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.
At a time when machines are getting smarter and more capable and traditional jobs are being replaced with looser forms of employment (from freelancing to gigs), America is agonizing over the future of work. Will there be enough well-paying jobs or “tasks” for everyone? Can we continue to depend on work as a universal provider, or will other forms of income have to take up the slack? Can we support growing numbers of elderly people who might not be able to work?
At the offices of Yelp, Vice, and WeWork--and surely many other Millennial-centric startups--employees don't need to meet down the street at a local happy hour joint. Happy hour starts down the hall at the in-office bar. It's a trendy feature to have in the office--but it's also a huge liability if you don't know what you're doing.
An open office can prompt collaboration—or awkward silence. When employees have nowhere to work privately, it’s time for a new look at workplace design.
Sara Armbruster, vice president strategy, research and new business innovation at Steelcase, spoke at the 8th Global Peter Drucker Forum about how the work environment can support new leadership behaviors. She joined 360 Real Time to discuss her belief that the workplace itself can help leaders lead better, and, in turn, help others around them succeed.
Architects increasingly embrace the idea that they play a role in fostering good health by designing buildings that make it easier for occupants to make positive lifestyle choices such as moving during the day, absorbing natural light and eating healthy food. POLITICO asked Matt Welker, who promotes healthy building design at the American Institute of Architects, to pick five of his favorite buildings and explain what makes them good at making you healthier.
With a rich history dating back to 1905, American Greetings was in need of a new headquarters that would carry the business into the next century. After deciding to relocate its 1,600 employees from Brooklyn to Westlake, Ohio, the company looked to CallisonRTKL to design a facility that would be an expression of their corporate culture and character, with both a deep respect for the American Greetings history and a view to the future of the industry. At over 60,000 SM, the new headquarters is a truly modern workplace with space for offices, meeting rooms, photo studios, showrooms and a large courtyard.
Humans are by nature creative. We’re makers, designers, producers, idea-generators. Creating is one of the things we humans are really good at—and our creativity is a big reason why we work.
Too many people today are disengaged from their work and show up only for the paycheck. But financial rewards are not the first things people look for in a career. A sense of purpose ranks much higher.
Whether you look at polls of employees or Silicon Valley's obsession with perks like unlimited vacation days, it's clear that flexibility is the latest hot workplace benefit. Some commentators have even gone so far as to call flexibility the new definition of success.
There's plenty of reason to cheer this development. Studies show that flexibility reduces stress and can boost productivity, and on a human level having the ability to adjust your schedule to help an ailing relative or attend your kid's field trip is certainly nice. But while there's a compelling case to be made for workplace flexibility, that doesn't mean the idea is all upside, as two new studies illustrate.
Although we now struggle to imagine living in a world without smartphones and the Internet, organisations appear to be slightly out of step with the digital era, according to a new study of their behaviour by Oxford Economics and Citrix. The research, published in a report called Building the Digital Workplace, measured progress toward digital work at organisations around the world. It found that there is a pressing need for organisations to develop a coherent digital strategy especially with regard to work. Although all the common concerns remain about security, costs and skills remain, the report suggests that firms need to do more to reap the benefits of a digital workplace. It cites the example of firms who have done most to develop a digital workplace strategy and the positive outcomes they have enjoyed.
It happened again today. I saw a young couple eating together, with their heads down, phones in respective hands. They did not engage in any actual human-to-human correspondence, connection, or eye contact whatsoever. I did, however, overhear a whole lot of dings and beeps from their phones.
Is this what we've come to? Are the connections we make through our devices real? Do they empower us to actually gain new perspectives and make real, human-centered connections?
As we've pumped our schools and classrooms full of devices, have we unintentionally disconnected our children from one another?
Via ki.com
There’s a lot of chatter about the “cool” office spaces we all envy a little – the ones with gaming areas, nap nooks and fully-stocked kitchens. But what is the line between a fun, collaborative office space and one that’s too lax and distracts employees from being productive?
Companies, of course, want to be perceived as established and financially healthy – and the amenities you offer employees can help you accomplish that, while creating the kind of atmosphere job-seekers envy. But you can’t just throw up a basketball hoop and tell your employees go play without some ground rules first. Before diving headfirst into the ballpit, so to speak, company leaders should ask themselves what they are trying to achieve with what they offer, and how they’re going to manage these spaces, as well as expectations.
As successive BCO Specification Guides and the research of organisations like CoreNet Global have proved, the spatial dynamics of offices have changed dramatically in recent years. Put simply, the modern office serves significantly more people per square foot than ever before. Originally this tightening was largely down to the growing ubiquity of flat screen and the mobile devices, but more recently the major driver of change appears to be the gradual disappearance of personal workstations in favour of more shared space.The typical space allocated to an individual in a building has shrunk dramatically in the last few years, while the provision of public and meeting space has increased. The upshot is that the amount of personal space allocated to each individual in a building has fallen by over a fifth in just a few years and the very idea of using the number of employees to determine their individual space requirements without other considerations seems less relevant.
Work environments that are designed to make employees feel connected, functional and emotionally fulfilled can increase their productivity. Spaces that employees rejuvenate in can lead to an overall improved disposition. One of the findings in the Steelcase Global Report is that employee engagement correlates directly with workplace satisfaction.
Recent research into hot-desking — the sharing approach that’s found a home in countless co-working spaces — revealed “flexible” and “activity-based” office arrangements could actually hurt, rather than help, employee trust and satisfaction, it raised questions about whether the most popular office setups are the most effective.
When your biggest office distractions aren’t things like Slack or meetings or your own Facebook account but other people, your options for getting back on track may feel limited. The bad news is that they are pretty limited; when you get down to it, there are really only two potential courses of action open to you. The good news, on the other hand, is that you don’t need to learn a complicated mind hack to help you focus or to download yet another productivity app. Here’s a straightforward guide to prevent your irritating colleagues from driving you crazy.
Performance certifications like LEED, Passivhaus, and Green Globes have changed the way we think of baseline environmental concerns, but a new set of rubrics looks to build on those standards. The concept of wellness in many ways is an extension of the environmental movement, as it expands the ideals of building performance to the human experience.
The terms “workplace” and “culture” are almost synonymous in today’s business vernacular. Companies devote countless hours, resources, and strategies to defining and implementing distinct workplace cultures that support their goals, build their brands, and affect every aspect of the work environment—including the power to attract, engage, inspire, and retain talent. Culture may not always mean a static end game; instead it may be a shifting variable that is encouraging change and aligning with new behaviors and productivity. Take Google for example, “…Google doesn’t view their culture as a “set it and forget it” program. They’re actively changing and maintaining it, because it’s crucial to their success. “
They are either the heroes of the office — safeguarding the hygiene of the fridge and diligently reporting any wrongdoing — or irritating snitches, depending on your viewpoint.
More than half of workers have encountered a “dark knight employee” at some point in their career, a study indicates.
Researchers from the University of Toronto and the University of British Columbia found that 18 per cent were working with one of these office vigilantes and that 58 per cent had known one during their career.
Over the past year, I’ve had numerous conversations with clients about how to hire, inspire and retain their millennial employees. It seems many leaders I work are struggling to find the “right” answer, but there are as many answers to this question as there are industries, offices and jobs.
