Where is the workplace moving to?

Photo from Republikken co-working space in Copenhagen taken by the author

Traditional offices and work from 9 to 5 are decreasing. That’s a fact and we all know that. Now, when we can easily measure space utilization rates, we see that desks are used less than 50% of the time (see e.g. Oseland et al. 2013, Knoll, 2011, or http://www.workplace-manager.com/). Some companies try to reduce their costs by giving up some of the office space and promoting flexible work style and remote work, for example, from home (see e.g. Smart Flexibility book by Lake, A. 2013). Others try to increase the attractiveness of their office space by heavily investing into modern design. However, bright colors and cool furniture often doesn’t do the trick. So what is going on? Where are we moving?

Yesterday I bumped into an interesting dissertation from UK. In her dissertation, Dr. Canonico explores the influence of homeworking to employees and organizations and differences between three age groups. She claims that when home-working practice becomes a commodity rather than a privilege the effect of increased productivity disappears. Meaning, that now, when only some employees are given the privilege of homeworking, they feel obliged or thankful, thus, put more effort to what they are doing and work harder for this given opportunity. However, when flexibility becomes an expected entitlement, they do not feel the same way and start requiring more, for example, covering stationery costs and similar. So the common proposition that people are more productive at home is disproved. I believe that this is a good indication that offices will not become obsolete and we still need a place where we go to work.

But then again, people don’t go to offices as much. We can witness a rise of co-working spaces. What is the secret there? I found a new book about co-working spaces (The Coworking Handbook by Suarez, R. 2016) which I, unfortunately, have not read myself yet but looked at the review of it written by P. Carder. And I must say, after having multiple interviews with both co-working space managers and people working at co-working spaces, as well as trying as many different co-working spaces myself, I totally agree with the reviewer. The main difference that separates successful co-working space from non-successful one is the community it creates. If there’s no community – it doesn’t matter how cool your place is from the design perspective, how well located it is – people might come once but probably they won’t return. And, according to the author, co-working space is an added value offer for a traditional real estate. It seems that often, co-working companies can rent physical space from real estate owners and “sell” it (sublet) for the higher cost. So if people are willing to pay, they see the value in it. Of course, we cannot exclude the role of the space itself – it needs to be functional and supporting the needs of people working there but in general people tend to complain about it less than in a traditional office environment.

So what does this mean to big corporate organisations? How can they create this added value of real estate? If people don’t come to the office, they want flexibility, and they are rather willing to work in co-working spaces, does it mean that companies have to become some kind of hubs with a community manager to attract their employees to come there? Is that a role of real estate manager, HR manager, or a totally new role that corporations still overlook? Should they do it or is it too much? Should they rather change their employment agreements with employees and allow a total flexibility by covering costs of using other spaces than their own office? Would that mean more financial flexibility for company moving from capital costs to operational cost?

I have much more questions than answers when looking at this. And we at PATI work hard try to answer at least to some of those and would be happy to have a discussion if that is interesting for you as well!

All the best,
Vitalija