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Year: 2019

Natural office space preferred by 4 in 5 people

Posted on by aleks

New research published by Lund University in Sweden reveals that more than four out of five people have a preference for natural office space and biophilic office interiors.

Biophilic office space incorporates elements of nature, ranging from natural materials and natural daylight, to indoor planting to soften the space.

In September we looked at some of the principles of biophilic office interiors, including large windows that connect you with the natural environment outside, and the use of pot plants to bring nature indoors.

Peter O’Reilly in Lund University’s Department of Psychology surveyed nearly 200 people to learn more about their preferences before starting work in a new office environment.

Using a combination of questionnaires, he found that 81.4% of office workers across both genders prefer their workspace to incorporate natural features of the type found in biophilic office design.

Gender and biophilic office space

One unexpected result from Mr O’Reilly’s research was the discovery that female respondents were more likely to prefer biophilic office interiors than their male counterparts.

This had not formed part of his initial predictions – although he noted that it reflected previous research done on the subject.

In his conclusion, Mr O’Reilly wrote: “Future office-based professionals appear to exhibit a priori office workspace design preferences consistent with research identifying good psycho-environmental design.”

The study seems to back up what was already known about biophilic office interiors and their effects on employees’ state of mind, with further implications in terms of reducing stress and boosting productivity.

Get access to biophilic serviced office space

As we have said before, biophilic serviced office space does not have to go to extremes – some careful use of indoor planting and natural materials can be an excellent starting point.

In our serviced offices in London and Manchester, we combine this with good use of natural light and the surrounding environment.

Wherever possible, our serviced offices and meeting rooms have large windows, and our buildings are located close to water, whether it’s the London Docklands or Salford Quays.

Combined with ergonomically designed office furniture from brand name suppliers, we do everything we can to provide you with a comfortable workplace that nurtures your productivity and mental wellbeing throughout each working day.

Proud to provide green serviced office space

Of course for many people it’s not just a case of wanting a sense of nature in the workplace, it’s also about choosing premises that are environmentally friendly so you can be as productive as possible with good peace of mind.

We are proud that our green serviced office space includes Ecotricity green energy, carbon emissions offsetting and excellent access via public transport, as well as secure on-site bike racks and shower facilities if you need to clean up after your morning commute.

Our carpets and our furniture, including our ergonomic office chairs, are made of recycled materials where possible, and we use energy efficient heating and cooling, as well as water-saving devices to make the most effective use of all resources.

Serviced offices in Manchester give female entrepreneurs opportunity

Posted on by aleks

Following research published to coincide with International Women’s Day, we take a look at how serviced offices in Manchester give female entrepreneurs a range of opportunities from safer scalability, to greater networking opportunities with business peers.

The Rose Review of Female Entrepreneurship was conducted by NatWest’s deputy CEO of commercial and private banking Alison Rose and commissioned by HM Treasury to identify the economic opportunities of providing more support to female entrepreneurs.

Some of Manchester and the north-west’s leading figures from business and politics contributed evidence and opinions to the review, including Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham.

It found that women are significantly less likely than men to start their own business venture – and are outnumbered by a ratio of two to one, with an average business size half that of their male counterparts.

By closing the entrepreneur gender gap, the review estimates the UK economy could be boosted to the tune of £250 billion, roughly four years’ worth of normal economic growth.

What stops women entrepreneurs?

The Rose Review found that women tend to be more risk averse and have fewer existing business connections than their male counterparts, leading to less networking and slower growth.

While 29% of male entrepreneurs scale their business up to over £1 million turnover, for women this figure is just 13%.

However, both sexes are equally successful at keeping their business ventures afloat, and a healthy 73% of entrepreneurs of either gender have been trading for over 3.5 years.

How can serviced offices in Manchester help?

By using serviced offices in Manchester, your new venture benefits from a fully furnished, well equipped workspace with room to grow – safely, as you can scale up to larger offices as and when you are ready.

We even offer virtual offices in Manchester, so you can have a professional business address even if you still currently work from home, removing the challenge of putting across a professional image if you can’t find suitable childcare arrangements or can’t commute for some other reason.

Our serviced office space in Manchester is a real melting pot, with breakout spaces, kitchen facilities and communal areas that encourage networking between the entrepreneurs who use our premises on a daily basis.

Putting Manchester’s female entrepreneurs on the map

Choose our serviced offices in Manchester for an M5 postcode or our adjacent serviced offices in MediaCity for an M50 postcode ideal for media start-ups and creative firms.

Either option puts you firmly on the map with an Exchange Quay or Clippers Quay address and a workplace reached easily by public transport from the city centre – including just a few stops along the Metrolink line – or by car from the ring road.

We are hugely proud of the start-ups who choose to work from our serviced offices in Manchester to support their networking ambitions and reduce the risks of scalability.

No matter whether they are led by women or by men, we look forward to helping many more entrepreneurs take their first steps along a new and ambitious career path.

