Workplace Trends Research Summit 2024 – Outline Programme

Our programme for the day is currently taking shape, with the call for abstracts currently running until 31 December.

Here are the first of our planned sessions. If you’d like to submit an abstract for consideration please visit our Apply to Speak page.

Delegate registration is also now open with limited numbers of Super Early Bird tickets available. Click here to go to our booking system.

Outline Programme

The Productivity and Sustainability Impacts of Working Flexibly – An Approach to Embracing Complexity
– Andy Lake, Flexibility.co.uk

For his recently published book, Beyond Hybrid Working, Andy Lake has dived into the research on the impacts of flexible working – in particular ‘remote working’ – on productivity and on the environment. His findings are also informed by data from his 25+ years working with organisations to change and evaluate their ways of working.

Andy’s approach goes beyond the sometimes tribal ‘home versus office’ debates that tend to colour the claims for negative or positive impacts in these two key areas. Instead he sets out ways to embrace complexity, looking at the range of factors and dependencies that make a difference to productivity and sustainability across all the locations in the extended workplace. En route, he also tackles the question ‘what is productivity anyway?’ (the easy one!), and sets a challenge for researchers in this field.

Andy Lake, Flexibility.co.uk

Andy Lake is a specialist in Smart Working, and has worked on dozens of implementations and evaluations across the private, public and voluntary sectors. He is the author of Beyond Hybrid Working – A Smarter and Transformational Approach to Flexible Working (Routledge, 2024) and numerous other publications exploring Smart Working and the future of work. He has led or participated in numerous research projects looking at the impacts of new ways of working and service delivery on business, government, transport, housing, and the environment.

Andy has worked as an advisor with the UK Cabinet Office and the European Commission. He was the technical author for British Standards PAS3000: Code of Practice for Smart Working. Andy also runs the Smart Work Network, a peer collaboration network for people implementing Smart Working in their organisations, and is Director of Flexibility.co.uk.

Actionable Workplace Experience Insights at NatWest – A Case Study of AI-Powered Impact and Change
– Paul Urmston, NatWest and Ian Ellison, Audiem

Eighteen months ago, NatWest began using an AI-powered workplace experience analytics approach to better explore its colleague workplace experiences and how to improve them. The aspiration was not just to understand what things were important to colleagues, but also why.

Approaching 40,000 verbatim talking points later, NatWest’s property team know more about their office and branch workplaces – and how to improve them – than ever before. This case study features data insights and workplace leadership tactics to help workplace professionals both unlock their own actionable insights and engage other workplace stakeholders.

Paul Urmston, NatWest

Paul is an Area Workplace Manager for NatWest Group responsible for the facilities operations across the South of England.

He is focussed on ensuring the workplace proposition at NatWest is able to stand up to the changing nature of our colleagues wants and needs with a special interest in measuring the workplace experience and being able to prove the value of workplace investment without factoring in cost savings from property consolidation.

Ian Ellison, Audiem

Ian Ellison has been a recognised figure in the UK workplace industry for almost 25 years. A chance discovery of Facilities Management at Orange Telecomms led to an academic role at Sheffield Hallam University. From there he co-founded 3edges Workplace with fellow academic Dr James Pinder, focusing on ‘real world’ workplace education, research and consultancy. He currently co-hosts the Workplace Geeks podcast, and is co-founder of the workplace experience insights platform Audiem.

How an Empathetic Modelling Intervention Influences Architects’ State Empathy To Inform the Design-Thinking Process
– Kim Hutton, Human Connections

This research looked at whether ‘state empathy’ in the design-thinking process could be influenced and measured and this peer reviewed study’s findings were then presented at the International Ergonomics and Human Factors Conference, 22021.

For this study architects were sent  a set of tasks which they had to perform whilst wearing eye glasses and gloves that simulated loss of visual acuity and hand dexterity. The tasks were a combination of daily living activities and design-related tasks using Computer-Aided Design.

The initial results indicated that when architects took part in an immersive experiment their state empathy levels increased, pre-post, when measured on a psychometric scale. This was a mixed methods research paper and the post intervention interviews revealed some interesting design-thinking insights.

Kim Hutton, Human Connections

Kim has used her 40 year background career in Healthcare, as a Physiotherapist, to translate her knowledge of user’s capabilities into academic research and evidence-based practice.  Following her Master’s in Human Factors and Ergonomics at Loughborough University, she was invited to become a visiting lecturer at The School of Design and Creative Arts, Loughborough University and a Visiting Industrial Fellow at the Engineering Design Centre (EDC), Cambridge University. She promotes a ‘system-thinking’ approach to help organisations work towards achieving a more empathetic, diverse and inclusive environment for their colleagues and stake holders in the workplace and built environment.

Would you like to join us?

If you’d like to submit an abstract for consideration please visit our Apply to Speak page.

Delegate registration is also now open with limited numbers of Super Early Bird tickets available. Click here to go to our booking system.

Workplace Trends is proud to support One Tree Planted. We help them plant a tree for every delegate booking.

With sincere thanks for the support of our 2024 sponsors and media partners.