The shift to hybrid working doesn’t mean the end of head offices, but it does mean reconsidering their purpose. 

After more than a year of home working, offices around the world are cautiously preparing to welcome back staff. However, the days of the 9-to-5 desk job appear to be over.

Instead, the future is hybrid working: an approach that allows employees and businesses to retain the enhanced flexibility the pandemic pushed them to embrace. While the trend for hybrid work was gathering pace before the Covid-19 crisis, its rapid acceleration during lockdowns has permanently altered the priorities of both employees and executives.

Adapting to the ‘new normal’ is a priority for many corporates as they emerge from the chaos of Covid-19. Among its benefits are improved work-life balance for staff, which bolsters recruitment and retention, a reduction in travel and thus a business’s carbon footprint, and a shoring up of the bottom line through reduced exposure to long, expensive office leases.

Global firms including EY, NTT and Standard Chartered bank have already partnered with IWG to embrace the hub-and-spoke model. In the first half of 2021 alone, IWG has welcomed a million new users to its flexible workspaces. Hub-and-spoke reimagines the corporate HQ as a destination (‘hub’) to which employees will travel for collaboration and creative meetings, rather than the base from which they should work day to day. At all other times, staff are free to base themselves at satellite offices (‘spokes’) closer to home – often local flexspaces that provide a professional, distraction-free working environment without the need for a long commute.

In light of this change to the function of corporate HQs, here are three ways companies are choosing to repurpose their head offices.

Smaller, more collaborative spaces

Operating a hybrid model means having fewer people at a company HQ each day. And, with this in mind, some firms are already taking steps to cut floorspace.

Jamie Dimon, JPMorgan Chase’s Chief Executive, recently outlined the business’s hybrid plans. He expects that for every 100 employees, the firm may need seats for only 60 – and its plans therefore include a significant reduction in its office real estate. Elsewhere, Lloyds Banking Group and HSBC have stated that their office space will shrink by 20 per cent and 40 per cent respectively.

High employee demand for hybrid working means 74% of firms are now planning on maintaining the increase in remote working that was sparked by the pandemic. And it isn’t only staff who benefit from increased flexibility, according to a study shared by EY: it found that companies can save as much as $11,000 for every employee that works under a hybrid model.

As the office evolves into a hub for creativity, discussion and collaboration, companies are designing spaces that lend themselves to small- and large-scale social interaction. By removing half of its desks, cloud software business WeTransfer was recently able to create more meeting spaces, workshop rooms and recording studios.

IWG’s flexible workspaces are always designed with collaboration in mind. The business club, a large space that comprises 20% of the total square footage, is at the heart of every location. This is laid out with different zones suited to meeting and collaborating – whether it’s a table where the whole team can work together, a brainstorming room or a formal sitting area.

There is also a move away from open-plan office designs in favour of those that allow for the type of ‘deep work’ people often feel they do better from remote locations. Spotify, for instance, is overhauling its office spaces to strike a better balance between facilitating collaboration and focused work, creating small rooms specifically designed for tasks that require quiet and concentration. 

Tech powered offices

Collaborative workspaces can help to ensure that face-to-face time spent at the company HQ is meaningful, but tech still has a role to play. Creative zones and meeting rooms, for example, will always need the kit that allows staff to work effectively.

TVs, tablets, smartboards and projectors all play a role in helping teams visualise their ideas. Meanwhile, going wireless keeps people from getting distracted by having to plug in, untangle or step over coils of cords.

Most spaces will also need to be enabled for video conferencing, taking into account factors such as acoustics, the degree of enclosure and background sightlines. At the same time, it’s critical that decision-makers invest in the right tech to nail the video meeting experience, for example, cloud-based platforms supported by AI and advanced analytics that enable features such as facial detection, transcriptions and translations.

On the basis that, in a world of hybrid working, most meetings are likely to include virtual attendees, Microsoft has developed an AI-powered noise-reduction feature for Teams that automatically mutes ambient sounds during meetings. In addition, the company’s ‘raise your hand’ feature indicates when a meeting participant wishes to speak.

Space for culture

Offices are not just places for collaborative work – they also provide opportunities for networking and promoting company culture. This is something that is hard to replicate when people work remotely, according to research by R/GA, which highlights the particular difficulties of integrating new hires into a team when staff aren’t physically together. 

Culture is critically important to company success, and research shows that when cultures are more effective, organisations see payoffs in revenue growth, retention, stock price and net income. 

Strong cultures can be built by creating places where people want to be. A corporate HQ can be “a priceless cultural asset for a business,” writes IWG CEO Mark Dixon in a column for fDi Intelligence. It enables “people to imbibe the shared company spirit that sets them apart from other organisations.” 

At the same time, though, repurposing that HQ as part of a shift to hub-and-spoke working makes sense. Embracing the change “gives companies the flexibility to invest in their staff and in growing the business” at the same time as “delivering spectacular benefits for employees… Team members gain better mental health and reduced costs through not having to travel into city centres [every day].”

“The future of work is with us today,” says Dixon. “Embracing hybrid ways of working is not just convenient, but sensible, too.”

An industry leader for more than 30 years, IWG is helping both businesses and brokers find the flexspace solutions they need in this new world of work.