The most suitable Realty Structure for Emerging Business Needs

The new age of “flexible workspace” is fast growing across the globe due to the rapidly changing work dynamics. Business giants like Microsoft, IBM, and PwC have been leading the way by adopting flexible workspace models to best suit their employees and businesses. Organizations everywhere have realized the importance of being agile owing to the pandemic and other socio-political inconsistencies surrounding us. Having said that, flexible workspaces did not emerge from the pandemic, though it definitely has become more popular because of it.

The advent of flexible workspaces began with the famous “coworking space” in the mid to late 90s, where a common open-to-all working space would be set within company premises or a central shared space in a corporate building surrounded by many independent small offices. Coworking spaces exponentially grew thanks to the numerous budding start-ups, which greatly benefitted from the affordable and well-equipped workspaces.

Studies have shown that flexibility enhances the working relationship between employer and employee and has also proven to be more efficient and economical in running businesses. The following are various benefits that companies big and small can reap from adopting this model of hybrid work culture.

Lease Flexibility

In today’s dynamic nature of businesses, companies would prefer short-term leases versus being tied to large spaces for 5 or 10 years. This gives them the freedom to vary their workspace based on the business needs and opportunities. Flexible workspaces are cost-effective and eliminate the company’s liability of operational overheads, maintenance, and facilities management.

Better collaboration and Innovation

Flexible spaces are also transformative in nature to organizations. A shared space with different cross-functional co-workers creates a rich environment for better exposure, sharing of ideas, cross-pollination of knowledge, and better innovation.

Increased visibility

While working in a flexible space, the organization gets better visibility, increasing networking opportunities. One can meet or identify candidates for hiring or collaborate with prospective clients. Companies can even spread the word on opportunities or events through informal discussions in shared workspaces.

It is clear now that ‘Flexible office space’ is firmly being established as a strategic and robust real estate solution for an extensive range of office needing businesses. As per CBRE’s article from September 2021, property management is taking on a pivotal role in meeting rising tenant demand for flexible space. The pandemic has increased direct and sublease vacancy and a softening of rents across many markets. This trend is likely to increase the urgency for landlords to explore leasing space differently, and one that, in many cases, will lead to flex. CBRE professionals in the US, Europe, and the Asia Pacific are making landlords recognize that flexible space is here to stay and that they need to consider incorporating flexible space into their buildings.

Types of flexible workspace solutions available today

Though flexible workspaces have many terms like short-term offices, flexispaces, flex spaces, or hybrid workspaces, they all fundamentally provide equipped and serviced office spaces where employees and businesses can work from. They are also flexible in terms of usableness. One can pay as per their use, hourly, daily, monthly, or even yearly.

Coworking or Shared working spaces provide the usual office amenities like conference rooms, wi-fi, printers, tea, and coffee. These spaces are used on-demand, where people can book and pay as required. It is believed that companies can reduce up to 50% of their real estate spending by adopting this model.

Another popular model is the Hub-and-spoke approach that lets companies have a central hub of headquarters and various other smaller offices across different locations. This is a very conducive hybrid work format for large and spread-out teams.

Like all new means and methods, Flexi workspaces face the teething adoption challenges from some organizations that are still figuring out privacy requirements and network security concerns. However, the main advantage remains that these models are very agile and cost-effective for organizations. Still, they are also weaving together the corporate real estate ecosystems and flexible office spaces, giving rise to complex yet promising opportunities for all stakeholders.