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April 23, 2016

Latest Work&Place + Performance management + Design and people ⁰

by Sara Bean • Facilities management, Flexible working, Newsletter, Property, Work&Place, Workplace

This week’s Newsletter features the latest issue of Work&Place, which presents a truly global perspective on the forces redefining our relationship with work. In news, the Government extends the One Public Sector Estate scheme and London’s commercial property sector is unaffected by the Brexit jitters. The three day working week is the ideal scenario for the over 40s; current performance management practices discount the digital workplace; and employees spend too much time checking work emails at home. Mark Eltringham says design what you like but don’t discount the impact of adding human beings to the mix; how people have been writing guides to good ergonomics at least since the early seventeenth Century; and that Charles Eames came to have mixed feelings towards his most famous chair. Download our Insight Briefing, produced in partnership with Connection, on the boundless office; visit our new events page, follow us on Twitter and join our LinkedIn Group to discuss these and other stories.

April 11, 2016

What our enduring love of wooden office furniture tells us about how we work

by Paul Goodchild • Comment, Furniture, Workplace design

As the office continues to evolve so too do the materials used within it. While many corporate headquarters make liberal use of brushed steel, aluminium and glass, an ancient, well loved and sustainable material is becoming increasingly popular all over again. Wood never went away, of course, but the latest ideas about office design seem to have given it a new lease of life as a material. In part this is down to an inherent love for wood, but it is also acknowledges the aesthetic and functional crossover between the office and other places where we work such as cafes, hotels and homes. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the new generation of commercial office furniture designs. In many ways they hark back to the 1950s when the British were introduced to modernism in no uncertain terms. This design movement led the British to reject dark woods and embrace new forms and materials including lighter, arguably more natural woods.

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April 9, 2016

TMT & workplace design + Real-estate decision making + Dutch productivity ⁰

by Sara Bean • Facilities management, Flexible working, Newsletter, Property, Workplace

In this week’s Newsletter Andrew Brown explains why the Dutch are regarded as leaders in ideas on productivity; Mark Eltringham says the TMT sector may push the office design boundaries, but much of what they’re doing isn’t unique to them; and Sara Bean reveals just 1 percent of men have so far taken up the opportunity of Shared Parental Leave (SPL). In news; the global economy, workforce strategies and rising costs all influence real estate decision-making; Londoners are unsure and often un-consulted on the proliferation of high rise buildings; HR best practice proved to improve business performance and disturbing evidence that mobile phone users movements are being monitored. Download our Insight Briefing, produced in partnership with Connection, on how the boundless office can be freed from the shackles of time and place and access the latest issue of Work&Place. Visit our new events page, follow us on Twitter and join our LinkedIn Group to discuss these and other stories.

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.

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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?

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March 22, 2016

While politicians squabble, here’s what the Budget meant for the workplace ⁰

by Mark Eltringham • Comment, Facilities management, Legal news, Workplace, Workplace design

Strange as it may seem now, there was a Budget last week. We’d planned to produce a report on it once the dust had settled but given that whatever dust had originally been kicked up has now been swept away by a political storm, it’s only now we feel able to offer some perspective a few days out. As ever these days, the budget touched on a number of aspects of the workplace, sometimes hitting the mark and sometimes suggesting politicians don’t yet understand how people work. There was the usual stuff about rates and commercial property but also plenty to digest about the freelance economy, productivity, new technology, flexible working legislation and the current, often faltering attempts to develop wealth and infrastructure as well as the 21st Century creative and digital economy in places other than London. There’s plenty to digest here and plenty of people have already had their say, so a chance to grab a coffee and take all or some of it in.

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March 19, 2016

The Insight newsletter for March 18 is available to view online ⁰

by Sara Bean • Facilities management, Flexible working, Newsletter, Technology, Wellbeing, Workplace design

In this week’s Insight Newsletter; Mark Eltringham on the seven ways flexible working is chaining us more firmly to work and why there are more ways than one of providing recyclable office furniture. Google scales back its plans for its Californian campus; US businesses waste up to $1.8 trillion annually on mundane tasks; new guidance is published on delivering sustainable fit outs; and many organisations only hold on to paper-based document for their signature. Confirmation that companies that don’t offer their employees a convenient location and appealing workplace are more likely to lose them; Hong Kong and London are the world’s most expensive office locations and the unhealthy effects of commuting by car. Download our latest Insight Briefing, produced in partnership with Connection, on how the boundless office can be freed from the shackles of time and place and access the latest issue of Work&Place. Visit our new events page, follow us on Twitter and join our LinkedIn Group to discuss these and other stories.

