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.
In today’s evolving real estate markets it’s no longer just the modern office towers clustered in city centers or the strategically located business parks that are considered to be core property assets.
As many HR departments know, a well-designed workplace environment can be a powerful asset for attracting new talent to a company. But designing the office in a way that meets the needs of four generations, now working together, is a relatively new challenge for many organisations.
The age gap between the oldest and youngest employees sharing office space can be up to 50 years, which can lead to a fragmented or one-sided approach to workplace design and culture if not considered carefully. Organisations that fail to accommodate the differing needs of all four generations risk losing talent and potentially face bottom line repercussions.
Office real estate will experience a slowdown this year, with some experts projecting the market has reached its plateau. A labor shortage coupled with millions of square feet in new supply expected to come online this year will take its toll on the sector. Though office-using employment remains healthy thanks to strong demand from tech companies, the pullback in office-using jobs and more than 50M SF of projected office supply scheduled to hit this year (the most since 2009), is expected to push up vacancy rates. CBRE expects rent growth to slow, with rents increasing by 1.5% over the course of this year, down quite a bit from 4.5% growth in 2015.
Corporate real estate occupiers must do more to embrace flexible working and identify the sources of competitive advantage offered by their workplaces, according to the newly published Corporate Real Estate (CRE) 2017 trends report from JLL. The study highlights the key issues affecting corporate property needs and requirements this year, and offers occupiers some advice on how to deal with them, including how real estate strategy affects organisational perfomance. As well as flexible working and real estate strategy, the report also considers the consequences of automation, which it suggests will have a significant impact on the way workplaces are designed, occupied and managed within just a few years,
Steelcase and Microsoft have come together for the first time to help organizations enable and facilitate more creative work from their teams in an increasingly competitive business landscape. By providing workers with a thoughtfully designed workplace — one that brings together space and technology — business leaders can unlock the creativity of people, inspiring ideas and accelerating innovation along the way.
Workplace design has vastly evolved over the last 10 to 15 years. Office spaces, which were once designed to deter co-mingling, are now centered around bringing people together. Open floor plans are the norm, and panels to divide desk space keep shrinking, or don’t exist at all. While we could attribute this dramatic evolution to a generational transition (a.k.a., millennials), or to the rise of “startup culture”, this shift is rooted in something broader: the need for meaningful collaboration.
People crave authenticity and comfort, and increasingly, they’re expecting the workplace to match the warm vibe they experience at home. Fortunately, there are easy ways to achieve this — and more importantly, solid reasons why it matters.
The Steelcase Global Report: Engagement and the Global Workplace found the most engaged employees worldwide are also the most satisfied with their work environment. So while some view the workplace as strictly utilitarian, or worse, an afterthought, there are compelling reasons to sit up and pay attention to space. Happy, engaged workers are glad to be in the office because they like their environment.
A few years ago when the idea of cowork spaces first surfaced, no one could have foreseen how rapidly the ways in which we work would change, and the kind of impact this would have on how, when and where we work.
Employers traditionally have followed workers to wherever they live. As many workers earned higher wages and bought homes in the suburbs, companies followed. Millennials generally like what city life offers, so it’s no surprise that real estate developers are rehabbing apartment complexes near city parks, restaurants, major retailers and theaters.
Robert Bach, director of research at Newmark Grubb Knight Frank real estate, told Business Insider that 14% to 22% of suburban corporate complexes are at risk for becoming obsolete, so it’s no coincidence that “fitness-focused and food-savvy millennials” prefer city life.
In the past several years, a handful of America's largest corporations have joined an exodus from their suburban headquarters to new home bases in the city, and millennials seem to be the driving force.
The traditional office park — a cluster of drab, nondescript buildings encircled by vast parking lots and highways — is dying. Given millennials' penchant for walking and fast-casual restaurants, a number of American companies are either rebuilding their suburban office parks to mimic an urban environment or uprooting for the city.
President Trump’s second attempt at a travel ban arrived this week, with provisions intended to prevent it from being blocked in court, as the first one was. On Wednesday, Hawaii became the first state to challenge the new immigration order in court, but there’s no sign Trump plans to relent. He has promised to increase the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) force by 15,000 officers, many of whom will be tasked with ensuring employers’ compliance with immigration law.
