The boss of IWG, the world’s biggest flexible working company, has predicted that UK offices are going to become significantly more regionalised as the country emerges from the Covid-19 pandemic.
Mark Dixon, who founded the firm 31 years ago, told EG that more fragmented, close-to-home office networks are “absolutely the workplaces of the future,” as corporations increasingly turn to a hybrid working model in the coming years.
“It is regional and suburban locations that are really going to come to the fore going forward,” he said. “Workplaces will be needed all over the country to meet demand… Why would you want to commute long distances to work in a centralised office when you don’t need to?”
His comments come on the day that IWG posted a £620m loss for, as the company reeled from the effects of global lockdowns and office closures to fight the coronavirus outbreak.
Nonetheless, Dixon was bullish about the company’s prospects, after signing a flurry of deals in the last week, including one with Nippon Telegraph and Telephone to provide access to its worldwide office network for NTT’s 300,000 employees.
Insurer Royal Standard Alliance, tech giant Cisco, software company Salesforce, IT consultant Talentsoft and retailer Staples have also recently signed similar agreements to give their workers access to IWG offices.
It is a succession of deals which added a record 500,000 users to the company’s network, gave IWG its best ever start to a year, and, according to Dixon, signals the start of “a massive surge in growth” for the flexible office sector.
“Flexible and hybrid working is not for everyone, but a significant proportion of the workforce will work in a different way over the coming years… The drivers are very strong,” he continued.
“It is what workers want. You might not like working from home indefinitely, but some of the time it’s quite nice. So this hybrid work with working from home sometimes, local office others, and head office occasionally will become the norm.
“If you want to get the best talent, then offering the choice of where you work will be a big advantage. Plus, there are big savings per head from hybrid working.”
Lockdown learning
Dixon also insisted the company was “well placed” to survive another serious global wave of the virus and a subsequent lockdown, despite the massive losses sustained last year.
Part of this is down to having learned to move swiftly to insulate the company, but the other is to remain forward looking with investment so as to emerge stronger.
“The main learnings are you’ve got to restructure as early as possible, and deal with the problems and costs early on,” he said. “But we have also doubled up our investment in IT, which is allowing us to win these significant corporate customers [like NTT].”
“Obviously you have got to be still standing when you come out the other end – but you have to keep investing at the same time.”
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