April 22, 2022
Do organisations truly understand how their people work? A big question that needed some unpacking and was explored at a recent Workplace Evolutionaries event, led by Tim Allen and Mark Eltringham. This is raw audio from the event so includes a brief chat about dogs and some other stuff. More →
March 9, 2022
With 12 months to go, ‘Destination Workplace’ has been unveiled as the theme for the second edition of the Workspace Design Show. Taking place at London’s Business Design Centre on 27-28 February 2023, the Workspace Design Show will once again be bringing together the entire commercial interiors community to discover and discuss tomorrow’s workspaces. The Workspace Design Show has announced the members of an advisory board and is also launching an Amsterdam counterpart. The Amsterdam show will have a special focus on bringing UK exporters an opportunity to sell to the Benelux market. More →
March 7, 2022
Working outside traditional hours, and checking in at all hours of the day, night, weekends, and holidays, is not necessarily beneficial for the 21st-century workforce, according to new research from the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) and Cornell University. The researchers address the issue of working ‘out of hours’ in the paper, “Working During Non-Standard Work Time Undermines Intrinsic Motivation,” published in Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes. They set out to examine the motivational consequences of studying and working outside of traditional hours, such as weekends and holidays, among employees and college students. More →
March 1, 2022
New research from The Adecco Group and the Center for Leadership in the Future of Work, University of Zurich claims that people management executives are moving further away from being “managers,” toward a dual role as both data scientists and guardians of change and culture. The report, The Chief People Officer of the Future: How is the Top People Management Role Changing as the World of Work Evolves? draws upon the views of 122 senior people management executives from 10 countries and regions, and who are responsible for a total of 3,110,419 employees, to assess how the landscape of people management is changing. More →
February 28, 2022
The covid-19 pandemic has drastically affected every aspect of our lives, whether it be in a personal, societal, or professional sense. One of the biggest changes to come from the pandemic is the impact it has had on workplaces, and what we now know our working world to be, including the advent for the first time of widespread hybrid working. Long gone are the days of long commutes, long days in the office and set working hours. More →
February 25, 2022
Elina Grigorou is the author of a fantastic book called Wellbeing in Interiors: Philosophy, Design & Value in Practice. The book looks not only at the ways organisations can use design to address the wellbeing of individuals, but also the impact this approach has on them as individuals in terms of their creativity and productivity. This in turn can have a transformative impact on the organisations for which they work. More →
February 21, 2022
As an spin-off of the leading trade fair ORGATEC in Cologne, ORGATEC TOKYO promises a full-flavoured start to the ORGATEC year 2022. More than 80 leading brands will be showcasing their products and services at the inaugural ORGATEC TOKYO event, which runs from 26 to 28 April. Around six weeks before ORGATEC Tokyo opens its doors, the trade fair has already chalked up its first success: the entire Tokyo Big Sight, South Halls 1+2 exhibition space set aside for ORGATEC Tokyo is now fully booked. Leading brands such as Kokuyo, Okamura, Itoki, Uchida, Plus, Karimoku, Knoll, Wilkhahn, USM, UniFor, Kvadrat, Arper (pictured), Cassina and Häfele have confirmed they will be present. More →
February 8, 2022
The distillation of every received and laundered idea of the past two years leads us here. A claim from Gallup that in future just over a third of the desks in offices will be empty. Whatever Gallup thinks, this is great news for the office sector. One of the truths the office sector hasn’t always liked to talk about too much over the last few decades is that in a typical office over that period, around half of the desks have already been empty. More →
January 13, 2022
January 7, 2022
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. More →
January 4, 2022
Keeping on top of communication barriers in the business world can feel like an endless game of Whac-A-Mole, especially now in the new era of hybrid working. The usual culprits are well-known by now: patchy WiFi connections, crashing computer programmes, cloud syncing issues, important emails sneaking into spam folders – the list goes on. All can impede our ability to get the job done. More →
Members of flexible workspace provider
March 11, 2022
The much talked about new normal doesn’t exist, but the world has changed in profound ways
by Dr Simon Williams • Cities, Comment, Flexible working, Property, Technology
Work
One of the biggest changes predicted during the pandemic was a long-term shift towards home or hybrid working. However, there are already signs that this transition might not be as obvious or complete as expected.
