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Year: 2020

Serviced Office Company opens new Business Centre in London

Posted on by aleks

Many of our clients old and new need some extra space as we move through the second half of 2020, so we are proud to present our newly opened Business Centre in London’s Millennium Quarter that has a BREEAM rating of ‘Excellent’.

The new premises at Millharbour Court are just a short distance away from our Pepper Street serviced offices on the Isle of Dogs, adjacent to Canary Wharf.

It’s a key location that puts our clients in prime position for access to Tower Hamlets’ thriving business district, as well as giving you a highly sought-after address to use when representing your company nationwide and internationally.

We have worked hard to create a shared office space that caters for commuters, client co-working and collaboration in communal areas, while also providing privacy when it is needed.

What you’ll find at Millharbour Court

Millharbour Court features a variety of areas to encourage productivity and collaboration, as well as to allow you to entertain visitors in comfort:

  • A waiting area in reception for guests to take a seat until you are ready for them.
  • An open-plan communal area for co-working with a number of tables and booths.
  • Spacious kitchen areas and breakout zones for relaxation, hydration and meal breaks.
  • A private outdoor terrace with seating and planters to connect with nature.
  • Cycle hubs, secure lockers and shower rooms for a healthy and hygienic commute.

Together, this all gives you contemporary office space that helps to reduce stress levels and boost your own innovation, while making your work day more comfortable.

Crucially for the current climate, we have ensured there are plenty of places to work while observing social distancing and the other demands of a COVID-secure workplace, but still benefiting from all the features of a modern working environment.

Doubling up

Millharbour Court joins Pepper Street as our second business centre on the Isle of Dogs, doubling our clients’ options for serviced offices and meeting rooms in London.

In the north-west, we also have two locations for serviced offices and meeting rooms in Manchester, both based in Salford Quays adjacent to MediaCityUK and Manchester city centre.

We choose all our serviced office locations carefully to meet local demand, to give our tenants a prestigious postcode for their office stationery, and to ensure easy arrival into work each day via car, bicycle, public transport or on foot.

In addition, we provide virtual offices in London and Manchester at the same physical addresses, allowing you to work remotely while still gaining professional contact details and reception services – and with meeting rooms available to hire on-site when you need them.

Find out more

If you would like to know more about our serviced offices, meeting rooms and virtual offices in Manchester and London, please get in touch and we’ll be happy to answer any questions you might have.

To find out more about our new Business Centre at Millharbour Court, give us a call. We can arrange an in-person viewing if you would like to see our new facilities for yourself, in order to decide whether to take occupancy.

A room with a view: How windows increase perceptions of office space

Posted on by aleks

The move towards COVID-secure workplaces presents new challenges for office layouts. Employees need to be spaced apart where possible, facing in one direction instead of face-to-face across a desk.

As a result, employees can be left feeling as though they have less space, not more, with less flexibility to accommodate teams in efficient ways or to leave more room between desks.

Our serviced offices in Manchester and London offer one way to add to your total workspace, as a temporary or permanent way to give each employee a genuine increase in the amount of empty space around them.

And it’s not just their area of floor space that can be beneficial, as research shows a room with a view feels more spacious for employees than one without.

Personal space and the virtual disc

A study published in the psychological sciences repository PsyArXiv surveyed 20 participants from the UK and 24 from South Korea, to identify similarities and differences between office workers’ perceptions of their personal space.

They found that the ‘virtual disc’ – the circle of perceived personal space that surrounds individual employees – is bigger in both cultures when the office has a good view of the outside world.

“We found that, in both cultures, participants experienced greater perceived personal space when in a sparse rather than dense office, and having a view of the city outside the office,” the researchers wrote.

At a time when there are tighter restrictions on how sparsely employees can be spaced out, the study indicates that a room with a view can help to increase workers’ satisfaction levels.

Casual culture

In the research, participants were shown virtual reality office environments, for example including shared office space, individual enclosed offices, and so on.

The researchers kept some aspects of these virtual reality environments the same, but varied others to make the virtual offices appear natural to participants from different backgrounds.

As a result, Korean participants were shown a formal workplace with employees seated at their desks, whereas British participants were shown a mix of more casual clothing and moments spent away from the desk, such as chatting around the watercooler.

We cater for these different ways of working in our serviced offices in Manchester and London, with the option of a formal desk arrangement, but also kitchen areas and breakout rooms for more casual chats about work and other subjects.

Making virtual offices a reality

The offices in this research were virtual reality, but our virtual offices in London and Manchester are real reality, giving you a way to increase each employee’s personal space by allowing more of them to work seamlessly from home.

We provide virtual offices in Manchester and London, at the same addresses as our physical serviced offices.

A virtual office means you can work from anywhere, but with the benefit of professional-looking contact details that base the public face of your business at one of our office buildings.

