A report from the US based Council on Contemporary Families claims that younger millennials have a much more complex and even traditional attitude than recent generations towards issues such as gender roles, workplace equality and working families arrangements. The study has monitored the attitudes of 50,000 18-25 year olds in the US since 1975. The most recent study, based on data from 2014, found that fewer of the current generation in that age category support egalitarian family arrangements than the same group 20 years ago. It suggests that while attitudes became uniformly more egalitarian throughout the 40 year period of the research, a more complex picture has now emerged in which positive attitudes towards traditional gender roles in families seem to be returning to the levels they were at the beginning of the 1980s, even though there is near universal agreement with ideals such as equality in the workplace and parental leave.
Here's Why It Matters That Millennials Hate Where They Work
Graduating from college is as daunting as it is exciting. Young adults leave the familiarity of their campuses and classrooms and head into the vast unknown that is the workforce. There are so many new, moving parts that it's no surprise an overwhelming number of companies found their employees are often "lost in transition" right after graduation.
Atlanta is Designing Office Spaces To Be Your New Fitness Coach
Forget LA Fitness — workplaces are now playing an active role in helping employees maintain good health and wellness. Atlanta is a forerunner in this shift, as the city is a home base and innovation hub for the new Active Design movement.
Active Design for your office space is about getting you in motion. Health-conscious business leaders are now asking their interior designers and architects to build opportunities into the workspace to get employees out of their seats.
THE IMPORTANCE OF COLOR IN THE WORKPLACE
Last year, a news story was released about the discovery of the world’s ugliest color, Pantone 448C, which was used by the Australian government on tobacco packaging to discourage smoking. This, and many other strategies are the result of the increasing amount of insight in recent years on color theory, which surrounds the meanings, effects, and use of color.
Office checkup: 9 ways to make your space healthier
What is a healthy workplace, exactly? The answer should be clear by now. Piles of research have dug into this topic, and then news outlets cover the latest discovery ad infinitum.
The problem is, research is rather dense, while the news isn’t comprehensive. Office managers trying to improve workplace wellness want neither a 55-page report nor a half dozen articles to convince their landlord that their space can do better.
Rise of the machine: How automation is redefining work and real estate
Automation is here to stay. The rise of the machine has proved a constant since the Industrial Revolution. However, acceleration in the pace of change at present is primarily down to digitisation, the 21st-century's phenomenon.
Looking To The Next Generation For Office Space Needs
A rapidly growing number of professional service firms are redesigning their office spaces to align with the “workplace of the future” and reap benefits including improving collaboration, client and partner service, employee recruitment and retention and technology integration. Along the way, they are recognizing that the process is far more complex than merely relocating to a trendier part of town. Savvy firms are deploying proven methodologies to overcome the obstacles and maximize the opportunities.
Three Minute Video: ‘Create Spaces Like Workshops’
Are we ready for the disruptive forces of change impacting our working world by the intersection of the digital and physical? Steelcase global design director James Ludwig joined Creative Business Week in Munich to discuss the seismic changes we’ll see over the next decade.
Has Connectivity Changed Our Experience of Place?
Given the ubiquity of digital connectivity, I would expect place itself to change tangibly, along with how we perceive and use it. Spatial changes appear to lag changes in our use and perception, however. This conforms to tech guru John Seely Brown’s contention that it takes a generation for a major technology innovation’s impact to be fully felt.
Every workplace can benefit from sustainable commuting habits
You’d be hard-pressed to find someone whose commute to the office couldn’t be improved. The time and stress associated with a long commute are huge factors in the choices people make about their jobs — some studies even suggest it is better to take a job with a shorter commute over one with a higher salary.
Submaterial Unveils the New Acoustic Surfaces Collection
Submaterial has seriously elevated the sound dampening game in recent years and their latest Acoustic Surfaces Collection is another brilliant step. Their wall systems feature a high-performance, thermally-formed acoustic substrate hidden beneath the thick layer of commercial grade wool felt, which lends itself to some serious sound-softening. But the company doesn’t stop there – instead, they bring a decorative element to the surface that results in really cool geometric wall patterns that disguise the original (acoustic) reason it’s there. From small walls to large installations, the wall surfaces are customizable with over 60 different colors to choose from.
Why companies need to go where the skilled workers are
Nowadays, when it comes to companies looking for a new location to call home for their headquarters or satellite offices, the local talent pool should be the top consideration for most businesses, along with available real estate and the presence of clusters—physical hubs housing a large concentration of same-sector businesses and support services.