[perfectpullquote align=”right” bordertop=”false” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=””]The signs of the transition to hybrid work are not as obvious or complete as expected[/perfectpullquote]
In the UK, the proportion of people working from home at least some of the time increased from 27 percent in 2019 to 37 percent in 2020, before falling to 30 percent in January 2022. Similarly, in the US the proportion working from home declined from 35 percent in May 2020 to 11 percent in December 2021.
One of the main reasons people are going back to the office is employers’ expectations. Many companies are concerned that more permanent home working might affect employees’ team building, creativity and productivity.
But among employees, there’s a greater appetite for hybrid and flexible working. One recent multi-national survey found that whereas roughly one-third of workers had worked at home at least some of the time before the pandemic, roughly half said they want to in the future.
Shopping
The pandemic didn’t create the habit of online shopping, but it makes more of us do it. Did this make us realise we don’t need actual stores anymore?
It doesn’t seem so. Shopping in bricks-and-mortar stores has already started to recover. Recent data on people’s movements, gathered anonymously from mobile devices, shows how in many countries, before omicron hit, travel to retail and recreation spaces was back up to pre-pandemic levels, and is already starting to rebound after omicron.
The rise in online sales has also not been as dramatic or sustained as many predicted. In the UK, online sales made up 20 percent of total retail sales before the pandemic. By February 2021 this had risen to 36 percent, before declining steadily to 25 percent in February 2022.
Travel
One habit that might take longer to recover is our pre-pandemic love of international travel. It has taken a hit around the world, and the sector is still struggling. The UN’s International Civil Aviation Organization projects that international travel in 2022 will still be down by nearly a half compared to 2019.
One British survey conducted last September found that while 80 percent of people were planning on holidaying in the UK in the next year, only around 40 percent were considering going abroad. In comparison, in the 12 months up to July 2019, 64 percent of Brits travelled abroad for a holiday according to one travel industry body.
People’s reluctance to travel has been largely down to concerns over the virus and confusion over travel rules. As worries decline and rules get lifted, we may see a “mini-boom” in holidaymaking.
Socialising
Early in the pandemic, some commentators – including the US chief medical adviser Dr Anthony Fauci – suggested we might never return to shaking hands. I, with my colleague Dr Kimberly Dienes, argued that it was vital these rituals make a comeback, as they have several social, psychological and even biological benefits.
Are social-distancing habits, including meeting fewer people and having less physical contact with those we do, here to stay? For most people, no. Data shows only one-third of people in the UK are still socially distancing regularly, the lowest proportion since the pandemic began.
No new normal
But truly, only time will tell how much the pandemic will have changed our habits. However, bolder predictions – that the pandemic was going to completely and irrevocably change our ways of working, shopping, travelling and socialising – now seem premature and exaggerated. The pandemic has taught us we can work, learn, shop and socialise in different ways, but the question now is whether we still want to.
[perfectpullquote align=”right” bordertop=”false” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=””]The pandemic has taught us that we need to connect with others[/perfectpullquote]
Humans have basic needs, such as autonomy, feeling related to others, and feeling effective and competent in what we do. Part of the challenge with home working, for example, is that it simultaneously fulfils one need by giving us greater autonomy but takes away another by making us less connected. Expanding adequately supported, equality-focused, hybrid and flexible working arrangements is perhaps a promising way to meet both needs.
Some people will have acquired a sense of competence, or at least familiarity, with the new ways of doing things during the pandemic and so may wish to keep doing them. In some areas – travelling overseas, for example – it may take longer for our competence, and confidence, in old habits to return. However, many seem to be quite quickly returning to old ways and re-learning how to feel competent at doing things that they did before.
The extent to which we’ll go back to our old ways may also depend on our personality traits, which have been shown to shape our compliance with new behaviour. For example, those more open to new experiences by nature, or more extroverted, may be more eager to travel internationally or socialise in larger groups.
Finally, the pandemic may have served as a reminder of how much we appreciate everyday interactions with others, in shops, restaurants and so on. People may be keen to return to familiar ways that revive this – for example, picking something up in a store on the way home from work. Above all, the pandemic has taught us that we need to connect with others and that there are limits as to how much online communication can replace real, face-to-face interactions.
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.