January 22, 2020
Gone are the days where office space is merely an area for employees to work from and to provide shelter while they do that. Today an office needs to be space that can attract, inspire and enhance the productivity of those who work from it.
So how is this done?
Connectivity now mean that offices are no longer where employees need to work from – instead it is the space where colleagues come together in order to share and collaborate on ideas. What is the point in consuming time, money and environmental resources in travelling to and from an office, when you can work effectively from home or even anywhere when using email on your phone.
As such, an office environment broadly needs to perform two important roles:
- Have a high degree of Environmental, Social and Governance responsibility (ESG).
Gone are the days where a job is for life. Today, companies need to work hard to attract the highest quality employees who themselves are more used to the practice of changing employers, or even having several jobs during their entire working career. ESG has become high on the agenda for many people and working for a company that adopts an aspirational policy, both in work practices and the buildings they occupy, has become an important consideration as part of any decision process;
- Provide High Quality and Flexible Space
With remote working becoming more prevalent, the use of office space has evolved. Occupiers now may have more dense areas for hot desking or zonal working, with larger break out and collaborative spaces. The office needs to be a fulfilling environment to work to encourage employees to make the effort to commute and to make it convenient to work from that space. This in turn leads to the requirement for more flexible space that can cope with high densities over the traditional norm and greater landlord provision of services, such as concierge, café, amenity areas, showers, cycle store, and suchlike.
At Fiera Real Estate, we are already delivering this type of product. At Aurora, Bristol, the building was the first outside of London to be accredited as BREEAM “Outstanding” certification with design densities at the top end of the British Council for Offices standards achieving records rental levels in reconigition of this investment. The next iteration, Halo, will go further by having Well accreditation, Cycle Score and matching Aurora’s Wired Platinum score.
The payback on this landlord “investment” is not just reaped by the letting of the building. Looking forward, there will be a divergence in the investment returns for landlords who own high quality, sustainable and efficient buildings compared to older, inefficient and inflexible space. The depreciation for those buildings will be greater resulting in obsolesce.
The office building of the future is already here and its job is no longer just to protect occupiers from the weather. It is a sustainable, flexible, connected and collaborative space whose primary goal is to attract and inspire those who occupy it.
It is a landlord providing a service to their customers which allows them to maximise the quality and productivity of their workforce.
Written by Steven Wright, Director of Fiera Real Estate, UK.