January 18, 2022
Employees are ready for work in the metaverse but sceptical about ability of firms to deliver
Just as businesses are starting to find their groove with hybrid working, the workplace has begun to evolve again with the emergence of the metaverse. New research from Lenovo claims that close to half of employees (44 percent) are willing to work in the metaverse and believe that it can deliver benefits like productivity to the workplace. The metaverse is primarily defined as a shared digital space with digital representations of people, places, and objects. In the future, the metaverse can be a highly immersive extension of the physical world, with its rich user interface. At the enterprise level, this opens up possibilities for businesses to create a more viable, interactive workplace. (more…)
Over 40 percent of employers are finding it more difficult to retain and recruit staff, according to 
Cities contribute 
Remote working swiftly evolved from a stopgap lockdown solution into a globally successful workstyle – and it’s set to stay. According to research quoted by
Members of flexible workspace provider 
While the debate about working from home versus working in the office continues, should the real conversation focus on the implications for a typical knowledge worker? ‘Knowledge work’ is a term that dates back over sixty years. It’s said to be first coined by Peter Drucker in his 1958 book The Landmarks of Tomorrow. The business guru went on to talk about knowledge workers in a later book, The Effective Executive, in 1966. He defined them as ‘high-level workers who apply theoretical and analytical knowledge acquired through formal training, to develop products and services’. 
The last 18 months have seen unprecedented change. Covid-19 has forced people to re-evaluate every aspect of their lives, including their career. As a result, we’ve seen a surge in workers taking charge of their careers and leaving their jobs as part of the so-called Great Resignation. Recent data from the 
Decades of declining change in the UK labour market has reduced the risk of damaging job losses, but also limited opportunities for pay-enhancing job moves, according to 
The events of the last 18 months have given us a once in a generation opportunity to reinvent work. Our generation can create a discontinuity between the assumptions of the past and the opportunities of the future. To capitalise on these opportunities though we have to dispense with the assumptions we hold about work and the places where work takes place, including many of the assumptions we hold about hybrid working. We have to re-examine the purpose of the office and what form it might conceivably take in the future before we can decide if it has any place in our plans. 
January 17, 2022
Is your office worth the journey it takes to get to it?
by Despina Katsikakis • Comment, Flexible working, Property