Boredom at work is often related to doing the same thing over and over again. This could relate to anything from our job tasks themselves, to our commute, to our working hours or our working environment. We know that variety is the spice of life, so why are so many of us still trapped in […]
Freedom of Movement and the Importance of Individuality
by Jamie Rothwell, MD at Hotbox Storage No, we’re not talking about Brexit. We’re talking about collaborative and open plan workspaces that encourage you to move around the workspace and work where and when you like. We are all familiar with these workspaces today. They are great at encouraging innovation, attracting talent and are just fun […]
How To Build Culture Through Office Design
Baker Stuart’s Insight: It’s something we spend a lot of time thinking about – the fit between your people and the place they work in. This article argues that one of the most powerful ways to cultivate culture is building it—literally—into your workplace. Want to find out how? Culture is the only long-term competitive advantage an […]
Are You Remotely Happy? 3 ways to engage remote workers in workplace wellbeing initiatives
A happy workplace makes a happy worker. Makes sense doesn’t it? Companies across the nation appear to believe so, as evidenced by the creation of new roles like ‘Chief Happiness Officers’ within corporations. This is just one way that we’re starting to see growing commitment to employee wellbeing. But with the rise of remote working (and with […]
Research: We’re Not Very Self-Aware, Especially at Work
Baker Stuart’s Insight: Our individual self-awareness at work has a huge impact on team performance. When individuals are less self-aware (i.e. there is a big gap between what individuals think they contribute to the team, and what their team members think they contribute), the team tends to make worse decisions, be less coordinated, and show worse conflict management strategies. If […]
Problems with noise at work? A lot of it is in our heads
Baker Stuart’s Insight: The problem of noise at work is particularly important at the moment because most UK employees are now working in open plan offices that are on average about 20 percent smaller than they were ten years ago. But much of the effect of workplace noise is due to psychological factors such as context […]
IKEA designs future autonomous cars that work as hotels, stores, and meeting rooms
Baker Stuart’s Insight: Is this the future of the mobile office? Ikea Labs thinks their autonomous cars which can serve as an ‘Office on Wheels’ could be. Their designs are envisaged as a way for us to work smarter; so in the future we could be holding meetings while watching the world go by, without having […]
Top global industries leading the way in remote work
Baker Stuart’s Insight: Remote working is on the up. Whilst this isn’t news in itself, the sectors leading the trend might not be quite what you expect. IT and Marketing are at the top of the leaderboard with 29% and 24% of employees working remotely – but the rest of the leaderboard, including business administration, app […]
Conversations may be more productive when held in the great outdoors
Baker Stuart’s Insight: Conversations may be more productive if they are had outdoors, research from the University of Manchester and Cardiff University shows. Their findings have potential parallels in workplaces, offering more evidence that getting out of the office, and into nature, can bring benefits. As the researchers write: “our research demonstrates that natural environments can […]
Do You Need a Workplace Culture Budget?
Baker Stuart’s Insight: Workplace cultures have been on the agenda for a long time now. But often, not enough is being done to concretely address culture problems in the workplace. This article reinforces that culture is really about behaviours, and discusses what we need to do to meaningfully change them. We’ve been talking about work culture […]
