January 15, 2021
Search Results for: people management
January 4, 2021
Supporting change during the pandemic with Simplicity Smart Lockers
by Kimberley Hutchinson • Company news, Furniture
The way in which we work has changed in a way no one would have ever predicted as a result of last year’s pandemic. Consequently, many businesses have chosen to adopt to an agile working practise. This coupled with the rapid evolution of the hybrid workplace has allowed more employees than ever the flexibility to work from home, many people however still crave that interaction with colleagues, and the ‘corridor conversations’ that cannot be replicated via Zoom and can only happen with workplace collaboration. (more…)
December 16, 2020
The weakness of purpose and the shift to problem-solving
by Steven van Belleghem • Business, Comment
BlackRock is one of the largest asset management companies on the planet. Each year, at the start of January, the CEO Larry Fink writes a letter addressed to the other CEOs of the world. In his New Year’s letter for 2020, Fink appealed in particular to his fellow CEOs’ sense of social responsibility. In particular, he focused in on the risks faced by the climate. “Climate risk is an investment risk,” and he called on all companies, both public and private, to create greater societal added value. “Society is looking increasingly to companies to solve social and economic problems,” he concludes, so asset managers should be encouraged to invest in companies with a ‘purpose’. (more…)
December 15, 2020
The FM industry is held back by short-term thinking, research claims
by Jayne Smith • Business, Facilities management, News, Working culture
Research published by VINCI Facilities claims that there is a lack of long-term strategic thinking amongst FM service providers and their customers that is limiting an opportunity to yield substantial business and social benefits. (more…)
December 12, 2020
Listening in on an enormous conversation about the workplace
by Mark Eltringham • Comment, Workplace design
One of the best tricks Clive James ever pulled was finding acceptance as a public intellectual in the UK. It’s not easy in a country in which it is possible to be too clever by half or even too clever for your own good. Stephen Fry continues to pull it off as does Mary Beard, but it’s a hell of a thing to achieve. In the UK it seems to rely on straddling at least two worlds. (more…)
December 10, 2020
Office taxonomy and an increasingly diverse workplace ecosystem
by Mark Eltringham • Features, Workplace design
From the archive. First published in October
2015. 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…)
December 10, 2020
Employers should explain their monitoring policies to workers
by Chioma Iwunze • Comment, Workplace
The number of companies monitoring their employees is growing. According to a Gartner survey, more than 22 percent of employees use employee movement data, while 17 percent of them are monitoring computer usage. With companies choosing to monitor employees, privacy laws are also catching up, and thus there is a need for explaining employee monitoring to prospective hires. Employee monitoring is defined as the use of monitoring devices and methods by companies to learn about their employees’ workplace behaviours and performance. (more…)
December 9, 2020
Freelancers stimulate entrepreneurship levels, claims research
by Jayne Smith • Business, News
Freelancers actively promote entrepreneurship, claims research from Trinity Business School, suggesting that a 10 percent increase in freelancers within the workforce leads to a 1 percent increase in entrepreneurial activity in the economy. (more…)
November 30, 2020
Rise of remote work monitoring technology to be investigated by taskforce
by Neil Franklin • News, Technology
Union body the TUC has today launched a new taskforce to look at the “creeping role” of artificial intelligence (AI) in managing people at work. The taskforce launch comes as a new TUC report, Technology managing people: the worker experience, claims that many workers have concerns over the use of AI and technology in the workplace. (more…)
November 24, 2020
Covid-19 will transform the way technology is used in offices
by Jayne Smith • News, Technology
A new paper from the British Council for Offices outlines how technology is being used in offices to combat Covid-19. While offices may be shut in the UK until 2nd December at the earliest, the paper outlines how the sector is adapting and embracing a range of new technology to ensure that offices can comply with hygiene and social distancing measures. (more…)
November 23, 2020
The workplace to become more human-centric than ever, as priorities change
by Jayne Smith • Flexible working, News, Working culture, Working lives
Companies are facing complex performance challenges as the COVID-19 resurgence heightens the need to reinvigorate employee engagement. JLL’s new “Human Experience” report explores these changing workforce dynamics and expectations in a post-pandemic world and offers insights for how forward-thinking companies can reimagine their approach to managing their people and workplaces to stay ahead in 2021. (more…)





According to a recent 












January 13, 2021
Office design will respond to the events of the past year as it always has – by getting better
by Oliver Ronald • Comment, Workplace design