April 16, 2025

Come fly with me. The new digital issue of IN magazine is here for you

by Mark Eltringham • IN Magazine, News, Premium Content

The digital edition of IN magazine 23 is now out and available for you here. In this issue: why we act up at airports and what designers can do about it; the datacentre market is struggling to keep up with AI’s rapacious demand for resources; a review of the Workspace Design Show which keeps getting better; what a new generation of buildings can tell us about how to balance ethical goals with organisational strategy; the headquarters of Italy’s largest co-op; the difficulties of keeping up with developments in AI and why we need to keep trying; and a book that sets out the research based business case for the office. Plus loads of great commentary and our regular round up of product and business news and events. More →

February 10, 2025

When it comes to business change, persistence eats resistance for lunch

by Jennifer Bryan • Business, Comment, JB

People’s favourite word in change is RESISTANCE. We seem to not be able to talk about it enough. The problem is that many times, the thought of resistance stops us from doing something because we are either afraid of it or just don’t want to deal with it and this causes big problems for us as leaders in our businesses. Whenever there is change, there will be resistance, that is a given. Why – because it is human and natural to resist any change, whether that be positive or negative. If I or someone else said to you “You have the winning lottery ticket!” your first reaction would be to dis-believe, which is a form of resistance. More →

January 22, 2025

The constant craving to put numbers on working relationships

by Mark Eltringham • Features, Workplace design

The answer to the great question of life, the universe and everything is not 42, as you may have been led to believe. It’s 1/137 (or near enough). This is the greatest of the two dozen or so universal constants. According to current thinking, without the physical and quantum relationships it describes, the universe as we know it could not exist. More →

January 20, 2025

Businesses are cautiously optimistic despite economic and technological uncertainty

by Neil Franklin • Business, News

Almost 60 percent of CEOs around the world expect global economic growth to increase over the next 12 months, according to PwC’s 28th Annual Global CEO Survey, launched during today’s World Economic Forum Annual Meeting. The report, which surveyed 4,701 CEOs across 109 countries and territories, also finds that 42 percent of businesses expect to increase headcount by 5 percent or more in the next 12 months – more than double the proportion who expect headcount decreases (17 percent), and up from 39 percent last year. The percentage is highest (48 percent) among smaller companies (less than US$100 million) and those in the technology (61 percent), real estate (61 percent), private equity (52 percent) and pharma and life sciences (51 percent) sectors. More →

January 20, 2025

Forget all the talk of Blue Monday; work is still (largely) good for us

by Mark Eltringham • Comment, Facilities management, Wellbeing, Workplace

So here it is. Blue Monday. Today. Officially the most depressing day of the year. We say ‘officially’, but like the idea of ‘Body Odour’ its common usage hides the fact that it was originally created as part of a PR campaign, in this case one for Sky’s travel channel in 2005. The whole idea of Blue Monday is couched in a pseudo-mathematical equation which includes factors like the weather, levels of debt, time since Christmas, low levels of motivation and, apparently, an unspecified variable known simply as ‘D’. More →

January 17, 2025

We still display status in office design, but in new and subtle ways

by Mark Eltringham • Comment, Workplace design

There was a time, not so long ago, that one of the most important factors to consider when designing an office was the corporate hierarchy. The office was once the embodiment of the corporate structure. In Joanna Eley and Alexi Marmot’s 1995 book Understanding Offices, quite a lot of space is dedicated to the idea of the ‘space pyramid’, which means simply that the higher up the organisation you were, the more space you were allocated and the better your furniture and surroundings. Even then, the idea of office design as a signifier of dominance was starting to wear thin, as the authors acknowledge. Ostentatious displays of status were already seen as somewhat gauche, but they were to be fatally undermined by the technological advances to come.

January 7, 2025

Here’s how to support neurodivergent employees at work

by Stephanie Clarke • Comment, Wellbeing, Workplace

Businesses have much to gain from neurodivergent employees. According to a recent Deloitte report “teams with neurodivergent professionals in some roles can be 30 percent more productive than those without them”. Benefits of neurodivergent individuals to the workplace – according to the CIPD, range from “problem-solving, to creative insights and visual spatial thinking.” More →

January 3, 2025

If you want to get ahead in your career, get in to the office, report argues

by Neil Franklin • Flexible working, News, Workplace

Businesses are increasingly likely to prioritise workers willing to come into the office for pay rises and promotions, according to a new poll from Reed Group. A year ago Reed.co.uk, which deals with over 30 million job applications a year, predicted that employers would increasingly mandate days in the office and would prioritise what it called the ‘in-person premium’. More →

December 18, 2024

A divine spark of inspiration for office occupiers and designers

by Mark Eltringham • Briefing, Premium Content, Workplace design

Organisations are having to rethink the form and function of their offices in ways unprecedented in their relatively short history. And perhaps the biggest challenge is to create places to work that reflect the organisation’s culture and the needs of the people who work there (some of the time). One possible framework for aligning an office design model with the culture of the organisation is presented in a supplement published for IN Magazine called Gods of Work. Published in partnership with Modus, it draws on management and organisational theory and established models of office design to suggest solutions to some of the challenges facing organisations as they rethink the way they work. The office of the future for most organisations will be smaller, but much better and we hope this becomes an invaluable guide for those setting out on that path.

December 17, 2024

How Charles Handy changed the way we speak about the workplace

by Mark Eltringham • Comment, Facilities management

Originally published in 2019. There are writers whose language pervades our discourse so extensively that even those who have never heard of them will echo not only their sentiments but also their means of expression. One of these people is Charles Handy, who has just published his latest book 21 Letters on Life and its Challenges at the age of 87. His work resonates to this day and not least because he was so far ahead of the curve in detailing many of the characteristics of modern organisations and the challenges created for everybody by the changing nature of work and business. More →

December 3, 2024

Do you have leadership paralysis?

by Jennifer Bryan • Business, Comment, JB

There are so many different theories on how to lead change. Tom Peters says we should not discuss change but organisational revolution (Peters,1991); Chris Argyris talks about change management as flawed advice (Argyris, 1985); Kotter puts forward a top down change transformation process (Kotter, 1995); Beer, Eisnestat and Spectors, discuss a bottom-up process (Eisnestat and Spectors, 1990) and that is just to name a few ways of looking at this aspect of leadership. More →

November 28, 2024

These are very early days in our relationship with Generative AI

by Jo Sutherland • AI, Comment

The launch of ChatGPT in late 2022 marked a milestone moment for artificial intelligence, bringing what was once a niche technology firmly into the mainstream. Suddenly, AI and especially Generative AI, wasn’t just the prerogative of data scientists and tech developers. It was a feature in everyday conversations, a presence in business strategies, and a catalyst for innovation across industries. In the months since, platforms like Gemini and Perplexity have emerged, pushing the boundaries of what AI can achieve while expanding its role in the workplace. More →