After months of cold and dreary weather, the long-awaited arrival of summer can result in a slump in employee productivity.
How can offices tackle the summer slump in productivity?
UnOffice: Not Just a Faster Horse
Everyone is asking for the workplace of the future, but a better starting point would be to imagine the work of the future. The office of the future may not be an office at all. Clerical tasks no longer dominate the world of white collar work.
Best Places To Sleep in the Office
Wellbeing in the Workplace Has Superpowers!
The wellbeing of your employees isn’t a program or HR checklist. It’s a business strategy aimed at increasing employee productivity, enhancing engagement and improving overall health and happiness in the workplace. And like any good business strategy, it’s ongoing, targeted and essential to what defines your organization and its success.
Rejuvenating Chicago’s older buildings with new ideas from new places
Owners, developers and designers are rejuvenating older buildings by rethinking the traditional concept of common spaces. Lobbies and public areas previously designed to function solely as entry points and security checks are now hospitality-infused destinations
‘Nap Bars’ Are Officially a Thing Now—Would You Try It?
In Spain, where daily naps are the norm, a new “nap bar” called Siesta & Go is getting some attention. The bar, which opened in late June, rents out bunks by the minute (perfect for those 15 to 20 minute power naps!). The top bed in a bunk is 12 U.S. cents per minute, in case you ever wondered how much your sleep was really worth.
Millennials reluctant to work remotely as they feel prohibited from working flexibly
There is growing sentiment among younger workers that flexible working is less a right – as outlined by the Government in 2014 – and more a ‘selective benefit’ for a choice group of employees. New research by Michael Page claims that two thirds (67 percent) of millennials believe employees with families are more encouraged to work flexibly than their single colleagues, and 6 in 10 (61 percent) feel the same flexible working privilege appears to apply more to senior co-workers, with junior team members more often discouraged from flexible working initiatives.
Meaningful Workplace Decisions Require Accurate Data
If your smartphone gets you within a mile of your destination, is that close enough? If a store delivers the shirt you bought, but in the wrong size, can you wear it? If you order steak and the waiter brings you a burger, will you be satisfied? In life and in business, close isn’t good enough. You can’t make meaningful decisions, if you don’t trust how you’re making them. So, when it comes to an organization’s two most valuable assets, people and real estate, it isn’t surprising to learn that accuracy is paramount.
Humanizing The Workplace Of The Future
Many corporate cultures have been shifting toward collaborative workspaces, where there is less physical division in the space between workers. Although this fosters a high level of productivity and creativity for some, it can be a detractor for others.
10 Inventions That Shaped The Workplace
Google wins approval for new London headquarters
The building, designed by Thomas Heatherwick and BIG in collaboration with BDP replicates some of the campus facilities now associated with a tech campus including a garden, 200m jogging track on the roof, swimming pool, massage parlours exerciserooms and facilities for badminton, five-a-side football and basketball. The finished 11-storey building will be more than one million square feet in size of which Google will occupy 650,000 sq ft.
Seven ways in which flexible working is making our lives more rigid
A number of recent surveys of the ways in which we work have highlighted the implications of flexible working and the integration of workplace technology into our lives. While we should take most surveys from businesses with a pinch of salt, when they all point in the same general direction, we can assume that their results are broadly correct.
The latest RAND survey paints a disturbing portrait of the American workplace
Not even remotely possible
Quite apart from the time and rent saved, there’s growing evidence that remote teams can be more productive than in-person ones. Consider: “We found massive, massive improvement in performance — a 13% improvement in performance from people working at home.” Consider companies like Automattic, Gitlab, InVision, and Zapier, all of which thrive as fully remote companies.
Big Data. Better Places.
With so much data available, why is it still difficult to understand how an organization’s biggest assets, people and spaces, perform?
This Is Your Brain on Design
There has been, historically, a divide between building performance and human performance. I would argue that there’s no reason why they have to be divided. What we need to do is combine the information and produce best practices that serve both. We need to ask questions like, “Why do men and women differ when it comes to, say, thermal comfort?
Chicago Design/Architecture Think Tank Explores Health, Safety, and WELLfare
Third annual Legat/DIRTT symposium brings together leaders in healthcare, education, law enforcement, sustainability, and design to consider the future of performance-enhancing environment
Keeping pace with workplace technology
Ask any industry expert what’s driving the evolution of workplace design, and you’ll likely hear a short answer: “Millennials.”
London Tech Week: Harness Creative Potential
We’ve all been in a meeting where people failed to participate. One person runs the agenda. One person writes on the board. Everyone else occasionally checks in but also checks email, text messages and does other work. Conversely, we’ve seen what can happen when someone is passionate about a project. Energy and inertia can often be sparked by a creative idea. That’s when something big can happen.
Apple Park employees revolt over having to work in open-plan offices
Open-plan offices have become more common since the 1990s but have come under scrutiny in recent years. A recent Haworth's white paper said that open-plan offices are "sabotaging" employees' ability to focus at work, with office workers losing 28 per cent of their productive time due to interruptions and distractions.