Handling hybrid: what design steps can heal a fractured culture?
The new year is seeing some familiar plotlines about return to office and the tension between technology and community. Insights from a new Stantec report shine a light on key challenges
2025 in commentary: a year of plotting, promises and patchy progress
As the curtain comes down on 2025, we reflect on a year of challenge and change in work and workplace through the lens of 12 comment pieces written by the WORKTECH Academy team
Is misplaced faith in mandates making things worse for the RTO?
Company bosses are doubling down on the return to office but all the evidence on mandates suggests that they repel talent and wreck morale without really raising levels of performance
Talking point: can the office rise above the doom and gloom?
It’s easy to feel down about prospects in the workplace sector. But as we gear up for final quarter of 2025, emerging trends in real estate, technology and design point to a brighter future
Why is full-time office work flatlining despite strict mandates?
Evidence suggests that the return to office is stalling, but leaders will miss a trick this autumn if they obsess on RTO policies and not on practices that really improve the work environment
The big debate: will building standardisation stifle local creativity?
New hospital building programmes are today at the centre of a tense battle between standardisation and deregulation. Will workplace design fall into the same trap?
Factory settings: why is the post-industrial workplace so popular?
Creative firms relocating to industrial heritage buildings is on the rise. Research from the Netherlands suggests that connections to the past provide workers with motivation and identity
What the world’s oldest org chart tells us about company hierarchy
A long-forgotten management graphic of a railroad company has been rescued from the US Library of Congress and reinterpreted by designer Rachel Botsman at the London Design Biennale
