April 20, 2021
Search Results for: performance
April 16, 2021
New framework launches to help offices meet sustainability goals
by Jayne Smith • Environment, News, Workplace design
New office developments and major refurbishments in the UK will be able to formally register under the Design for Performance framework. The framework claims to help developers ensure that projects deliver against their design intent and overcome the well-evidenced performance gap between design and operation. This is achieved by requiring project teams to target an operational NABERS Energy rating during the project design and verify it once the building is occupied. (more…)
April 15, 2021
Milliken’s London showroom becomes first in the UK to receive Well Certification
by Freddie Steele • Company news
Flooring designer and manufacturer Milliken announced that it has been awarded WELL Certification at the Platinum level for its Clerkenwell Showroom by the International WELL Building Institute (IWBI). The prestigious distinction was awarded through IWBI’s WELL v2 pilot, the next version of the WELL Building Standard. WELL is the premier building standard to focus on enhancing people’s health and wellness through the buildings where we live, work and play. (more…)
April 12, 2021
Employee experience is top priority for CIO’s but UK held back by lack of tools
by Jayne Smith • News, Technology, Working culture
Elastic (NYSE: ESTC), the company behind Elasticsearch and the Elastic Stack, have announced a new study, claiming that employee experience has become a new priority for IT leaders as they reinvent their infrastructures to support remote workforces. The Changing Role of the IT Leader was conducted by Forrester Consulting on behalf of Elastic in February 2021, one year into the global pandemic, and published in April.
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April 9, 2021
Lockdown mental fatigue is rapidly reversed by social contact, study claims
by Dr Christopher Hand, Greg Maciejewski and Joanne Ingram • Features, Flexible working, Wellbeing
Many of us are looking forward to a summer of relative freedom, with road-mapped milestones that will grant us more opportunities to see our friends and family. But we’ll be carrying the effects of months of isolation into those meetings, including a sense that our social skills will need dusting off, and our wits will need sharpening. The mental effects of lockdown have been profound. Social isolation has been shown to cause people’s mental health to deteriorate even if they have no history of previous psychological problems. Alongside this drop in mood, loneliness has been linked with a host of cognitive problems, including fatigue, stress and problems with concentration. (more…)
April 9, 2021
JLL announces plans for new UK headquarters at 1 Broadgate
by Freddie Steele • Company news, Property
British Land has announced that JLL has chosen 1 Broadgate for its new UK flagship office. JLL, the global real estate services firm, has signed an agreement for lease for 134,000 sq ft on a 15 year term, representing a pre-let of nearly a third of the office space. (more…)
April 1, 2021
Finding a new sense of purpose in the way we all do business
by David Lineen • Comment, Environment, Property, Wellbeing
It is now a truism that society expects more of business than merely maximising shareholder value. Milton Friedman’s conviction that unswerving commitment to this single goal would ensure that business and society would prosper has come to be seen as blinkered, unfit for the twenty-first century and enabling of corporate greed. Instead of shareholder value maximisation, an idea that The Economist called ‘the biggest idea in business’ in 2016, businesses are now encouraged to recognise their responsibilities to an array of ‘stakeholders’, from employees, suppliers and customers, to the planet itself and other communities (real or imagined). So, it has never been more important for businesses to do good, have a clear sense of purpose and be seen as doing so. (more…)
April 1, 2021
‘Healthy buildings’ enjoy a surge in demand worldwide
by Neil Franklin • Environment, News, Property, Wellbeing
A new survey of many of the world’s leading real estate investors finds that 92 percent of respondents expect demand for healthy buildings to grow in the next three years. The report claims that this is a compelling signal of the direction the real estate sector is heading. This finding, among others, is captured in a report titled A New Investor Consensus: The Rising Demand for Healthy Buildings (registration) which claims to be a comprehensive health and wellness study of global real estate investment managers and stakeholders representing aggregate AUM of $5.75 trillion and portfolio investments in real estate totalling approximately US$1.03 trillion. (more…)
March 31, 2021
From the archive: A new approach to office design is redefining property 0
by Gary Chandler • Comment, Facilities management, Property, Workplace design
At the end of the 18th Century it was becoming apparent that overpopulation was something the human race would need to address for perhaps the first time. Advances in technology and the urbanisation that followed the Industrial Revolution had created a new set of challenges. These were most famously laid out in a 1798 book called An Essay on the Principle of Population, written by an English cleric called Thomas Malthus.
March 25, 2021
Fifth of managers consider quitting as COVID burnout strikes
by Jayne Smith • Flexible working, News, Wellbeing, Working lives
More than six in ten UK managers have experienced burnout at work because of the COVID-19 pandemic, with a fifth considering quitting their job as a result, according to new research from Benenden Health. (more…)
March 25, 2021
Wellbeing strategies could add £61bn to English economy
by Jayne Smith • News, Wellbeing, Working culture
Corporate wellbeing could add £61bn to the English economy by 2025 through added productivity, if UK companies can create new wellbeing strategies and improve underperforming ones, according to a new study by Westfield Health. (more…)





Just as the pandemic has forced many to re-think their relationship to the office, developers and building owners have been forced to reassess the service they offer to meet the altered needs of occupiers, according to research by 











April 7, 2021
The binary choices and multiple outcomes of flexible working
by Mark Eltringham • Comment, Flexible working