Our thoughts & insights

What makes WeWork spaces so memorable isn’t just the design; it’s the people behind the experience. In the 'We Want a WeWork' article, Chris Moriarty explores how roles like community and workplace managers are reshaping how we think about office life. It’s a call to reimagine what great workplace experiences look like and how every organisation can learn from the co-working model. Read the full article to see why experience, not just space, is the future of work.

In “Can We Reinvent the Modern Office?”, recent Workplace Geeks podcast guests Jeremy Myerson and Philip Ross challenge the conventional approach to workplace design, advocating for a fundamental shift away from outdated models rooted in efficiency and control. They propose ten transformative directions—ranging from social and healthy to digital and shared—that aim to create workplaces fit for the future. Their insights encourage a bold reimagining of how we work, urging leaders to move beyond incremental changes and embrace a more profound transformation. This thought-provoking piece invites readers to consider whether it's time to reset and rebuild the modern office from the ground up

In this article, James Pinder argues against the overuse of rating scale questions in employee surveys, highlighting their limitations in capturing employee experiences. He argues that while these questions provide structured data, they often reduce nuanced feedback to mere numbers. James advocates for embracing free-text responses, which offer richer insights and more meaningful engagement, challenging organisations to rethink their feedback strategies and adopt more human-centric approaches to understanding employee sentiments

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Chris Moriarty, co-founder of Audiem, shares his insights on various workplace setting topics, including progressive work concepts, 4-day workweeks, hybrid/telework and more.

In the world of workplace, "biophilic design" can be regarded as little more than some nice plants and a token water feature. But beneath the preconceptions and misunderstanding lies a complex intersection of evolutionary theory, environmental psychology, sustainable practice and the potential for urban transformation. In our latest Workplace Geeks special—and first ever ‘Workplace Geeks investigation™’ deep dive—Chris Moriarty and I set out to explore the roots and relevance of biophilic design: where it comes from, why it matters, and how it's being used (and sometimes misunderstood) in today’s workplace and beyond.

In a recent episode of the Workplace Geeks podcast, we published our last in a series of chats with members of the Workplace Leaders Top 50 list 2024.

Marvin Minsky, a pioneer in the field of artificial intelligence, argued decades ago that “Easy things are hard” for computers. He meant that computers struggle to do things that humans can do easily and often without really thinking about.

In January, Ian Ellison had the opportunity to join a panel of experts for WORKTECH Academy’s quarterly briefing webinar.

Co-founder Chris Moriarty shares his views on what the CRE industry should focus its attention on. Spoiler alert, it involves people and not buildings!

A major new research initiative, WorkPulse, has been launched by workspace provider Workpattern in collaboration with AI-powered analytics platform Audiem. This ongoing project aims to uncover emerging workplace trends by tracking employee sentiment across industries and regions.

Surveys remain a popular way of collecting workplace experience data, but increasingly, we hear people talking about survey fatigue and the reluctance of employees to give feedback.

We were so lucky to convince one of the OG's of workplace research, Jeremy Myerson, to join us on one of our earliest episodes. In this discussion we find out how he turned a research project that focused on getting employees to draw lines on grey boxes into an award winning paper still influencing workplace research today.

In our very first interview on the Workplace Geeks podcast we spoke to Kursty Groves. Speaker, fellow podcaster, and accomplished workplace strategist, we chatted about 'Space for Innovation'. A phenomenal exploration into how the spaces can get our creative juices flowing. A blend of academic research, practical experience and storytelling which gets us under the skin of innovation.

Ian talks through our new Topics engine. A powerful way to unlock workplace insights from huge amounts of employee feedback. Combined with our Workplace Mix framework, this tool has the ability to transform how you view workplace experience in your organisation.

We've looked at neurodiversity with Josh Artus looking at a guide he authored to help design more inclusive spaces, but what does the academic landscape look like in this field? What evidence is there that can give us confidence that measures will work? We explore it with Jo Yarker.

Imagine there was a workplace design metric sitting there, completely unseen and completely unknown to the vast majority of people. And imagine we could use it to predict the effectiveness of office space. Well imagine no longer, dive into the wonderful world of Space Syntax with Kerstin Sailer.

Dive into our chat with Nigel Oseland on the Workplace Geeks podcast, exploring the Human Zoo concept in office design. From evolutionary psychology to the Bürolandschaft approach, hear Nigel's take on reimagining workspaces for well-being and performance.

We're pleased to announce that on the 20 April, we'll be hosting our very first Audiem event. A chance to get a full view of the platform, understand the thinking behind it and see some of the ways that organisations are using it. We'll even throw in a case study from some of the largest tech companies on the planet.

Workplace experiences ebb and flow. They are rich and complex. While they might seek to cater for diverse and wide-ranging groups, they are individually and often very personally felt. They are shaped over time, yet can be transformed – from delight to disgust, or vice versa – in an instant. And they are typically subtle and nuanced – not only positive and negative, but often ambivalent too.

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if the focus of the 1980s was on business ‘excellence’ in terms of performance and efficiency, perhaps the most important organisational pre-occupation of the post-pandemic 2020s will concern something equally complex and elusive: workplace experience. Here we explore the challenges that come with it.

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Neurodiversity is rightly getting some much deserved focus in workspace design circles but are we approaching it in the right way and how do we avoid slipping into unhelpful stereotypes. The amazing Josh Artus guides us through this important topic.