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Workplace topics are often fascinating, complex and deeply relevant to millions of people. In all three of these respects, this episode feels really important. Chris and Ian are joined by two past guests to explore long COVID, first academically, and then personally.

For the first part, Dr Jo Yarker, Professor of Organisational Psychology at Birkbeck, University of London, and Director of Affinity Health at Work, shares key findings from a recent paper called “It’s a rollercoaster”: the recovery and return to work experiences of workers with long COVID. The paper was published in Work & Stress in 2023, and was co-written with longtime collaborator Dr Karina Nielson, Professor of Work Psychology at The University of Sheffield.

Then for the following reflection section, Dr Kerstin Sailer, Professor in the Sociology of Architecture at University College London (and black belt third dan space syntax ninja of the highest order) joins Ian while Chris was elsewhere, to talk very openly and honestly about how living and working with long COVID has affected her for the past three years.

Huge thanks to Jo and Kerstin for helping put this one together - we hope you think the Workplace Geeks have done this incredibly important topic justice. If you think other people would benefit from the insights, please spread the word.

🤩 Remember to rate, review and recommend the show to help us spread the Workplace Geeks word - thank you please! 🙌🏼

Learn more 🌱🧠

• "It's a rollercoaster" access to the full paper
• SOM Long COVID infographic
• SOM Long COVID mythbuster
• Affinity explainer about IGLOo model
• Jo on LinkedIn
• Jo at Birkbeck, University of London
• Affinity Health at Work
• Affinity Health resource library
• Kerstin on LinkedIn
• Kerstin on Mastodon (her preference to Twitter)
• Kerstin at The Bartlett School, UCL
• NHS England information about long COVID

📣 Audiem has been nominated for three IWFM 2024 Impact Awards, two in partnership with NatWest. Read the success story here⚡️

Hit Chris and Ian up and follow @WorkplaceGeeks on Linke

Workplace Geeks is sponsored by 2468 Group ☕️ and brought to you by Audiem⚡️- click to learn more!

📣 Brand new FREE Audiem webinars featuring special guests | The 7 habits of AI-powered workplace leaders | register here 🤓

🏅The Workplace Event's Workplace Leaders Top 50 awards are in their second year, and the Geeks were honoured to be invited to speak to the winners. Each of these special episodes will feature small but perfectly formed chats with three winners 🤩

In this second episode we're in conversation with EDI standard-bearer Lucy Golding, the self-proclaimed fabulous CPO Alishya Artwell, and ex-dancer-cum-workplace change consultant Jennifer Bryan. Here's what we asked them:

• How did you get into the workplace sector?
• ⁠⁠What’s different about it now compared to then?
• What does the sector need to be better at, and why?
• ⁠⁠What advice would you give an up and coming workplace leader?

Thanks to obo for providing the Mute recording booth at The Workplace Event and to MJF Interiors for their excellent Workplace Geeks podcast lounge

Learn more 🌱🧠

• The Workplace Leaders Top 50
• Lucy Golding
• JLL
• Alishya Artwell
• Pareto
• Jennifer Bryan
• ABChange

Hit Chris and Ian up and follow @WorkplaceGeeks on LinkedIn

...and don't forget to use the hashtag #WorkplaceGeeks 💬

Workplace Geeks is sponsored by 2468 Group ☕️ and brought to you by Audiem⚡️- click to learn more!

📣 Audiem has been nominated for three IWFM 2024 Impact Awards, two in partnership with NatWest. Read the success story here⚡️

Whilst Ian was away on holiday we thought it would be a good opportunity to dig out an interview we've had on file for a few months.

During Clerkenwell Design Week, Chris was invited to an event at 'friends of the show' Obo. They'd invited Reader in Architectural Design at Loughborough University, Robert Schmidt III, to discuss adaptable architecture which looks at prolonging the useful life of buildings by designing them to be more adaptable to create a more sustainable built environment.

In the chat we explore how this compares to traditional architecture, the role of professional bodies and other education institutions as well as the idea of a building's 'usespan' (the length of time that a space has a viable use) versus the lifespan (the length of time the materials will be hanging around) and how we close the gap.

And we're joined by our very own James Pinder for the reflection section as he worked on this idea with Robert over a decade ago! Small world.