If you need to meet a client or job applicant in person, we have meeting rooms for hire. Or combine our virtual and physical serviced offices into a single mixed-mode workspace that supports your social distancing efforts, for a truly COVID-secure office.

Overhead, task lighting and natural daylight in shared office spaces

Posted on by aleks

We all know lighting is an important element in serviced offices, but how do the different kinds of lighting combine to influence employee satisfaction in modern shared offices?

A recent study in Frontiers in Built Environment looked at satisfaction levels among employees in a newly retrofitted Seattle office block.

Workers in the refurbished offices were asked to rate their workplace in terms of how satisfied they were with it, both before and after the redecoration was carried out.

Lighting was one element of the survey, along with other environmental qualities like air quality, acoustics, workplace layout and size.

In particular, the researchers found that employees were generally happy with light levels, even when the overhead illumination was less bright than is usually recommended.

Putting employees in control of lighting

Part of the retrofit process involved giving employees more control over their lighting. Overhead lighting was replaced with remote control LED fixtures with adjustable colour and temperature capabilities.

Each employee also had task lighting so they could illuminate their own area without affecting their colleagues, and access to natural light where windows were not blocked by neighbouring buildings.

Interestingly, the study found four statistically significant improvements in satisfaction after the retrofit:

  • Aesthetics of work area
  • Amount of desktop lighting
  • Amount of light for computer work
  • Access to an outside view

This serves to underline how the visual appearance – including lighting and aesthetics – of a shared workplace can have a big impact on employee satisfaction.

Saving energy on office lighting

The study revealed results with useful implications for saving energy on office lighting. In particular, employees working with backlit computer displays did not need bright ambient lighting.

In fact, the workers in one of the offices surveyed specifically requested lower lighting levels from overhead.

At the same time, the researchers found the office managers used relatively dim overhead lighting – below the normal recommended light intensity – as part of efforts to save energy consumption.

Natural light is of course one way to illuminate shared and serviced offices without running up an electricity bill.

Individual task lighting, especially using energy-efficient LED bulbs, ensures employees can brighten their own work area when necessary, such as for paper work instead of screen time, again without unnecessary energy expenditure.

Light and bright serviced offices

Our own serviced offices in London and Manchester make good use of natural daylight whenever possible, with waterside locations and large windows for unobstructed views of the outside world.

At times artificial lighting is essential, especially in winter, so we take advantage of light, bright colour schemes that are easy to light from overhead or with task lighting.

And when your employees need to take a break from the office – for example, to look at something other than a backlit computer screen – we provide comfortable breakout rooms and easy access to outside spaces for a refreshing walk.

Finally, we allow our tenants to add their own branding and colour schemes to the serviced office space they occupy – so if you want to put your own stamp on your space, just let us know.

KPIs for employee health and wellbeing in flexible workplaces

Posted on by aleks

It’s generally agreed that flexible working is a good way to improve health and wellbeing for some employees, who might find it difficult to work full-time from the office.

We know this to be true – we have serviced offices in Manchester and London that provide flexible workplaces for small businesses, as well as virtual offices at the same addresses that enable seamless working from home.

But what about employees who divide their time between working from the office and working from another location, whether that’s home, travelling for work, or anywhere else?

According to research carried out at the Politecnico di Milano, half of employees globally spend only half of each week working from the office – and that’s before the Coronavirus pandemic emerged.

For the other two and a half days, they work from home, on the road, or at a third-party location.

What affects flexible workers’ workplace wellbeing?

When flexible workers need to come into the office, they face a variety of environmental factors that can have a positive or negative effect on their health, wellbeing and physical comfort.

The researchers compiled a list of nearly 20 factors that affect workplace wellbeing for flexible employees – this is a ranked list, with the most important variables at the top.

  1. Thermal Control
  2. Workload Management
  3. Safe Workplace
  4. Job Content
  5. Natural Ventilation
  6. Air Quality Control
  7. Organisational Culture
  8. Psychosocial Support
  9. Light Levels
  10. Clarity in Leadership Roles
  11. Layout and Ergonomic Furniture
  12. Social Climate
  13. Glare Control
  14. Reward and Recognition
  15. Acoustic Comfort
  16. Development and Growth
  17. Civility and Respect
  18. Engagement and Involvement
  19. Biophilic Design

It’s interesting to note that throughout this list, some relatively simple practical measures are mixed with more abstract aspects of company culture – and with HVAC issues ranking so highly, it’s no surprise that so many workplace disputes arise from who controls the air conditioning.

What you can do to help

All of the factors listed above are within your grasp, and while we won’t interfere with your company culture, we make sure our serviced offices in London and Manchester cater for the practical workplace considerations.

Spacious, ventilated and air-conditioned serviced offices with plenty of natural light tick several of the boxes from the moment you move in.