March 18, 2016

Increase in commercial office take up across Europe expected to continue ⁰

by Sara Bean • Facilities management, News, Property

The commercial property occupier markets across Europe recorded healthy improvements in activity during 2015, with the total take-up in the major office markets rising by 10 percent, according to Knight Frank’s latest European Quarterly Report. Although there was a drop in take-up in Europe’s two largest markets, London and Paris, this was made up by the strong performance of German, Iberian and Central and Eastern Europe markets. Commercial property rents rose by around 3.5 percent over the course of 2015, largely due to growth in markets such as Dublin, London, Madrid and Stockholm. Rental growth is expected to spread to a wider range of cities in 2016 with Paris, for example, expected to see prime office rents rise following more than two years of stability. A total of €64.5 billion was invested in European commercial property in Q4 2015, taking volumes for the full year to €238.5 billion. This represents a 25 percent increase on 2014.

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March 17, 2016

Flexible working increasingly the norm for financial services firms ⁰

by Mark Eltringham • Flexible working, Technology, Workplace design

Flexible working is on the way to becoming the norm in financial services with the average employee spending 39 percent of their time working remotely, according to new research from tech consultancy Intercity Technology. The company surveyed a mere 100 employees from different organisations within the financial services market to gain insight into their workplace habits so you may want to treat this carefully. The respondents also thought this proportion of time spent remote working would increase in the next two years to 41 percent, with an ever increasing adoption of technology-led solutions in the workplace. Additionally, the surveys suggests that 70 percent of employees believe using a device of their own choosing positively impacts the way they work with their colleagues, with the biggest specific benefits identified as flexibility (51 percent), more productivity (42 percent) and improved collaboration (33 percent).

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March 17, 2016

Study confirms that commuting by car has serious health consequences ⁰

by Mark Eltringham • Environment, News, Wellbeing

Adults who commute to work via cycling or walking have markedly lower body fat percentage and body mass index (BMI) measures in their mid-life compared to adults who commute via car, according to a new study in The Lancet Diabetes & Endocrinology journal. Even people who commute via public transport also showed reductions in BMI and percentage body fat compared with those who commuted only by car. This suggests that even the incidental physical activity involved in taking journeys by public transport may be significant. The study looked at data from over 150,000 individuals from the UK Biobank dataset, a large, observational study of 500,000 individuals aged between 40 and 69 in the UK. The study is the largest to date to analyse the health benefits of active transport. The strongest associations were seen for adults who commuted via bicycle, compared to those who commute via car.

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March 16, 2016

A new guide to delivering successful sustainable fit-out projects ⁰

by Mark Eltringham • Environment, Facilities management, News, Workplace design

Today marks the publication of a new guide which claims to help contractors and end-users deliver sustainable fit-out projects. Published by trade body the Construction Industry Research and Information Association (CIRIA), the Fit-out environmental good practice on site guide (C757) claims to be a more practical guide than other publications and standards and addresses the most important challenges for those responsible for fit-outs across a range of sectors including offices, retail, education, leisure and health. The authors claim that the fit-out sector faces unique challenges that include the need for a quick turnaround of projects, the need to control costs as well as deal with project specific site constraints. The guide aims to help the managers of fit-out projects to meet these challenges as well as helping them to deliver projects that are sustainable both during the fit-out phase, occupancy and the life of the completed project.

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March 12, 2016

Office redesign a priority + Menstrual leave debate + Nine workplace trends ⁰

by Sara Bean • Facilities management, Flexible working, Property, Workplace, Workplace design

In this week’s Insight Newsletter; Mark Eltringham weighs in on the flexible working/menstrual leave debate; Tricia McCall looks at the way the latest workplace designs are influencing the classroom. We learn about the nine workplace trends that managers should address; that staff believe that 91 percent of firms won’t be competitive by 2020 and that a majority of managers see redesigning their organisation as their most important priority. In news – the Government fails to deliver on technology; London occupiers will pay just for a view; and the CIPD warns that not enough organisations are taking action to address the causes of gender inequality. Download our latest Insight Briefing, produced in partnership with Connection, on how the boundless office can be freed from the shackles of time and place and access the latest issue of Work&Place. Visit our new events page, follow us on Twitter and join our LinkedIn Group to discuss these and other stories.