February 7, 2024

Of mice and men

by Mark Eltringham • Comment, Flexible working, Technology

The history of the humble computer mouse dates back to the 1960s and engineer Douglas Engelbart’s work on improving the way people and computers interact. He initially called the device he envisaged a ‘bug’ but the first prototype he created with Bill English was so unmistakeably a rodent that there was only one thing they could have called it. If only they had settled the question of whether the plural was mouses or mice. More →

February 6, 2024

Hefty fine for Amazon has implications for employee surveillance policy

by Rob Smedley and Will Richmond-Coggan • News, Technology, Workplace

The French data protection watchdog CNIL has fined Amazon France Logistique €32m, equivalent to 3 percent of the entity’s annual turnover, approaching the maximum permitted level of 4 percent. Describing Amazon’s employee surveillance as “excessive”, the regulator also cited instances where the monitoring of staff was found to be outright illegal, by breaching the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). More →

February 6, 2024

Revised plans submitted for joint tallest building in Western Europe

by Neil Franklin • Architecture, News, Property

Eric Parry Architects have put forward revised plans for the One Undershaft tower in central London. A planning application for the project was first submitted to the City of London authority in 2016. The revised plans would make it the joint tallest building in the UK. More →

February 2, 2024

Narcissistic leaders are bad for share value but do have their uses

by Jayne Smith • Business, News

Narcissistic leaders are bad for share value, unless they are seen to stimulate innovation and growth at companies suffering from corporate inertia, according to research which analysed how CEO narcissism affects stock recommendations from securities analysts. The study by Nottingham Business School (UK), Middle Tennessee State University (US), and the University of Leeds (UK) is the first to explore the relationship between CEOs who are linked to excessive risk taking and their value to a company. The paper “Chief executive officer narcissism, corporate inertia, and securities analysts’ stock recommendations” has been published in the journal Strategic Organisation. More →

February 2, 2024

Life at the coalface: How the agile workplace first appeared in the mid 20th Century

by Mark Eltringham • Comment, Wellbeing, Workplace design

The idea of diffusion of innovation has become so embedded in our culture, and most recently so associated with the adoption of new technology, that we might assume it happens in predictable ways. The steps between innovators, early adopters, early majority, late majority, and laggards seem intuitive and certain even when their peaks might be unsure. And yet history teaches us that sometimes new ideas can take years or even decades to take hold, even when they are potentially world-changing and relevant for the era in which they were formulated. More →

February 2, 2024

Three quarters of organisations never or rarely check on employee morale

by Neil Franklin • News, Workplace

Organisations cannot afford to neglect or pay lip service to employee morale if they want to retain talent, according to new research from MHR [registration]. In its latest Employee Experience report – which identifies employee wellbeing as a huge component of morale – MHR reveals that 75 percent of organisations fail to regularly check in on employee needs and attitudes, for example through satisfaction surveys. More →

February 2, 2024

New RIBA guidance sets out to demystify smart building technology

by Jayne Smith • Architecture, News, Technology

The Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) has published its Smart Building Overlay to the RIBA Plan of Work. Developed with ScanTech Digital, Glider Technology, Kier and Hoare Lea, RIBA says this free resource will support anyone involved in the design of newbuild, retrofit or refurbishment projects to implement smart building technology. The Smart Building Overlay introduces smart building terminology and outlines the benefits of embedding smart building technology from the outset. Its principles can be applied to projects of all scales and scopes. More →

February 1, 2024

Firms want to embrace AI, but bewildered by range of options

by Jayne Smith • AI, News, Technology

The vast majority of Chief Information Officers plan to increase AI tool spending in 2024, but say their teams are overwhelmed by the number of apps on the market. As a result, 77 percent are concerned about application sprawl adding to their complexity and security risks. That is according to a new report from Canva which includes insights from more than 1,360 CIOs on their priorities, opportunities and the challenges of managing their IT amid the AI boom. The company commissioned Harris Poll to survey CIOs from the UK, US, France, Germany, Spain, Brazil, Mexico, India, and Australia to understand how they’re managing application sprawl and making decisions about workplace tools in the AI era. More →

January 30, 2024

Workplace design and the corrective force of rediscovery

by Mark Eltringham • Comment, Workplace design

It has become something of a preoccupation of mine to consider why so many of the conversations we hold about workplace design are largely about the rediscovery of old ideas. It may be because there are constants about how people interact with their surroundings and each other and the truisms underlying those interactions. Although these are often reframed by the amount of data we now have to support them, some things never change. More →

January 29, 2024

Lab rats – how the UK life sciences sector is struggling to find space to work

by Chris Barlow • Features, Premium Content, Property

In November 2023, plans to turn part of a golf course next to a motorway into a £340 million science park were refused by South Oxfordshire District Council. Although now classified as greenbelt, the location was the site of a landfill as recently as the 1990s and is just a stone’s throw from both the A40 trunk road and M40 motorway. The developers are expected to appeal. Whatever the details of this story, it is an example of how challenging it can be to meet demand for lab and life sciences space in the so-called Golden Triangle of London, Oxford and Cambridge in the South of England. This lack of supply is acting as a brake on the UK Government’s dream of making the country a “science superpower”. More →

January 25, 2024

Motherhood penalty means many women in tech leave due to care responsibilities

by Jayne Smith • Flexible working, News, Workplace

Almost 40 per cent of female tech leavers cited caring commitments as a decisive factor in their decision to leave the industry, according to research by Tech Talent Charter. Work life balance was ranked the most important consideration, as working parents are juggling careers and full-time caring commitments, prompting the Tech Talent Charter and MotherBoard Charter to join forces to address maternity retention in tech. Women who have flexible working arrangements have a significantly higher retention than those who didn’t. These findings emphasise the damage that the ‘motherhood penalty’ has on the tech industry and its ability to keep women working within it. More →

January 25, 2024

The final word on … responsibility

by Mark Eltringham • Business, Comment

There have been many experiments over the years that expose the darker aspects of human nature. One of the most telling of these was carried out by two American researchers called John Darley and Bibb Latane in 1968. The two men’s work was partly inspired by a notorious 1964 murder in which a woman called Kitty Genovese was stabbed to death in public. The murder took place over a period of around half an hour, during which a number of witnesses who watched the crime from their windows failed to help the victim.