MediaCity serviced offices are your gateway to Greater Manchester

Posted on by aleks

One of the big attractions of our MediaCity serviced offices is how close they are to the Metrolink line running through Salford Quays – and with recent changes to how Greater Manchester tram tickets are priced, our serviced offices in MediaCity are even more of a gateway to locations right across the city.

Since January, Metrolink ticket prices have been based not on making a specific journey from one stop to another, but instead on zones, including a small central Zone 1 in the city, Zone 2 which includes the surrounding area, and Zones 3 and 4 for the outer suburbs and terminal towns.

MediaCity – including our serviced offices on Clippers Quay and also our nearby Exchange Quay serviced offices in Salford Quays – all falls within Zone 2, which means a Zone 1+2 Metrolink ticket will cover trips into the city and back out as far as several valuable destinations:

  • Stretford and Old Trafford
  • Chorlton and St Werburgh’s Road
  • Barlow Moor Road
  • Bowker Vale on the Bury line
  • Newton Heath and Moston
  • Edge Lane on the Ashton line

Zone 2 includes the entire Eccles line beyond MediaCity, as well as all of Salford Quays, and crucially that not only means clear ticket prices for many of your own journeys across the city, but also for anyone paying you a visit via the city centre.

A record-breaking network

The changes to ticket pricing follow record-breaking pre-Christmas passenger numbers across the Metrolink network, which served nearly four million journeys in November alone.

On average each year, more than 42.5 million journeys are made on Metrolink, and in 2018 reliability stood at 99.3% on the UK’s largest light rail system.

In 2020 the new Trafford Park Line is due to open, further increasing services through Trafford Park, Europe’s largest trading estate.

This will give even greater access to over 1,300 businesses in the area, with a combined workforce of more than 35,000 people, as well as out as far as the intu Trafford Centre.

As the opening of the new line approaches, 27 brand new trams will join the current fleet of 120 vehicles, allowing the network to cope with demand during peak times.

We expect to see demand for office space in Trafford Park to increase as the new services come online – making our serviced office space in Salford Quays a great way to get ahead of the competition.

Both our Exchange Quay offices and Clippers Quay offices are just a short walk from their nearest tram stop, so you won’t have to brave the Mancunian weather for long or wait more than a few minutes to start your commute home at the end of a long day.

Metrolink has become a major achievement in Greater Manchester’s public transport mix – from Altrincham, Didsbury and Manchester Airport right through the city centre to Bury, Rochdale and Ashton-under-Lyne – and our serviced office space in MediaCity and Salford Quays puts you right at the heart of this network.

Canary Wharf offices: Sustainability on your doorstep

Posted on by aleks

Our Canary Wharf offices put you in a prime location on the Isle of Dogs, adjacent to the Jubilee Line and to the main Canary Wharf estate – and that automatically gives your business some great environmental credentials you can shout about to your customers.

For example, Canary Wharf Group has an ongoing commitment to reduce, reuse and recycle single-use plastic packaging, so if you pick up a snack and a drink on your way to work via Canary Wharf tube station, you can do your bit by recycling your plastic packaging too.

There are also safe drinking water stations around Canary Wharf where you can refill water bottles, further reducing the number of disposable single-use bottles that get thrown away on-site.

By implementing these measures, Canary Wharf Group has already achieved:

  • Over 40,000 water bottles refilled.
  • Around 15,000 water bottles recycled.
  • Nearly 3.5 million coffee cups recycled.

You can even earn rewards for recycling plastic packaging purchased at Canary Wharf – just install the Helpful app to start scanning your packaging and earning credits for putting it in a suitable on-site recycling bin.

How our Canary Wharf serviced offices help you to be eco-friendly

Our own Canary Wharf serviced offices give small businesses a great way to be more eco-friendly by combining your own private office space with shared facilities and meeting rooms.

Communal meeting rooms, kitchen facilities and breakout rooms mean these shared spaces are not left standing empty but are there when you need them – making the most of heating, lighting and floor space.

Convenient nearby public transport links including Canary Wharf tube station allow you to manage your carbon footprint during your commute, as well as providing eco-friendly transport options for visitors coming to meetings on-site.

But we always strive to do more to offer some of the only truly environmentally friendly managed offices in the UK.

Taking the next step in eco-friendly offices

Office space can be equipped with ergonomic furniture and a great selection of facilities, without that meaning it cannot also maintain high environmentally friendly standards.

Some of our eco-friendly extras include…

  • Secure bike racks, showers and changing spaces for rainy/muddy morning commutes.
  • Best use of natural daylight and automatic light sensors to reduce artificial lighting use.
  • Energy-efficient building heating and cooling systems for eco-conscious comfort.
  • Recycled materials used throughout carpets, chairs and other furniture where appropriate.
  • On-site recycling facilities, Ecotricity green energy and Climate Care carbon offsetting.

We use technologies that cut down on unnecessary use of resources, including water, electricity, heating, cooling, lighting and general waste.

But that doesn’t mean you have to compromise on comfort – our serviced offices in Canary Wharf are furnished and decorated to a high standard, with heating and air conditioning when it is needed.

