20 May 2016 | Herpreet Kaur Grewal

This week’s ThinkFM conference saw the launch of The Stoddart Review, a project with the ultimate aim of ensuring business leaders fully understand the contribution that workplace has on overall organisational performance. 

Its basic premise is that too few people in the c-suite place enough strategic importance on the working environment as a key driver. They don’t understand, or choose to ignore, the ability of workplace to impact the bottom line – despite myriad well-researched linkages made over the last decade and more. The first Stoddart Review report will be published towards the end of the year.

The background to all of this is the UK’s startlingly low productivity rate when compared with other G7 countries. Also this week, workplace experts have criticised legislation in the Queen’s Speech for not being focused enough on productivity.

We’d like to know whether there’s an appetite for this kind of thing in your organisation; and interest, however recently kindled, in the link between how a workplace is specified and the performance of those using it. Amongst your colleagues and those you report to, do you hear the workplace you oversee spoken about as a generator of productivity? Or is it still just something to maintain to a regular flurry of typical KPI figures?

We’d like to see any additional comment you have on the topic, so please feel free to expand on your initial choice and email us at editorial@fm-world.co.uk