Workplace Trends: Spring Summit - The Healthy Workplace

Alexi Marmot, AMA Associates and The Bartlett, UCL

Alexi Marmot is an internationally acknowledged expert in the design, management, and use of places for work and learning. Alexi is a Principal Investigator on the Active Buildings study, a unique investigation into how the spatial layout of office buildings influences the step count and sitting time of office workers. World experts in Epidemiology & Public Health, Health Psychology, the Built Environment & Spatial Design are working together to develop novel ways of capturing indoor movement as assess building potential for activity generation.

Bridget Juniper, Work and Well-Being Ltd

Bridget Juniper is a Chartered Occupational Psychologist. She is a methodologist and specialises in helping organisations to better quantify the impact of workplace on employee well-being and effectiveness.  Her PhD examined the measurement of employee well-being and she continues her award-winning research at Cranfield University where she is also a guest lecturer. Bridget has been awarded an Honorary Research Fellowship at the School of Business, Economics and Informatics at Birkbeck College, University of London and lectures on the MSc Organizational Psychology programme. She is also a Visiting Research Fellow at the Royal Institution of Great Britain.

Tom Helliwell, Pringle Brandon Perkins+Will Ltd

Tom is a workplace specialist with extensive experience in leading workplace strategy, assessment and change projects across varying scales of the property portfolio, for high profile private and public sector organisations. Tom’s focus is on new ways of working, space utilisation, workplace assessment and change. As well as delivering consultancy projects, he is responsible for continually developing the Workplace Toolkit to support and enhance the data gathering and assessment process. Tom’s experience has allowed him to gain an in depth understanding of how people, space and buildings work. Combining this knowledge with an appreciation of working practices and design trends, Tom can tailor workplaces to provide clients with the right environment for their business.

Chris Lees, Zurich Insurance

Chris is working as the Global Business Solutions Manager in the Corporate Real Estate & Facilities Management department of Zurich Insurance Group. In this role, Chris is responsible for global projects that involve a significant degree of either innovation or IT, and is leading projects around workplace utilization, reservation, mobile applications and data warehousing. 

William Fawcett, Cambridge Architectural Research

William Fawcett is an architect with experience in practice, consultancy, research and teaching. He was trained at the University of Cambridge Department of Architecture and continued with PhD research at the Martin Centre, the Department’s research division. After four years in a conventional architectural practice and four years teaching at Hong Kong University Department of Architecture, he was one of the co-founders of Cambridge Architectural Research in 1987.

At CAR he has worked with colleagues on a wide range of projects, from UN consultancy missions to North Korea to conservation plans for historic buildings in Britain. A major interest is in functional issues – how well buildings work and how their users perceive them. This leads to design guidance publications, or to briefing studies for specific projects. Design for flexibility is also a particular interest. A study of sustainable refurbishment led to a new approach to whole-life costing for construction, described in 'New Generation Whole-life Costing'.

Paige Hodsman, Saint-Gobain Ecophon

Paige has eighteen years of experience in the commercial design and construction industries with a focus on sustainable workplace solutions. As Concept Developer for the office sector at Sain-Gobain Ecophon, she is responsible for collating and disseminating information on the latest research and development in the fields of office acoustics, interior design, architecture and environmental/sustainable construction.

Mark Catchlove, Herman Miller

At Herman Miller Mark helps people create great places - sharing Insights from Herman Miller's research teams and partners. 

Mark also blogs at http://markcatchlove.wordpress.com/

Anthony Dickens, HASSELL

Anthony is a Practice Leader at international design firm HASSELL. He has experience in interiors projects spanning corporate workplace, residential and hospitality in Australia, Asia, the UK and Europe. Anthony is an award winning designer and has previously completed numerous projects from briefing and concept design through to documentation and on-site quality control. He has most recently been responsible for the design of Medibank Place, Medibank’s new 26,000sqm workplace in Melbourne, Australia.

Tim Hanwell, Officeworks

Tim is an expert in musculoskeletal disorders, pain and injury associated with sitting, and repetitive strain injury (RSI). His 18-year career includes working for the BBC, London School of Economics, Rolls Royce and the NHS.

His particular interests are in creating healthy office environments and reducing the risk of workplace injuries. From his experience in treating professional patients, a high degree of injuries can be caused by excessive PC use, combined with poor posture. Tim helped to found Officeworks specifically to help companies to improve the health and wellbeing of their sedentary staff, reduce absenteeism and ultimately save money in the longer term.

Tim specialises in workstation assessments to help employees reduce their risk of musculoskeletal injury. Small adjustments to your sitting posture can considerably reduce your risk.

Neil Usher, Sky

Neil is Workplace Director at Sky.

He is experienced property professional working in the sparsely populated area at the intersection of workplace, HR and social business. Neil has successfully designed, delivered and managed workplaces in over thirty countries in a variety of industry sectors.

Neil has an established personal blog (workessence), - he says becuuse "I am interested in what I do and want to talk about it and learn from others. I conceived the #workplaceblogs Twitter hashtag as a place to find great thinking, brought pecha kucha to the UK property industry, and may just be the UK’s only workplace poet".

"Use social technologies to extend my network to areas beyond property and the workplace in order to see what I do from different perspectives. I value creativity, openness, and the courage to experiment and change."

Read Neil's blog at www.workessence.com
Follow Neil on Twitter at @workessence