexibility has offered immediate benefits for remote workers, ranging from lifestyle and financial to positive influences on wellbeing. Workers in particular social groups have experienced life-changing situations, securing work in previously inaccessible geographic locations. (more…)
The events of the last 18 months have given us a once in a generation opportunity to reinvent work. Our generation can create a discontinuity between the assumptions of the past and the opportunities of the future. To capitalise on these opportunities though we have to dispense with the assumptions we hold about work and the places where work takes place, including many of the assumptions we hold about hybrid working. We have to re-examine the purpose of the office and what form it might conceivably take in the future before we can decide if it has any place in our plans. 
The 4th January was the first working day of 2022 for many employees, but due to ongoing working from home restrictions the majority will not be attending their usual workplaces. According to the latest research from the Institute of Workplace and Facilities Management (
New research by the 
There are 38 ways to win an argument. That is according to the 19th Century German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer who laid them out in an essay called 
Whilst driving through Zürich in a hailstorm I passed a Mercedes with a plastic bin liner taped over a missing window. Two thoughts struck me. First: this must be the result of the owner locking himself out of the car, as car crime is a fictional event in Switzerland (bike theft is preferred). The second was how utterly pointless this flapping piece of plastic served as an attempt to seal the broken window. 
The 
Despite having to get up earlier, commute, and the heightened risk of Covid-19 transmission in the office, almost five million UK employees are considering ditching working from home this winter, due to concerns around rising energy costs. 
New research by 
Pressing the ‘reset’ button is never easy. But I’m a firm believer that, once we do, we become much less averse than we perhaps expected to the change it inevitably brings. This is particularly true of the past eighteen months. From all of the sadness and hardship endured, we are beginning to emerge into a new, changed way of living. One that is both familiar and altogether different. The dichotomy is particularly evident in our workplaces. For many sections of the economy, the office was the ecosystem of our daily working lives. Initial questions of whether the office would survive quickly fell by the wayside, and a more interesting, nuanced, debate of what we want the office to be began. 
January 17, 2022
Is your office worth the journey it takes to get to it?
by Despina Katsikakis • Comment, Flexible working, Property