January 20, 2020

Digital culture is key to attracting contingent workforce

Over the past decade, we’ve witnessed a radical change in the makeup of workforces in the UK and globally. The rise of flexible workforces continues unabated, to the point where contingent workers are a significant and vital part of the employment fabric. Demonstrating this point, recent research by the City & Guilds Group found that 84 percent of UK employers use contingent workers, and 35 percent anticipate they will rely on them more in the next 3-5 years. (more…)

January 2, 2020

Personality is not only about who you are but also where you are

by Dorsa Amir • Comment

In the field of psychology, the image is canon: a child sitting in front of a marshmallow, resisting the temptation to eat it. If she musters up the willpower to resist long enough, she’ll be rewarded when the experimenter returns with a second marshmallow. Using this ‘marshmallow test’, the Austrian-born psychologist Walter Mischel demonstrated that children who could resist immediate gratification and wait for a second marshmallow went on to greater achievements in life. They did better in school, had better SAT scores, and even managed their stress more skilfully. (more…)

December 20, 2019

The tipped out, left out and fallout from a failing workplace culture

by Mark Eltringham • Features, Technology, Wellbeing, Workplace design

The big workplace news story of the past week or so appears to be one about a toilet seat. Sometimes it’s in the small things we can discern a greater truth. To see a world in a grain of sand, as William Blake wrote. The seat of this much discussed loo is tilted forward by 13 degrees so that after about five minutes it becomes very uncomfortable because people tire of using their legs to stop themselves sliding off. The reason is clearly to stop them ‘wasting time’ on the toilet. (more…)

December 12, 2019

Climate change emergency demands more and better action

by Neil Franklin • Environment, News

Four years after the Paris Climate Agreement, tangible action from governments is falling well short of what is needed to restrict global warming to 1.5° Celsius. Meanwhile, the actions of the majority of businesses that do support emissions reductions also currently fall far short of where they need to be to address climate change. A new impetus for 2020 to raise company ambitions to net zero emissions by 2050 at the latest, is required. These are the findings of a new report, The Net Zero Challenge published by the World Economic Forum. (more…)

December 3, 2019

Manifesto calls for action on disability inclusion as pay gap for disabled people widens

by Neil Franklin • News, Wellbeing

A leading non-profit disability and business organisation is calling on the future Government to commit to a series of actions to support businesses to deliver on disability inclusion. Business Disability Forum published its ‘Manifesto for Inclusive Change’ today (3 December) to mark the United Nations International Day of Persons with Disabilities. The manifesto calls for action in seven areas to ensure that the role businesses play in disabled people’s lives is enhanced, not inhibited, by government policy. To read Business Disability Forum’s ‘Manifesto for Inclusive Change’ go to www.businessdisabilityforum.org.uk . Follow the debate at #DisabilitySmart. (more…)

November 18, 2019

The agile workplace: try to catch the wind

by Neil Usher • Comment, Workplace design

In the chilly hours and minutes, of uncertainty sang Donovan in ‘Catch the Wind’. That’s us, arriving at the agile workplace. We are all Donovan. The comment was recently made on Twitter that agile is “as natural as the wind”. Seemingly however, the anxiety and frustration generated by our experiences are proving as impossible as catching it. Change programmes issue us with a metaphorical bag to catch it in. Where the problem seems bigger we get given a proportionally bigger bag, forgetting the problem of mass.

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November 4, 2019

Green office building continues to increase in US cities

by Neil Franklin • Cities, Environment, Property

Chicago’s office market was named the greenest in the U.S. for the third year in a row as the level of green office building trend continues to increase in the nation’s largest cities, according to the sixth annual Green Building Adoption Index by CBRE, Maastricht University and the University of Guelph. The researchers claim that green-certified office space across America’s 30 largest office markets has reached 42.2 percent up from 41.9 percent the year before, marking a new high. (more…)

October 25, 2019

Fine tuning office design and its most wonderful invention to our needs

by Mark Eltringham • Comment, Workplace design

The best workplaces are always focused on people. Which is why many of the great pioneers of workplace thinking are from the social sciences, including disciplines such as psychology, ethnography and anthropology. These are the people who have shared the insights that help us to understand the characteristics of great office design. In particular, this relies on an awareness of the ways in which people interact in particular spaces. (more…)

October 3, 2019

The art of arranging the world so we do not have to experience it

by Mark Eltringham • Comment, Flexible working, Technology, Workplace

If you’re a man, each morning as you leave the house you probably perform the bleary-eyed pocket patting ritual that, after a shower, shave and a cup of tea is your sole reassurance that you are in any way prepared for the day ahead. The thinking is that if you’re clean, caffeinated, your flies are up and you’ve got your keys, wallet and phone, you can take pretty much anything the world can throw at you. (more…)

September 26, 2019

The office of the future should be circular

by Phil Oram • Comment, Environment, Workplace design

Minimising the impact of business on the wider environment is no longer a ‘nice to have’ but a business imperative. Pressure is coming from all stakeholders including employees, investors, customers and clients, government and the media. According to the Leadership in Corporate Sustainability – European Report 2018, three quarters of European business leaders believe that ignoring sustainability will affect their company’s ability to create long-term value. (more…)

September 13, 2019

There is still time to avoid the regrexit of Brexit

by Anthony Brown • Business, Comment

Several months ago when we invited Jonty Bloom, one of the media’s most respected journalists to come and speak to our guest audience, we knew it would be informed, relevant and fascinating. What we didn’t know was that the day before (4th September 2019) Boris Johnson would deliver a stunningly inelegant performance at his inaugural Prime Minister’s Question time, the day after losing his first vote in parliament to prevent a further delay in delivering Brexit. (more…)

September 5, 2019

The role of gamification in workplace creativity

by Agnessa Spanellis • Features, Working culture

Coming up with a good creative idea is hard. We do not fully understand how this process works, but there are certain techniques that have proved successful in fostering creativity, such as mind-mapping, brainstorming or creating conditions for free experimentation. Many big companies (such as design agencies) embrace these practices in the way they work. (more…)