🤩 Please rate, review and recommend the show to help us spread the Workplace Geeks word - thank you! 🙌🏼

Learn more 🌱🧠

• Robert Schmidt III
• Adaptable Architecture | theory and practice 📖
• Loughborough School of Architecture
• Clerkenwell Design Week
• Check out Obo.

Hit Chris and Ian up and follow @WorkplaceGeeks on LinkedIn

...and don't forget to use the hashtag #WorkplaceGeeks 💬

Workplace Geeks is sponsored by 2468 Group ☕️ and brought to you by Audiem⚡️- click to learn more!

📣 Audiem has been nominated for three IWFM 2024 Impact Awards, two in partnership with NatWest. Read the success story here⚡️

Chris and Ian are joined by Dr Valeria Winkworth, People Consulting Director at EY, for a longer discussion about human-centred business transformation and change. Valeria first appeared on Workplace Geeks earlier this year as part of the second WORKTECH23 event special (called ‘three takes on change’) to talk about the first report from EY’s recent ‘Humans@Centre’ collaboration with Oxford University’s Saïd Business School, called ‘The future of transformation is human’ (2022).

We thought the topic was so important that we invited Valeria back. This episode revisits this report and the research behind it, then expands to include the next instalment from the collaborative team, called ‘Transformation Leadership: Navigating turning points’ (2024). It includes a discussion of the seminal Kübler-Ross ‘stages of grieving’ model, now co-opted into the canon of organisational change theory, as well as other collaborative approaches to change.

So, if you truly believe that people are your most valuable asset, this is an invaluable listen.

🤩 Please rate, review and recommend the show to help us spread the Workplace Geeks word - thank you! 🙌🏼

Learn more 🌱🧠

• Dr Valeria Winkworth
• The future of transformation is human
• Transformation Leadership: Navigating turning points
• Humans@Centre collaboration
• Elisabeth Kübler-Ross foundation
• Penny Walker’s DAD (decide, announce, defend) vs EDD (engage, deliberate, decide)
• Saïd Business School
• EY

Hit Chris and Ian up and follow @WorkplaceGeeks on LinkedIn

...and don't forget to use the hashtag #WorkplaceGeeks 💬

Workplace Geeks is sponsored by 2468 Group ☕️ and brought to you by Audiem⚡️- click to learn more!

📣 Brand new FREE Audiem webinars featuring special guests | The 7 habits of AI-powered workplace leaders | register here 🤓

In this episode Chris and Ian are joined by another UK workplace sector stalwart, long-time flexible working pioneer, author and consultant, Andy Lake. As you'll hear, this polite and humble chap has been an advocate for working flexibly in many ways, including the Civil Service's 'The Way We Work', online community resource flexibility.co.uk and UK Smart Working Code of Practice, PAS 3000:2015.

The conversation focuses on his most recent book, Beyond Hybrid Working: A Smarter & Transformational Approach to Flexible Working. Published by Routledge in December 2023, the book draws together more than three decades of workplace experience and thinking. But of course the conversation doesn't stop there... Chris and Ian encourage Andy to whip his soapbox out from under his desk and share his views on recent central Government return to the office directives!

🤩 Please rate, review and recommend the show to help us spread the Workplace Geeks word - thank you! 🙌🏼

Learn more 🌱🧠

• Andy Lake
• Beyond Hybrid Working
• PAS 3000:2015 Smart Working Code of Practice
• The Way We Work (also known as TW3)
• flexibility.co.uk
• Dr Dan Wakelin
• Isovist Consulting

Hit Chris and Ian up and follow @WorkplaceGeeks on LinkedIn

...and don't forget to use the hashtag #WorkplaceGeeks 💬

Workplace Geeks is sponsored by 2468 Group ☕️ and brought to you by Audiem⚡️- click to learn more!

📣 Brand new FREE Audiem webinars featuring special guests | The 7 habits of AI-powered workplace leaders | register here 🤓

In this episode Chris and Ian sit down with someone who has been in the centre of the real estate and workplace sector for four decades... the one and only Dr Rob Harris.

Today Rob is the principal of Ramidus Consulting, a specialist built-environment research and advisory business, as well as Chairman of the BCO Research Committee. Prior to that Rob has worked for some of the leading lights in the London/UK property and workplace industry (including DEGW!) which is why he’s the perfect person to tell the story of how London went from sixteenth-century coffee houses to the digital and network offices we see today.