There are approximately 11 million people living in the U.S. without documentation, meaning the likelihood that an employer has undocumented workers on staff is considerable, especially in industries like manufacturing, agriculture, hospitality, and construction. Companies in and outside those fields are already gearing up for ICE raids on their worksites. Here’s what you need to know to prepare.
One of the many traps that lies in wait for unwary organisations is to confuse corporate identity with their brand. The visual aspects of an identity may reflect the firm’s personality and values, and a change may go in hand in hand with the development of a new strategic direction or culture, but a mismatch can be jarring if the stakeholder perception of the organisation does not marry up with its branding. The forces at play here are increasingly subtle and complex, not least because modern organisations are not just concerned with the way they portray themselves to their customers, but also their current and prospective employees and other stakeholders. Indeed for those firms deep in the trenches of the war for talent, the primary focus of their branding strategy may be how it helps them to recruit and retain their people and create the right working culture.
For the first time, there can be as many as five generations working together in the office, and each age group comes with its own preferences and perspectives on how and where work should be done.
It’s important for employers to be in tune with what their workers want and need, as there is increasing competition among organizations to find people with the skills and abilities to succeed.
The pendulum has been swinging in recent years with many big corporations, including Best Buy, IBM and AT&T, opting for more of a results-only work environment where employees do not have to physically be at work, according to Purdue University Krannert School of Management associate professor of management Bradley Alge.
The benefits include workers being able to balance work and family and being flexible about where they can work. More than 70% of employees of corporations would be willing to trade easier commutes for better office environments, according to CBRE research.
Google’s delivering on its promise of keeping its interactive whiteboard under $6,000. Priced at $4,999, the Jamboard is just a hair more expensive than the 55-inch version of Cisco’s Sparkboard and considerably less so than the $8,999 Surface Hub, which was both the first of the trio to be announced and first to market when it started shipping last March.
Google’s 55-inch offering is set to arrive May. That price includes two styli and one eraser. What it doesn’t factor in, however, is upkeep. The management and support fee is going to cost your IT department an additional $600 a year – though that price will be halved if they manage to get in before the end of September. And hey, the company will throw in a free wall mount too, for good measure.
Younger workers are less and less loyal to employers, which is driving firms to place greater emphasis on benefits, empowerment and a better working environment, according to a study from ReportLinker. The small scale online study of 500 people found that Millennials are less likely than older generations to say they’re highly committed to their employer, with just 40 percent saying they somewhat agree with this statement compared to 66 percent of older workers say they’re highly committed to their organisation. The report concludes that this is encouraging employers to introduce new ways of winning the loyalty of employees. For example, 87 percent of employees who are more involved in decision-making are also more likely to say they are committed to their employers although, as always, we should be wary of the distinction between correlation and causation.
In just a short time, Apple will begin moving into its famed new “Spaceship” campus. Officially named Apple Park, the massive project is nearing completion after nearly six years of planning and building. $5 billion project, developed in collaboration with architects Foster + Partners, has been easy to follow for observers of the company with drones providing aerial footage of the construction on a regular basis. The dramatic shape of the building, a simple perfect circle, is a testament to Apple’s unique focus on design.
Susan S. Szenasy, publisher & editor in chief, Metropolis (SSS): We’re seeing a shift toward the suburban. In Los Angeles, for instance, there are pockets of developments that have the potential to urbanize the old suburb. AECOM, represented today by Brett Shwery, is based in Los Angeles and has its headquarters in a high-rise. They designed Box’s headquarters in Redwood City, near San Francisco. Let’s start with Sandra Ladao. Why Redwood City?
The workplace can have a lot of impact on your productivity. It can have an impact on your ability to focus, your creativity, efficiency, etc. This level of impact the working place has on the productivity makes the design of the site and workplace environment profoundly significant.
Most of the people do not necessarily think that it can impact your working efficiency. But if you make some changes in certain areas, you will see the difference in productivity levels.
What’s behind the buzz? Most of these workplace labels suggest some generalization about the workplace environment. The risk in generalizations is they can promote a one-size-fits-all mentality. The reality today is that people in most organizations vary widely in terms of socio-economic status, age, gender, sexual preference, religion, geography, language, and culture. Designing workplaces that meet the needs of a diverse workforce requires a holistic approach.