This all gives you a place to work from that is comfortable and well appointed, while supporting your environmental commitments, and all within easy reach of the eco-friendly initiatives taking place on the main Canary Wharf estate.

Find your place as north-west SME office space demand continues to rise

Posted on by aleks

It’s been a turbulent decade for businesses as a whole – so as we enter the last year of the 2010s, it’s a good time to take a look at the levels of demand for north-west SME office space.

Just before the end of 2018, a House of Commons Library Briefing Paper was published showing a range of business statistics for the UK as a whole, including business size and location.

Some of the headline figures include:

  • A 63% increase in the number of UK businesses between 2000 and 2018.
  • A total of 5.7 million UK businesses in the private sector in 2018.
  • Around three quarters have no employees (i.e. are self-employed individuals).
  • About 96% are micro businesses (i.e. fewer than 10 employees).
  • Over 99% are SMEs (i.e. fewer than 250 employees).

Not all of these are office-based – many self-employed individuals may work from home, on location or from rented workshops for more industrial roles – but it gives a good indicator of the relative sizes of businesses in general.

That makes over 5.4 million private sector businesses up and down the UK with less than 10 people working for them – but how does north-west SME workspace demand stack up against the other regions?

A growing north-west business community

We’re proud of the vibrant business community that exists in the north-west, as our serviced office space in Manchester sees a rich and diverse range of tenants who can share ideas in the communal spaces in our buildings.

So we’re not surprised that in 2018, the total number of businesses in the north-west continued to rise by 3% to reach 545,000.

This growth rate matches London – and we are equally proud of our well appointed serviced office space in London adjacent to Canary Wharf, helping to provide good quality workplaces for new and growing businesses in the capital.

Of the other UK regions, the south-west scored a 3% growth rate and the north-east, starting from a relatively low benchmark, grew an impressive 14% year-on-year to reach 163,000 enterprises in 2018.

Every other region achieved growth of 1% or less, including a fall in the number of businesses in six regions and in the UK total for the first time this century.

Why you should choose serviced office space in Manchester

If you’re setting up a new business or trying to grow your brand, it’s important to be based in a prosperous region, and in one with an established business community for networking opportunities.

Our north-west serviced office space ticks both of these boxes – with well over half a million private enterprises across the region and one of the fastest growth rates signalling a prosperous future as well.

For those in the south, our serviced office space in London puts you on the doorstep of Canary Wharf and in amongst over a million other businesses.

We choose our locations carefully – our serviced office space in MediaCity, for example, has been at the heart of massive growth and regeneration in recent years and given our tenants a real head start.

If you’re looking for new SME business premises for 2019, we would encourage you to think carefully too, and then choose our serviced offices in London and Manchester as the clear best option.

Serviced offices help self-employed businesses grow in the new year

Posted on by aleks

Serviced offices could give you the opportunity you need to grow your self-employed business in the new year, providing a place where you can hit the ground running during a crucial phase in the self-employed business calendar.

Before Christmas, we looked at how virtual offices can help new businesses to get set up, while giving a legitimate, fully serviced professional address in a prime location for correspondence.

Virtual offices are good if you already have somewhere to work from, if you work from home, if you travel around a lot, or if your job doesn’t need its own premises at all.

But if you do need a place to work, serviced offices are the sensible next step to help grow a self-employed business in the new year, or at any time.

Why is the new year important for self-employed businesses?

A new calendar year is naturally a common time to think about making some changes – especially if you’re self-employed and want to grow your business as part of personal New Year’s resolutions relating to money.

The end of January also brings the self-assessment tax deadline, making it a good time to take stock of how your business is performing and what changes you can make to prosper more in the new year.

And in April, a new tax year begins – giving you a window of opportunity between New Year’s and the springtime to get your business affairs into better order.

How do serviced offices help grow self-employed businesses?

Virtual offices give you a front for your self-employed business, a professional address to trade from and legitimate contact details in a desirable postcode area.

Serviced offices give you all of this and back-office services too, with furnished office space ready to occupy immediately, supported by meeting rooms to hire and informal breakout spaces for chats and relaxation.

You’re no longer stuck holding professional meetings in the local coffee shop – although with plenty of amenities located close to our serviced offices in Manchester and London, you still have that option too!

Why choose serviced offices for my self-employed business?

If you’re looking for your first physical office space – whether you’ve used a virtual office until now, or simply traded from your home address – there’s plenty to recommend serviced offices for a self-employed business.

As well as getting all of the on-site facilities and the option of office space with an immediate start date, your new office simply gives you an environment conducive to productivity, and away from your home.

It’s often this separation of work from home life that helps self-employed individuals to strike a better balance, while shutting out the distractions you can face in a home office, from noisy neighbours to visits from the gas man.

This can make serviced offices the best first step for a self-employed business owner targeting bigger growth as the new year progresses – and there’s arguably no better time to make that move than when the calendar is still just one page old.