3 obstacles to near-to-home workspace becoming a pillar of hybrid workplace
For many employers, near-to-home workspace will be a vital component of their hybrid workplace planning. Here, we examine how ready the Australian market is to support its implementation.
One of the well-documented observations from the last two years of economic and social upheaval brought on by Covid is that IT systems and policies have adapted, employees have learnt to be productive outside the office, and managers are learning how to lead geographically distributed teams.
Research into working behaviours and preferences reaffirms what we all intuit, that there is no singular answer to the question - where then should we work; the office, home or near-to-home? Unsurprisingly, the answer to each option is ‘Yes’.
The least understood pillar of hybrid working is near-to-home working.
Some will say a neighbourhood café falls is a near-to-home solution, but most of us are not able to sustain a day’s work in a public space – even if the barista lets you. Rather, the term generally refers to purpose-built office space that accommodates anyone on an ad-hoc, regular or permanent basis. Think a coworking space, serviced office or satellite office.
Many significant organisations are wrestling with what it means to provide their people a near-to-home option. They speak to three key obstacles.
1. There is an inadequate network of flexible workspace facilities across a metropolitan area that can provide an equitable solution to employees.
It is not enough to offer one or two near-to-home work hubs in a large, widely distributed city. While a cursory search of coworking spaces in a city will suggest there is a reasonably good distribution, most of them do not have the scale to support multiple enterprise near-to-home programs, and some may not meet the workplace standards set by the employer.
Fortunately, this is changing. Some flexible workspace operators have identified the latent demand for large-scale, enterprise-ready flexible workspace.
Creativecubes founder, Tobi Skovron, sees expansion through the lense of neighbourhoods. “When we think about expansion, we ask ourselves where are the neighbourhoods that we want to join and what contribution can we make?” He looks for new markets where there is either a vibrant business centre or, with the support of Creativecubes, there will be. He says scale is an important contributor of success, “Despite this short time out of Melbourne lockdown our 1,500m2 location in Hawthorn is already too small”.
Workspace 365 recently opened more non-CBD locations including one 100kms from the CBD.
Hub Australia and Vicinity Centres have announced a collaboration to deliver coworking at a major suburban shopping centre and transport node in Melbourne’s Box Hill.
Sadly, the number of regional coworking spaces has been in sharp decline. Recent research led by Kate Dezarnaulds, founder of WorkLife and the regional representative on the board of Flexible Workspace Australia, showed that two-thirds of regional spaces permanently shut their doors during Covid. There is a strong case for government-sponsored and industry-underwritten coworking spaces in regional Australia to support this vital piece of economic infrastructure.
Operators see the potential demand and opportunity and so there are a number of suburban locations in the planning, but many of Australia’s urban centres are probably two years away from having access to a meaningful flexible workspace network. Nonetheless, there is currently enough distribution to warrant large employers trialling near-to-home work initiatives.
2. Procurement of space cannot be done through a single space provider because no one operator has adequate geographic reach.
Melbourne-based operator Waterman provides large scale flexible workspaces in suburbia. It is making swift progress toward its ambition “to have a centre within a 20-minute drive of the majority of Victorians”.
Meanwhile, suburban coworking champion WOTSO is about to open a location in Mandura which is 70kms south of Perth, making it their 10th centre located more than 10kms from a major city CBD.
In the short to medium term, however, it is unrealistic for a large employer to anticipate any single operator can meet the needs of near-to-home requirements. In the meantime, businesses like Deskpass provide a means for an employer to provide its people with a network of on-demand spaces without having to deal with each individual operator.
3. Open space coworking products are simpler to procure, but private workspaces have not yet been fully productised to support the variable nature of near-to-home workspace demand.
IWG (Regus) has very significant distribution of small serviced offices across suburban Sydney and Melbourne. Country Head Damien Sheehan says that while IWG has for many years offered global network access to occasional and part-time customers it is continuing to work through how near-to-home teams can be best accommodated. It is conducting a trial of semi-partitioned office space for hybrid-workplace teams in London and two US cities.
Several operators across the region are examining how private office licenses can be reconsidered to accommodate emerging demand. Considerations include timeshare offices where a single office can be used by two or more companies on separate days.
Final word
We are seeing a growing supply of suburban near-to-home workspace. However, the three obstacles spoken of above can be addressed more effectively through well conducted trials. Staged collaboration between employers and flexible workspace operators and/or access-pass aggregators will greatly support the effectiveness of hybrid working.
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