Search Results for: coworking

March 31, 2016

Government needs to wise up to the Fourth Industrial Revolution ⁰

by Mark Eltringham • Comment, Property, Public Sector, Technology

Last week, the UK Government passed the latest bill to pave the way for the creation of HS2, the high speed rail line that will initially connect London with Birmingham and later cities like Sheffield, Manchester and Leeds. Most of the criticisms of the line are focussed on its financial and environmental costs, impact on the wider rail network and (frankly poor) design. We can grant the project’s proponents all of their arguments countering those points and still we are left with a perhaps more fundamental problem. We are now committed to creating a train that will monopolise the resources available to public transport for the next twenty years and exist for more than a hundred, but without considering the world in which it will arrive. I’d go further and suggest that even as its tracks are laid, the world around it will already have left it behind, leaving it as an impressive but doomed testament to hubris, old tech and failure of imagination.

March 31, 2016

Flexible workspace underpins Hong Kong’s status as Asia’s hub ⁰

by Sean Lynch • Cities, Comment, Flexible working, Property

Despite the challenging cost of real estate and general commercial life in Hong Kong, startup activity in the city has seen exponential growth in the last few years, fuelled in part by new and innovative approaches to occupying workspace. The conventional Hong Kong office market is, famously, the most expensive of its kind – making it challenging for small and medium sized businesses to enter the market via this form of space. Despite this, the region’s startup scene is booming. According to an InvestHK survey, over 1500 startups bloomed in Hong Kong in 2015, which is a 46 percent increase compared to the previous year. And those numbers are likely to keep growing. So the question is, how do cash-strapped entrepreneurs, startups and other businesses manage to establish a base in this thriving city, despite these challenges, and what lessons does Hong Kong’s experience have for the rest of the world?

February 29, 2016

Report sets out challenges for rapidly changing Australian workplace ⁰

by Mark Eltringham • Flexible working, News, Technology, Workplace design

When it comes to innovation in workplace design and management, there are few countries in the world quite so forward thinking as Australia right now. Even so, Australia’s workers, firms and legislators remain under-prepared for the rapidly changing world of work, according to a new report from the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO), a Government funded research agency. Many of the trends outlined in the report will be familiar to readers of Insight. Over the next twenty years, it claims that around half (44 percent) of all jobs will be subject to computerisation and automation. Over the same period, it suggests that the majority of people will become active in the gig economy, many of them based in shared coworking spaces. The report also suggests that while Generation Z will be faced with the highest degree of change, an ageing population presents its own challenges.

February 15, 2016

The death of the office meme does not fit with a thriving property market ⁰

by Mark Eltringham • Comment, Flexible working, Property, Workplace design

You don’t have to look very far to find somebody or other proclaiming the death of the office. A quick Google search will come up with over 73 million results for the past year alone. This has been going on for decades, but a search engine now gives us a far better idea than the occasional feature in a trade magazine of just how the idea has evolved into a full-blown meme. The narrative has become so entrenched that the people who use it – typically the ignorant, the self-interested, the lazy and the ill-informed – rarely have their premise challenged. Usually it is an idea appended to some disruptive and supposedly apocalyptic trend and, at the moment, office kryptonite comes in the form of coworking, where once it was flexible working or mobile technology. And yet, for all the non-fatal wounds these innovations have inflicted on the traditional office, the idea of people travelling to work alongside each other in shared buildings endures.

January 28, 2016

The future of next generation TMT workplaces explored in new report ⁰

by Mark Eltringham • News, Property, Technology, Workplace design

A new report from property adviser Cushman & Wakefield claims to outline the key future property trends for TMT workplaces based on the views of decision makers from global Fortune 500 organisations, architects, designers, founders of start-ups and high-growth businesses. The Future of the TMT Workplace report produced in association with Unwork, identifies the key forces ‘driving change and necessitating TMT players to fundamentally rethink their workplace strategies’. These include frictionless growth, engineered serendipity, the ‘gig’ economy, the pace of technological change, demand for top technological talent far outstripping supply and where to locate in order to succeed.At this week’s launch event for the report, a panel of expert speakers agreed that workplaces have a critical for TMT firms to respond to challenges such as the need to attract the most talented tech workers.

December 15, 2015

Seven essential workplace design trends to keep an eye on during 2016 ⁰

by Dan Callegari • Comment, Facilities management, Workplace design

What has become increasingly apparent over recent years is that the office isn’t just a place to work, but also a driver of competitive advantage. We’ve always known this to a greater or lesser extent, but the dynamic and ever shifting nature of the modern world is presenting organisations with new and evolving challenges that they must address with all of the tools at their disposal. At the heart of this complexity is the physical workspace. Its design touches on every aspect of the changing workplace and the objectives organisations set for themselves and their employees. Although it has lots its primacy as the main place of work, you could also argue that the focus on the office’s key strengths makes it more important than ever within the context of overall working cultures. So, with that in mind, here are ten of the most important current trends in workplace design and management we foresee for 2016.

