Aaron Higgins
Aaron is a Boden Group Director, and Head of Boden Property. He's passionate about real estate, and works with clients and candidates in Project Management, Development Management, Quantity Surveying and white collar site staff.
Are swanky offices still important?
This is the headline splashed across LinkedIn news and talked about in social spaces. Commentators ask, with so many people choosing to work from home, and the costs of owning or renting high quality real estate spiralling, wouldn’t it be better to give up the office space?
It’s a good question. Will we see a decrease in office real estate over the coming years, as the workforce transitions to become more remote? With huge organisations like Adobe, Google and LinkedIn offering fully remote working to their employees, the simple answer seems to be that office space is going to be in the decline.
But we don’t think it’s as clear cut as this. In fact, we think it’s likely that there will be a steady rise in the real estate market for office space over the coming year. And here’s why.
1) Work Life Balance
One of the biggest arguments for remote working culture is that it enables workers a better work life balance. It cuts out the commute. It allows people more time to be around their families. It gives people the opportunity to get smaller chores done during the day. All of this is true. Working from home offers a greater level of flexibility to employees. However, that comes with a caveat that doesn’t always fit with the mantra of work life balance.
In 2007, Steve Jobs announced the first iPhone, and it wasn’t long before we became completely acclimatised to having constant updates and access to news and info in our pockets at all times.
In 2009, laptop sales in the UK outstripped the sale of desktop PCs by 35 million. Suddenly, the ability to work on the go became possible. Train journeys could be optimised. Presentations could be tweaked the night before a pitch. Files could be emailed over at the last minute.
Around the same time as this, social media began to give us an ever-present window into the lives of others. Fast forward to today and it’s commonplace for people to use these platforms to compare their own lives with their friends, colleagues, idols and complete strangers.
Hustle culture has become popular – we can work from anywhere, at any time, on any project. Now it’s disconnecting from work that has become the challenge. As the boundaries between work and home have become more blurred, many are discovering that keeping reasonable working hours isn’t possible. The expectation is that people now need to deal with problems at 9pm instead of 9am; the lure of the laptop to difficult to resist.
A physical office, separate from our homes is one of the most effective barriers to this “always on” culture. A commute to and from the office may seem archaic in the present moment, but as more workers hit burnout, having real decompression time that acts as the transition between work and home may once again become a necessity.
2) Wellbeing and socialisation
More than this, the responsibility of the office space is far greater than keeping people to office hours. It’s ensuring worker wellbeing through ergonomic chairs, proper lighting, lunchbreaks, and of course, community. Remote work doesn’t always mean working alone at home, of course, but it does restrict face to face interactions.
And while many may shout that they’re more than happy with the extra time they have to socialise with their friends, rather than being forced to be around colleagues that they may not like or have anything in common with, therein lies a problem of its own.
Socialising across generations, with people with whom we have profound differences of opinion, different life experiences, a different view of the world – these touchpoints are important for our own personal growth, as well as the fabric of society. Learning how to interreact with and get along with people we wouldn’t normally choose to socialise with is crucial to building community as well as successful businesses.
Those “swanky” offices have been designed in such a way that meeting points are in-built. Collaboration space has been highly prioritised in newer and refurbished office spaces. They help co-workers to build relationships built on mutual understanding.
Eating together in communal breakout spaces, grabbing coffee together, arriving or leaving at the same time, acknowledging someone leaving to get to their kids parents evening, or seeing their absence while they’re on holiday. These are all profoundly humanising moments. They build rapport, respect, understanding.
Not to mention the added ease of being able to have conversations face to face to ensure messages aren’t lost in translation. At times of high stress, or even just with people’s writing styles, miscommunications can occur in written format when people are relying on email or teams’ messages.
3) The younger generation
Finally, it’s worth noting that those who are faring well in the remote culture we’ve moved towards are those in more established or affluent situations. Those who have their own home office, the space to work uninterrupted. For a whole generation of people entering the workforce, or near the beginning of their career journey, working from home doesn’t have the same allure of flexibility.
Instead, it comes with the pressure of working around family members, attempting to ignore siblings, working at kitchen tables or in bedrooms that aren’t set up for productivity. For those who live with roommates, there is a similar dilemma – clashing video call times, a lack of privacy, unreliable internet connections shared amongst several people all trying connect digitally.
It also robs them of learning opportunities and face time with their more experienced colleagues, making it harder for them to pick up the skills and experiences necessary to progress at pace. It eliminates the opportunity for afterwork drinks, lunches out, impromptu social gatherings – and while these things may not be a draw for more established workers and those with families or caring duties, there are many who will still be able to look back fondly at a time when those experiences were the highlight of beginning a career.
The future of the office
The boom in remote working is certainly advantageous for some, and for those whose lives are now easier – mothers returning to the workforce, people with caring responsibilities, those with disabilities that can now access work they couldn’t otherwise have accessed, employers shouldn’t take the option away.
However, the office plays a vital role in the fabric of a successful working population. Creating enticing, flexible, social working spaces will continue to be a necessity for businesses who want to attract the best and most diverse talent on the market. Encouraging people to come together to collaborate, learn from one another, and widen their experiences will continue to be a vital part of business growth.
As burnout grows and the lines between work and home become ever more blurred, people will be drawn back to the office – perhaps never 5 days a week, and that’s fine; flexibility will play a huge role in talent acquisition and retention moving forward.
But we predict that real estate will bounce back stronger than ever over the coming two years, and that many workers will be crying out a clearer separation between work and home, a place to meet and collaborate, and space for career growth. High quality, flexible office space fulfills all these needs.
So, for those considering ditching the “swanky” office space, our advice would be to hold on for a little longer, as it may not be long before it’s a huge selling point again.
