July 5, 2019

Four day week makes business sense, claims Henley report

A four day working week could save UK businesses an estimated £104 billion annually, while improving productivity and their environmental performance according to new research from Henley Business School. The research claims that a shorter working week on the same pay could add to businesses’ bottom lines through increased staff productivity and an uplift in staff physical and mental health, whilst also resulting in a cleaner environmental footprint. Henley’s ‘Four Better or Four Worse?’ white paper exploring the issue claims that of those businesses who have already adopted a four day week, nearly two-thirds (64 percent) have reported improvements in staff productivity. (more…)

July 4, 2019

World Economic Forum sets out top tech trends for 2019

by Mark Eltringham • AI, News, Technology

The World Economic Forum has announced its annual list of breakthrough technologies with the greatest potential to make a positive impact on our world. The technologies on the list, which is curated by members of the Forum’s Expert Network, are selected against a number of criteria. In addition to promising major benefits to societies and economies, they must also be disruptive, attractive to investors and researchers, and expected to have achieved considerable scale within five years. This year’s list features several technologies and tech trends directly relevant to the workplace and building design, including telepresence, automation and systems for plastics management.

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July 4, 2019

Poor office design continues to hamper productivity

by Neil Franklin • News, Wellbeing, Workplace design

Research published by Dell claims to highlight the issues related to office design holding back workers’ productivity and the impact this has on UK businesses. While classic gripes like office temperature and loud colleagues take the top spots, poorly designed or implemented technology is having a negative impact on employees – with out of date technology (29 percent), poor Wi-Fi (22 percent) and poorly integrated technology (19 percent) featuring in the top ten factors UK workers feel impact their office lives. (more…)

July 3, 2019

Getting a sense of productivity and motivation

by Jeff Revoy • Comment, Technology, Wellbeing, Workplace design

When business operators are planning their company’s office, price is often chief among their priorities. Keeping the fixed cost of real estate low helps companies project—and increase—their expected income. Price is not just a consideration when it comes to rent; assets such as office furniture are often purchased en masse and for purely utilitarian reasons. Sure, a business is saving money by designing a no-frills, utilitarian office, which some Feng Shui experts would agree with, but what they are ignoring is how space affects productivity, motivation and enjoyment. (more…)

July 2, 2019

A Turing Test for the workplace ⁰

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

One of the ideas we’re going to hear about a lot over the next few years is the Turing Test. It describes the point at which a machine’s behaviour becomes indistinguishable from a human’s, so that a typical person is unable to work out if he or she is interacting with a machine or an individual. This matters for lots of reasons; functional, philosophical and ethical. (more…)

July 1, 2019

The biggest problem with open plan offices is how they are used

by Prof Dr Alexander Brem • Features, Workplace design

For decades the trend among workplaces has seen employees moving out of individual offices and into open plan spaces. This has not always been successful, with the open-plan approach receiving significant criticism. The key issues are distraction and noise, which apparently leads to uncooperative behaviour, distrust and negative personal relationships, and the lack of privacy and sense of being universally observed. Now that the internet connectivity is available almost everywhere and thus allows much more flexible working, the question arises: What might the set-up of an ideal workplace environment look like today? (more…)

July 1, 2019

Modern comms tools can shut out workers

by Neil Franklin • Technology

The use of technology to support communication and collaborative working in an increasingly digital and flexible world is something many of us recognise. However, a global study released today by Avast Business claims this technology is potentially causing a divide in the workplace, with 40 percent of UK respondents concerned that less tech literate employees will be ‘shut out’ unless they embrace the latest chat, collaboration and digital project management tools. (more…)

June 28, 2019

Office taxonomy and an increasingly diverse workplace ecosystem ⁰

by Mark Eltringham • Comment, Facilities management, Workplace design

It is perhaps the most common misconception of evolutionary theory that all animals are somehow evolving towards some end point – meaning us. This notion is perhaps best summed up when a sceptic asks: “If we have evolved from monkeys, why are there still monkeys?” The lesser of the two problems with this is its solipsistic assumption that humans are the pinnacles of life and that, if evolution were true, all species would eventually evolve into people. (more…)

June 27, 2019

We are running out of time to find the meaning of work

by Mark Eltringham • Comment, Flexible working, Technology, Wellbeing, Workplace design

Last week’s report from the IFS detailing the ongoing rise in the numbers of working poor in the UK highlights just how dysfunctional work can be in the modern era. While depictions of work in the media tend to consist of diverse Millennials clustering around a single laptop in the sun-dappled offices of tech firms, or chilling on the Chesterfield in a coworking space, the reality for many people is somewhat different. (more…)

June 26, 2019

Jobs upheaval as world adapts to era of automation

by Mark Eltringham • AI, News, Technology

A new report from the Economist Intelligence Unit and UiPath claims that organisations around the world currently making extensive use of automation technologies, with 67 percent of UK business executives claiming to be satisfied satisfied with the results of their automation initiatives, 48 percent describing their organisation’s progress with automation as advanced, and 73 percent expecting their company’s operating costs to improve as a result of automating business processes. It is published on the same day as another report suggests that up to 20 million manufacturing jobs could be lost to robots across the world’s leading economies by 2030, replaced by a range of new jobs. (more…)

June 25, 2019

The difference between office design and FM is the difference between sex and parenthood

by Mark Eltringham • Comment, Facilities management, Workplace design

There is an ongoing feeling within the facilities management discipline that when it comes to office design, facilities managers are not consulted early enough or well enough or consistently enough to ensure that the end result is a workplace that is as functional and as effective as it could be. The reason this feeling persists is that in many cases it is true. Or at least is true to a greater or lesser extent depending on how you view these things. (more…)

June 25, 2019

Leesman and Delos launch wellbeing benchmark

by Neil Franklin • Company news, Wellbeing

Leesman, the workplace experience analysts, and Delos, a wellness real estate and technology firm, have announced a new collaboration to investigate how real estate strategy can better support wellbeing at work. With a variety of strategies being promoted as a secret to ‘wellness at work’, this collaboration aims to test and validate the impact of real estate strategies on worker wellbeing on an ongoing basis, and not only when an office is new.