I have always been almost pathologically averse to futurology. It’s that smug certainty about the way the world will be that often grates. And right now the ‘future of the office’ is drawing us all in to becoming another of those who claim special insight. However, I have taken heart from listening to Professor Lynda…
In my previous blog post of this two-part series, I talked about the importance of face-to-face communication in hospital wards for exchange of information and socialisation and the development of a new single measure – SCI (Spaces for Communication Index). SCI measures space effectiveness in the form of maximising communication opportunities which is crucial for…
While many people are currently working from home because of Covid-19, it seems an important time to remember the value of socialisation face to face in the physical workplace and how that relates to organisational performance. In this blog, I talk about how my PhD research into workplace effectiveness in hospital settings, led me to…
If we ask you ‘what is the function of a building?’, your answer might well include ‘to give shelter’, or ‘to provide space for certain activities’. Indeed you might well say it depends on the type of building; a factory is there to manufacture products, a school allows children to learn. And of course you’d…
Last year in “Is open plan the collaboration magic bullet?” we blogged about the spatial effects on collaboration of an organisation that moved into a single floor open plan workspace from a highly partitioned office accommodated on two floors. Over the last few months we have delved a bit deeper into the evidence and have…
In our fourth and final blog in our series, we discuss the organisational reality of workplace data collection. The truth is organisations and businesses of all kinds routinely collect data. The most obvious being financial results. How many products have been sold this week? What is our total revenue for the year? How much have costs…
What happens when 21 people volunteer to take part in a live workplace experiment? An experiment that tests what factors govern the choices people will make when asked to find a work setting for a collaborative team task? A couple of weeks ago we embarked on what was in itself an experimental formula: a kind…
We spend a lot of time observing and thinking about office design and the effect it has on people’s behaviour, so what better working environment to study than the ever growing and fashionable phenomenon that is co-working space? Our interest was particularly piqued by a visit we made during last September’s Open House London weekend.…
When was the last time you completed a piece of work where you needed no input at all from anyone else? That probably depends on the exact nature of your work and role, but for most of us in knowledge-intensive work, the answer is likely to be ‘a while ago’. Increasing demands on people to not just do…
We are not called brainybirdz for nothing. We love birds. So when many months ago we found a tweet (!) from @biotweeps citing a 2012 study into the foraging behaviour of blue tits, great tits and marsh tits in woodlands in Oxfordshire, we were naturally interested, especially when we saw that the researcher scientists involved…
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