We provide ergonomic furniture from recognised brand names in office interiors, so your staff can work in comfort over the course of a long day.

Our light and airy interiors, waterside locations in Salford Quays and the Isle of Dogs, and carefully placed pot plants cover the bases of biophilic design too.

And with on-site washrooms, breakout rooms for relaxation and kitchen areas for mealtimes, your employees have all they need to stay satisfied and motivated until home time.

To find out more about how our serviced offices in Manchester and London can support your flexible workplace practices, please contact us today.

And remember, we also operate virtual offices from the same premises – so if you want to be able to work from anywhere while keeping a professional office address, we’ve got you covered.

Serviced office kitchens let employees choose their diet

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We all need regular meals to keep our energy levels up during the day, but while large companies may operate a canteen on their premises, you might find serviced offices with kitchens are better suited to a diverse workforce.

Research published in the April 2020 edition of the International Journal of Workplace Health Management looked at employees’ attitudes to food provided to them in hospitality workplaces, including the opinions of migrant workers.

The researchers found that many employees think their workplace canteen food is unhealthy and high in fat – leading some to go off-site and eat foods they find more familiar and healthy.

“In increasingly globalised workplaces, food provision is important for both emotional and physical health,” they wrote.

“The study’s findings have relevance to other multicultural workplaces where the food provided to staff may have consequences for employee wellbeing.”

Catering for diverse tastes

Giving employees control of what they eat for lunch is a small but significant step that can improve their health and wellbeing, maintain concentration into the afternoons, and even boost morale overall as workers feel empowered to enjoy their mealtimes more.

Serviced offices with kitchens allow you to do all of this, without the cost of providing snacks or hot cooked meals at the company’s own expense.

Our serviced office kitchens are well equipped areas where employees can prepare a simple meal, before heading to a breakout room or back to their desk to eat without a prolonged break from productive work.

What to cook in the workplace

‘Fast food’ doesn’t have to mean unhealthy meals. Some of the most popular foods to cook in the office make for relatively healthy and satiating lunches.

Soup is an ever-popular option. It can be made from powder, poured from a can or tub, or prepared in advance at home and brought into work in a flask.

Employees from different countries and cultures can bring their favourite foods to reheat at lunchtime, as well as smaller hot snacks throughout the day.

Kitchen areas are not just for lunch, either. They’re a chance to grab a satisfying breakfast after a commute into the office, or to eat something quickly if staying behind to work late.

All this adds up to happier, healthier employees, increased morale and improved productivity, as your workforce spends less time out of the office.

Other ways to maintain a healthy workplace

Food is just one part of keeping staff happy and healthy. Our serviced offices aim to give your employees everything they need to work well and stay well.

We have serviced offices in London and Manchester, both located close to public transport for an easier commute, and both equipped for employees to arrive by bicycle to keep fit.

Nearby shops and delicatessens allow employees to buy snacks and food if they did not bring it from home.

And we provide comfortable breakout rooms – somewhere to eat away from the desk, or just a comfy chair to relax for a few minutes during lunch or a tea break, before going back to the job with renewed energy.

How serviced offices can help you with workplace social distancing

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As more businesses start to get employees back to work, the term ‘COVID-secure workplace’ is the latest new addition to the UK’s Coronavirus vocabulary, and serviced offices can help you to open back up in a number of important ways.

For companies that already make use of our serviced offices, there are several things you can do to help ensure your workforce complies with social distancing in the office:

  • Space out workstations as much as possible
  • Avoid employees facing each other across a desk
  • Erect physical barriers wherever 2m separation is impossible

Imagine the layout of a traditional schoolroom, with individual desks all facing front – this spaces people apart and makes the best use of the room available by positioning workstations in a kind of grid layout.

We are happy to accommodate social distancing measures as much as possible in our serviced offices in Manchester and London, and as always the large windows let in plenty of natural light to help your employees feel comfortable in their new location.

If you need more space

In some cases, you might simply have too many employees to allow for adequate spacing between their seating positions.

Subject to availability in our serviced offices in Manchester and London, we can often provide additional room on-site, allowing you to spread out into an extra office on the same floor or elsewhere in the building.

This is especially useful if you are unable to allow your employees to work from home, so if you are interested in renting some extra space, please check with us as soon as possible so we can help you get your new rooms ready before staff return from furlough.

Our premises are located close to important business districts like Manchester city centre, MediaCityUK and Salford Quays, as well as the Isle of Dogs and nearby Canary Wharf.

But we have always avoided the most crowded areas, preferring to give our clients some open space and, where possible, views across open water – all of which is particularly important for the foreseeable future.

How virtual offices can help

If you are able to allow employees to work from home, or if you’d prefer to work from home yourself during this time, we can provide seamless virtual office services in Manchester and London.

Essentially this means that although you don’t come into the office in person, you can still be contacted at your usual physical business address.