What starts off as a conversation about his book 'London’s Global Office Economy: From Clerical Factory to Digital Hub', and how five ‘ages’ have defined and shaped the UK’s capital, ends up being a broad conversation about design principles, who gave birth to the modern workplace, the role of the ‘branded building’ and Rob telling us how the OG himself, Frank Duffy, called during a bleak break to Scotland to offer him a job at the centre of the workplace universe at DEGW in 1984.

Do not miss our very own Workplace Yoda offering up precious wisdom.

Joined by friend of the show Esme Banks Marr on reflection duty.

🤩 Please rate, review and recommend the show to help us spread the Workplace Geeks word - thank you! 🙌🏼

Learn more 🌱🧠

• Rob Harris
• London’s Global Office Economy: From Clerical Factory to Digital Hub
• Ramidus Consulting
• BCO Research Committee
• Esme Banks Marr

Hit Chris and Ian up and follow @WorkplaceGeeks on LinkedIn

...and don't forget to use the hashtag #WorkplaceGeeks 💬

Workplace Geeks is sponsored by 2468 Group ☕️ and brought to you by Audiem⚡️- click to learn more!

Workplace Geeks is sponsored by 2468 Group ☕️ and brought to you by Audiem⚡️- click to learn more!

📣 Brand new FREE Audiem webinars featuring special guests | The 7 habits of AI-powered workplace leaders | register here 🤓

🏅The Workplace Event's Workplace Leaders Top 50 awards are in their second year, and the Geeks were honoured to be invited to speak to the winners. Each of these special episodes will feature small but perfectly formed chats with three winners 🤩

In this episode we're in conversation with movement activist Gavin Bradley, honorary Workplace Geek Esme Banks Marr, and the super-positive and lovely Jackie Bird. Here's what we asked them:

• How did you get into the workplace sector?
• ⁠⁠What’s different about it now compared to then?
• What does the sector need to be better at, and why?
• ⁠⁠What advice would you give an up and coming workplace leader?

Thanks to obo for providing the Mute recording booth at The Workplace Event and to MJF Interiors for their excellent Workplace Geeks podcast lounge

Learn more 🌱🧠

• The Workplace Leaders Top 50
• Gavin Bradley
• On Your Feet Britain
• Get Britiain Standing
• Yo-Yo Office
• Esme Banks Marr
• BVN Architecture
• Jackie Bird
• Crown Workplace

Hit Chris and Ian up and follow @WorkplaceGeeks on LinkedIn

...and don't forget to use the hashtag #WorkplaceGeeks 💬

Workplace Geeks is sponsored by 2468 Group ☕️ and brought to you by Audiem⚡️- click to learn more!

📣 Brand new FREE Audiem webinars featuring special guests | The 7 habits of AI-powered workplace leaders | register here 🤓

Back for another two part event special, this time the Workplace Geeks spent two days eating Haribo and talking to all sorts of lovely folk from a beautifully branded recording booth at The Watercooler Event at London ExCeL.

Described as 'the leading workplace culture and employee wellbeing show in Europe', the show blends the people angle of workplace (The Watercooler) with the workspace design and management side (The Office). This episode focuses on the latter, and part two, dropping in a few weeks, will pick up some really interesting angles on the former!

Like our previous events specials, this episode features a sequence of mini-interviews, with Chris and Ian reflecting on their comment as they go. First we hear from Gary Helm, founder of obo, who also very generously provided the Mute Jetson L4 booth for us to record from. Thank you sir! We then speak to Rachel Slade from Baker McKenzie about their four year London office transformation and change journey. What a case study in leading workplace change! Next up it's Saskia Lorrison from Convex Insurance, who shares some reflections on designing workplace experience well. The discussion then pivots in the direction of sustainable workspace design with Vanessa Lopez from Oktra, and then pivots in a human centric direction for our final interview with none other than Simone Fenton-Jarvis, who literally wrote the book on it. Treat people like adults, and other ideas from Eric Berne's seminal work on trasactional analysis. Indeed.

Some great perspectives, reflections and case study learnings in here. Workplace Geeks: always caring about your workplace education!

💡 Remember that you can use the chapter markers in your podcast player to jump to different sections of the episode easily! 🤓

🤔 What do you think of the show? Any ideas, topic or guest suggestions? Hit Chris and Ianup and follow @WorkplaceGeeks on LinkedIn

...and don't forget to use the hashtag

Workplace Geeks is sponsored by 2468 Group ☕️ and brought to you by Audiem⚡️- click to learn more!