Contract furnishings provider, Hightower received multiple awards at NeoCon 2021, including IIDA's 'Best Small Showroom' (under 4,000 sf) and 'Best of Competition' for its newly designed Chicago showroom.
Humanscale welcomes Elizabeth Margles to its Marketing Division in the role of Chief Marketing Officer. Margles comes to Humanscale with twenty years of experience in design, fashion and retail and a background in public relations and advertising.
The exclusive relationship with Kontrol's BioCloud® Technology will provide real-time detection of airborne pathogens such as SARS-CoV-2 to help make workplaces safer as organizations return to the office.
The concept of place, and placemaking, has largely been missing from corporate strategy. We believe that the “corporate placemaker” has a key role, especially in large and complex organizations, by working for and on behalf of the people within their corporation.
If it ever seems that you spend a large chunk of your average working day either doing nothing or wasting it on pointless nonsense, then don’t worry about it because that is all perfectly normal. You may already know that just by looking around you, but two new surveys highlight just how much time people consider unproductive each day. The Global Attitudes to Work survey from Qualtrics polled 6,250 employees in 14 countries and found that UK workers believe that 36 percent of the time they spend at work is unproductive. This puts the UK towards the bottom of the international pile when it comes to perceptions of their productivity, a fact perhaps explained by another survey from Workfront which suggest that many Brits are unnecessarily disorganised and spend inordinate amounts of time dealing with non work related emails, looking for lost files and then simply replicating them after fruitless searches.
Over the last few years there has been something of a widespread backlash to the idea that we need to have constant access to information and our colleagues to work effectively. The touchstone for this movement is of course the open plan office but it has become something of a scapegoat given the universality of the problems of interruptions and distractions. One of the most vocal proponents of the idea that sometimes we need to work quietly and alone is Susan Cain, the author of Quiet and the person responsible for the TED Talk presented below on sound and acoustics. But she is not alone, as we suggested in this feature. Nor is the message new.
It is important to feel comfortable at your office in order to increase your efficiency and protect your health. There are many small steps you can take to create a better work environment for yourself. You can start by implementing the below office ergonomics tips to improve your work day, care for yourself and decrease desk work injuries.
Nah. The new workplace epidemic threatening employers and the productivity of their employees may be sleepy workers. Businesses lose $63 billion in productivity each year from the phenomenon, according to research.
To nail your new office design today, focus on tomorrow.
Workplace design trends are changing, so thinking ahead is crucial for any entrepreneur moving to a new location or giving their existing office a redesign, according to Dezeen. Michael O'Neill, head of research at office furniture company Haworth, told the architecture and design magazine that changing employee demographics and social norms are making the planning process for office design much less straightforward than 15 years ago.
Do you recognize the person sitting next to you at the office? In many workplaces, you’d be forgiven if not. As employees have expressed a desire to move throughout office spaces during the day and choose how and where they work, experts in office design say they have seen a shift in traditional workplace office designs in the last several years.
Read the article on marketwatch.com >
The practice of mindfulness meditation in the workplace has gained great prominence in corporate America, with major organizations like Google and the United States Marine Corp espousing the benefits of a consistent practice among leadership. When applied through the lens of leadership, a mindfulness practice can drive higher levels of attention and concentration; help practitioners be fully present amidst multiple demands; drive authenticity and innovation through focus and clarity; and help support resilience and wellbeing.
We spend around 40 hours a week in the workplace (some of us a lot more), so creating an environment that’s good for employee health and wellness is essential.
A well-designed office can actually reduce levels of absenteeism and lower staff turnover because staff are happier and healthier at work. Today I’m looking at five things you can do to create a healthier environment in your workplace, to improve wellness for you and your colleagues.
Maybe you blame your smartphone or your open office for the fact that you can't concentrate at work. But distraction isn't exactly a new problem: In 1925, inventor Hugo Gernsback published a design for the Isolator, a creepy-looking helmet that blocks out sound and vision so someone can focus on their work.
Aqil Raharjo, a second year design student at OCAD University in Toronto, Canada, has designed the perfect thing for when you need to take a quick nap at school or work.
For years, people have been developing the model for the home. They have personal spaces where they rest, sleep, maybe a work room. They have common spaces where they cook food, eat food, use electronic devices, a playroom. This idea of the home came about over thousands of years centered around what would make a person happy if they were there all day. But now, they are not there all day, they’re here in the office.
Employee engagement is on the mind of today’s organizations. This is part three in a three-part series on engagement in the workplace. Read part one and part two on the VOA blog.
The office is not the only work space that is evolving; a new level of electronic mobility — coupled with intense electronic dependence — is leading to changes in how homes are designed and how workspace is integrated into home life.
Gallup Poll results documented in this article support the notion that the telecommuting trend is on the rise. Signifiantly, 37% of participants say they have worked remotely at one point, which is four times the amount of respondents that indicated this just 20 years ago. Likely contributors to this jump? Advanced technology, a generation entering the workforce that prefers mobility and flexibility, and organizations seeking to expand remote and/or flexible work options as a way to attract and retain talent.
Fitness centers are pitching meditation and mindfulness sessions for stressed-out members.
When it comes to each individual’s working space and workstation area, a question that is always worth asking (and often is) is whether it is best to back off and let people customise their immediate surroundings to fit with their own tastes and needs or whether a company-wide tidy desk policy and uniformity of approach be imposed to protect a specific look and standard. One factor that is relevant is that there seems to be a pendulum swing between aesthetics and wellbeing going on at the moment, with many companies going back and forth in pursuit of the best approach. A study, conducted a few years ago by psychological scientist Professor Kathleen Vohs, along with a number of other researchers from the University of Minnesota, considered the behaviour of people working on both messy and clean desks and found that the individuals working in messier spaces came up with more creative and interesting results in their work overall.
The next generation of employees believe that if employers they want to attract and retain the best talent, they need to change their approach to new ‘live’ technologies which enable people to communicate in real time. According to new global research (albeit from a video comms company) despite 85 percent of employees using video as part of their everyday lives, only 28 percent say their employers are proactively encouraging them to use video at work to communicate. 72 percent feel that live video has the power to transform the way they communicate at work and 69 percent believe that increased use of video conversations would help employee retention at all levels within the organisation. The research, conducted among 4,000 employees across the UK, Germany, France and the US, also found that only one in seven (14 percent) employers is good at providing communications tools at work which mirror those employees use at home.
Don’t ignore the piles of trash on your desk anymore – it is time to spring clean your workspace, get rid of the clutter and sweep out those crumbs from under the keyboard.
An organised workspace helps you to be efficient, productive and generally on top of your business game, but where do you begin? As part of our business advice section, and with the help office design specialists Peldon Rose, this ten step programme breaks down the task into manageable actions.
Ever dream of staying in your PJs on a rainy Monday or skipping rush hour to get a head start on dinner? Working under the restrictions of a corporate company can make these kinds of conveniences pretty difficult. Fortunately, for some, working remotely is becoming increasingly more common. Money recently released a new annual survey from the remote jobs website FlexJobs.com, which provides the names of the best companies to apply to if you're looking to telecommute (i.e. work from home).
Companies want machine-like levels of productivity, because they know that the science of productivity -- the ability to output -- can make a significant difference to the bottom line of any company. However, there is also an art to productivity -- that is, the ability to figure out how to not only do more but to make “more” better at the same time. It’s also important to remember that even machines break down as parts wear out over time without regular maintenance.