Flexible working is not a magic bullet for workplace ills
According to Oxford Dictionaries the word of the year for 2016 is post-truth. This is a slippery little adjective because while some things are pretty much objectively true, the use of post-truth in many contexts is merely a way of shutting down opinion. It’s especially pernicious when it comes to ideas and philosophy because it assumes that the person using it knows what the truth is, yet the world’s sharpest minds can’t always agree on that As the great Ambrose Bierce defied truth in his caustic Devil’s Dictionary: ‘Discovery of truth is the sole purpose of philosophy, which is the most ancient occupation of the human mind and has a fair prospect of existing with increasing activity to the end of time’. And there’s a good reason why in the Bible Pilate’s question ‘What is truth?’ is met with silence.
What lift (elevator) design tells us about who we are and how we work
In 1959, cardiologists Meyer Friedman and Ray Rosenman identified the personality traits which go hand in hand with disproportionate levels of heart disease. These include an overblown sense of time urgency, a desire to fit as much into each second as possible, excessive competitiveness and aggressiveness and frustration when other people are doing things more slowly than absolutely necessary. In other words – your typical 21st Century human. Friedman and Rosenman coined a term for such people which has now entered common usage. They called them Type-A personalities. In Douglas Coupland’s 1995 novel Microserfs, one of the characters encapsulates what Type-As are all about. ‘Type-A personalities have a whole subset of diseases that they, and only they, share. The transmission vector for these diseases is the door close button on elevators that only gets pushed by impatient, Type-A people.’
WORK-LIFE BALANCE VS. WORKPLACE WELL-BEING
We spend 40, 50, 60 hours per week at work.
Many of us are tethered to a desk with an immobile computer or trapped in meeting after meeting in walled-off conference rooms. We toil away beneath fluorescent lights while fighting the appeal of sugar and salt-laden snacks that give “come and eat me eyes” from behind the vending machine glass. And we experience the unique kind of stress that only demanding markets, and even more demanding deadlines, can bring. And then at the end of the day, we’re supposed to jump in our car, drive to the gym for an hour-long workout, and munch on kale for dinner.
Corporate occupiers turn to coworking space to keep down property costs
Demand for coworking spaces is growing at an average of 10-15 percent per annum across all regions as firms look to cut their real estate costs by embracing the concept based on shared work spaces and collaboration. That is the key finding of a new report from Cushman & Wakefield. As the trend gains momentum, according to the study, developers are increasingly incorporating the aesthetic and function of such flexible working environments into mainstream building design. However the main driver of uptake continues to be concern about the cost of renting offices in prime locations and it is no surprise that coworking is focussed on major globalised cities.
What workers want from their workspace – and why HR should listen!
Getting the right office interior design can be of huge benefit to your employees, potentially improving their productivity, attendance, health and happiness. Yet, when designing a workplace, many companies forget to ask for the opinion of the very people they are hoping will benefit the most. So what do employees actually want from an office design and how can you provide it for them?
Designing space for virtual collaboration in an untethered world
Working with colleagues across different geographies and time zones has become the norm since an increasing number of organizations now integrate and seek collaboration at a global level. Interestingly, according to Cisco, 62 percent of workers now regularly collaborate with people in other countries. These globally integrated enterprises (GIE) aim to draw in the best talent from across the world, delivering maximum innovation and efficiency. The rise of global and distributed teams has been further encouraged by the popularity of remote working, with 71 percent of office workers now choosing greater flexibility to work from various locations instead of traveling to the office everyday . And the trend only looks set to gain pace, with 56 percent of senior leaders in large global companies expecting global teams to increase in the next one to three years.
SOMETIMES YOU NEED TO TAKE IT OUTSIDE
Picture a 70-degree day: blue sky, calm breeze, the smell of fresh-cut grass, the distant call of birds. A small band of colleagues, tablets and coffee cups at hand, gather in lounge chairs under a tree for a moment to connect, share conversation and refocus.
They could be meeting in their team space or a conference room, but they opt for the great outdoors—because it’s a beautiful day and there’s Wi-Fi and power access on the terrace. That’s the group’s favorite spot when the weather is nice and they need to discuss or debrief on a project. It’s a great haven for individuals who need a brain break, too.
DESIGN AS A BUSINESS STRATEGY: TAPPING DATA IS EASIER THAN YOU THINK
“Good design is good business,” Thomas J. Watson famously declared in the early 70s. But while the link between design and performance has since been well established with products, only recently has the physical workplace environment garnered the same attention.




