November 24, 2015

WeWork announces latest plans to dominate London’s commercial property scene ⁰

by Mark Eltringham • Flexible working, News, Property, Workplace design

Coworking giant WeWork has announced three new deals as it seeks to become the major player in London’s commercial property market. The firm, founded by Adam Neumann in New York in 2010, has made no secret of its plans for London as we reported earlier this year. The office space provider already has six London locations which it lets out to members (not tenants) who have access to the network of 57 locations in 17 countries on flexible terms via an app. According to a report published this week in Estates Gazette it is now set to add another 1 million sq. ft. to its portfolio in the capital with locations on City Road, Waterhouse Square and Docklands. The plans were announced to coincide with the launch of its largest London centre at Moor Square designed by Oktra. The company has also announced that it intends to launch its WeLive residential property concept in London in the near future following its successful launch in New York.

November 9, 2015

Business success is progressively less related to employment levels ⁰

by Mark Eltringham • Comment, Technology, Workplace, Workplace design

If you want to understand exactly how the economy has changed over the last few decades, one of the most important statistics is also one of the least remarked upon. It is the growing disconnect between a firm’s earnings and the number of people it employs, a statistic that puts paid to the lie that people are an organisation’s greatest asset. Once upon a time, of course, there was a direct correlation of one sort or another between the a firm’s revenue and the number of people it employed and consequently the amount of space that it took up. This was especially true for the world’s great manufacturers and other industries engaged in what was once proper work; moving, creating, destroying and maintaining things. Growth and success meant more employment and more space. There were economies of scale but the upshot was more or less an arithmetic progression in employment based on earnings.

September 21, 2015

New study highlights the key roles of real estate at UK’s top law firms ⁰

by Mark Eltringham • Case studies, Facilities management, News, Property, Workplace design

The UK’s top law firms are spending more on their real estate and allocating more space to staff, following years of reductions. Those are two of the key findings of a new report from The Lawyer magazine and property consultants JLL. Around half of the UK’s Top 200 law firms shared detailed data with the study, which also incorporates publicly available information on transactions. The study also takes into account the links between real estate strategy and broader strategic, management and human resources issues. While the report says the amount of space dedicated to each lawyer has risen by 7 percent over the last two years and the costs of owning real estate have also risen markedly, it also describes how many firms are now actively using flexible working to reduce real estate costs.The report concludes with a speculative look at future trends, including the uptake of coworking space.

September 21, 2015

Five essential office design trends to look for in the near future ⁰

by Tom Brialey • Comment, Facilities management, Flexible working, Workplace design

Since the early Twentieth Century, business leaders have been experimenting with office design in an attempt to improve productivity. From the sea of forward-facing desks imagined by Frederick Taylor, to the infamous cubicle of the late 1960s, to today’s open-plan office, each innovation has said something about our changing relationship to work. In a Gensler survey with more than 2,000 participants, 90 percent of respondents indicated that better workplace design and layout result in better overall performance. The greatest developments of recent times have emerged from the tech giants of Silicon Valley, where businesses have blended playfulness, company culture and the collaborative benefits of open layouts to craft unique and engaging spaces. So where are we headed? Here are five major trends that are likely to have a lasting impact on the way we work.

September 3, 2015

Three quarters of US workers avoid the office to get important work done ⁰

by Mark Eltringham • Flexible working, News, Wellbeing

Three quarters (76 percent) of US workers surveyed by online job site FlexJobs say that when they need to get important work done, they avoid the office completely. Of over 2,600 respondents, 50 percent reported that their home is their location of choice to be most productive on important work-related projects. Another 12 percent said they would choose a coffee shop, coworking space, library, or other place besides the office. Fourteen percent would choose the office but only outside standard hours, leaving less than a quarter who prefer the actual office during regular working hours as a place to complete important work. The main reasons for fleeing the corporate embrace were to avoid interruptions from colleagues (cited by 76 percent), escape distractions (74 percent), evade office politics (71 percent), reduce the stress of commuting (68 percent) and work in more comfortable surroundings (65 percent).

August 1, 2015

Insight Weekly on GenY, digital workplaces, productivity and more

by Sara Bean • Flexible working, Newsletter, Public Sector, Technology, Workplace

In this week’s issue; three new studies have joined the already extensive body of work linking workplace design and productivity; how business practices and the way people use technology vary across sectors; and over half of US workers say the 9 to 5 day is an outmoded concept. Amanda Sterling argues social media at work can help shift the power dynamic from the few to the many; Gary Chandler explains how workplace design can express a firm’s culture and Mark Eltringham explores what the Midwich Cuckoos can tell us about Generation Y. The Government challenges businesses to consider the boost untapped disabled talent could bring to their workforce and CoWorking giant WeWork looks to acquire over 1 million sq. ft. of space in London. Subscribe for free quarterly issues of Work&Place and weekly news here, follow us on Twitter and join our LinkedIn Group to discuss these and other stories.