A study among more than 500 UK business leaders, commissioned by flexible workspace provider IWG, found that almost a quarter (24%) have cut their company’s city centre office space in favour of more cost-effective hybrid working in local sites.
Just 6% expect their employees to spend more than three days a week in a city centre office.
The chief executives surveyed covered a wide range of company sizes, with the biggest slice (26%) employing more than 500 people, followed by 20% with 100-249 staff, 15% with 250-500 employees, and the rest ranging from a handful of sole traders through to 99 employees. The most common sectors were IT and telecoms (22%) and finance (18%), followed by retail, catering and leisure (12%) and manufacturing and utilities (11%).
One in four (25%) expect that a shorter working week will be the next evolution for their businesses, recognising that employees no longer need to work the traditional 9-5, in one place, to perform.
Almost half (49%) of chief executives surveyed expect economic conditions to be more challenging in 2024, with 65% planning to cautiously cut costs to help deliver growth. However, just under three quarters (74%) do expect to achieve business growth this year.
The shift to local offices and away from commuting to city centre headquarters also seems to be backed up by IWG’s own data based on the number of Wi-Fi logins per day across 300 of its UK locations between January and December 2023.
Flexible workspaces in former commuter towns such as Cambridge, Leatherhead, High Wycombe, Reading and Warrington have seen some of the largest increases in demand and office footfall. IWG’s data also shows that Wednesday and Thursday are now the most popular days for in-person collaboration. Thursday has replaced Tuesday as the most common day for office attendance.
Top 15 rural, suburban and town office locations for footfall growth:
- Cambridge (+112%)
- Leatherhead (+67%)
- High Wycombe (+59%)
- Reading (+55%)
- Warrington (+51%)
- Salisbury (+49%)
- Welwyn Garden City (+44%)
- Farnborough (+41%)
- Leicester (+39%)
- Milton Keynes (+35%)
- Peterborough (+32%)
- Huntingdon (+23%)
- Slough (+21%)
- Chester (+21%)
- Staines (+21%)
IWG added more than 800 new locations to its global network in 2023, more than double the previous year. The vast majority of these have been in rural, suburban and commuter town locations, giving employees the option to work in a collaborative office environment without
Mark Dixon, founder and chief executive of IWG, said: “I’ve no doubt that more localised working in suburbs and commuter towns, facilitated by hybrid working policies, will grow further this year.”
Its research among 504 decision-makers was carried out in December 2023 by Mortar Research, which is accredited by the Market Research Society.
Image © James Veysey/Shutterstock
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