Category Archive For "Workplace Design"
Keeping an eye on the psychological roots of productivity and wellbeing
One of the most famous and (literally) illuminating series of experiments into workplace productivity is nearly one hundred years old. Yet it continues to influence the way we think because it taps into an eternal truth about human beings. Namely that we are influenced as much by the kinds of attention we are paid by …
A feeling of togetherness is essential for our wellbeing and productivity
It is still depressingly commonplace to read proclamations of the death of the office. These are usually appended to some survey or other about the rise of flexible working or a case study of a workplace devoid of desks (or, more likely, one in which none are pictured). Of course, the actual conclusion we can …
Rediscovering an eternal truth for the future of work
I recently shared a piece from the Sedus What’s Up blog on social media. It was the one about the discovery of agile working practices in a 1950s coal field in Nottinghamshire and the implications for the future of work. Not so, I was informed by a man called Eike Spengler. It was actually practiced …
Better offices and engineered serendipity will characterise work after lockdown
If you ask people what they want from their offices, they are very likely to describe something more like a café than a traditional office. This has been true for some time and never more so than in this period in which people have been obliged to work out exactly what they want from their …
What Steve Jobs can teach us about the future of work and office design
At the 1983 International Design Conference in Aspen, Steve Jobs delivered a speech addressing the theme of the conference; The Future Isn’t What It Used to Be. In it he set out his thoughts on new technology, intuitive design, personal computing as well as the need for a constantly evolving idea of what the future …
Protection in the workplace
Sometimes special circumstances require special measures.
Inclusivity should be woven into the culture and fabric of the office
You can tell an awful lot about an organisation just by looking at the workplace it inhabits. These days that means the technological and cultural space as much as the physical office. Traditional office design models and standards can disadvantage certain individuals and make the office all but unusable for others.
The workplace after lockdown will be an evolution of what we already know
Understandably, we are hearing an awful lot right now about the disruption that the pandemic and lockdown are causing to our lives, and in particular the way we work. While a great deal of attention has been focussed on the immediate consequences for our daily lives, there is a growing body of speculation about the …
Agile working is transforming organisations and property markets worldwide
The words agile working might slip from our tongues easily enough these days, but just twenty-five or so years ago, before the Internet began to unravel the bonds that tied us full time to the workplace, offices were looked at in very different ways. Of course, firms have always had concerns about the efficient use …