This is a service we provide anyway, and it’s great for start-up businesses that don’t need physical premises or for sole traders who can easily work from a home office or spare room.

But for obvious reasons it’s taken on new meaning in 2020, following a huge uptick in people working from home almost overnight.

Let us know if you need to know more about our virtual offices in Manchester and London, which can give you the professional appearance of a physical presence in key urban centres, without having to travel on crowded public transport or have all of your staff based in the office in person.

Enjoy a clean Coronavirus commute with serviced offices in London

Posted on by aleks

The newly emerging concept of a ‘COVID-secure workplace’ is not just about social distancing in offices, but also includes some important hygiene considerations.

From the start of the Coronavirus pandemic, the number one message has been to wash your hands, and that still serves as a summary of many of the measures we can all take to protect ourselves and our employees against the virus.

Thanks to our own careful planning, our serviced offices in London and Manchester already cater for the additional demands of COVID-19 workplace hygiene and are ready for immediate use.

Top tips for Coronavirus hygiene in offices

It’s important to check the latest government guidance before making any decisions that could affect Coronavirus hygiene in offices.

But based on the current situation, here are a few top tips you might want to keep in mind when putting in place staff policies for the next few months or more.

  • Hand washing: Still the most important way to reduce COVID-19 risk, regular hand washing with soap destroys the lipid layer that holds the virus cell together.
  • Surface cleaning: Surfaces that might hold live virus cells are known as ‘fomites’ and regular sanitising can help to remove those cells and reduce COVID-19 risk in the workplace.
  • Fresh air: Virus cells disperse more quickly in open air. You can help to achieve this in offices using good ventilation and by letting as much fresh air as possible into the room.

Make sure staff are engaged with your Coronavirus mitigation methods, whether that means you need to provide some specific health and safety training, or just remind them of when they should wash their hands and wipe down their desk.

A COVID-clean Coronavirus commute

Social distancing is difficult on public transport, including the London Underground and Manchester Metrolink, so more of us are being encouraged to commute by car, bicycle or on foot.

Obviously your ability to walk to work depends on how far away you live, but it’s a good reason to be out of the house for longer on sunny days.

We provide cycle racks at our serviced offices in London and Manchester, so if you’d like to arrive to work that way, we should be able to accommodate you with a secure place to park.

And our on-site washrooms mean you can get cleaned up on arrival, so whether you get caught in bad weather en route, or you just want to thoroughly wash your hands, face and body before starting your day or travelling home, we have the facilities you need.

Working with you

This is undoubtedly a challenging time for many businesses and office workers, made all the more complicated by the ever-changing guidance on who can go to work, where and when.

It’s unlikely to end within a matter of weeks, so we will be working with all of our clients to accommodate changing needs wherever possible.

From COVID-secure meeting rooms in London and Manchester, to spacious serviced offices for social distancing at work, we are doing everything we can to help you meet and exceed your safety obligations so your staff can return to work and stay there.

Privacy and pot plants add to the positives of shared office space

Posted on by aleks

We all know shared office space can enhance collaboration, making it easier for teams to meet with each other in an open-plan setting like in some of our serviced offices in Manchester and London.

But what do people really want from an open-plan office? Researchers from Auckland University of Technology asked that question in an article in Applied Ergonomics earlier this year.

They found that employees prefer fresh, inviting and open spaces – and will even bring their friends and family to take a look at their workplace if they like it enough!

We have worked hard to incorporate some of these kinds of desirable features into our serviced offices in London and Manchester, including several characteristics mentioned in the article.

Pot plants and nature

We’ve mentioned pot plants in the past and, again, the researchers from Auckland found they really do make a difference to employees, in a survey of one particular workplace.

“Plants were frequently mentioned in the context of what people most liked about the office,” they wrote, and their figures showed pot plants to be the second-most mentioned feature overall.

This ranks pot plants above many of the ‘usual suspects’ of good office design, such as the interior decor, natural light, kitchen facilities and reception area – all of which also rated highly.

Versatile and scalable space

The availability of versatile spaces was the only feature to rank more highly than pot plants in the survey, as the workers involved favoured collaborative meeting rooms and the availability of an on-site library.

In a follow-up survey, the company involved had hired more staff, leading to less space per person in the office. At that time, nearly two thirds (62%) said they wanted more space, more storage, or more collaborative spaces and meeting rooms.

We understand the importance of scalability and versatility. That’s why wherever possible, we accommodate growing businesses by allowing you to occupy more of our serviced offices in Manchester and London as and when you are ready to expand.

And on the same premises, we also provide meeting rooms in London and Manchester, so your employees have a formal setting available to them for conferences, training sessions and interviews.

Privacy and breakout rooms

Finally, the researchers found that employees favoured the availability of private spaces, so that they could take some time away from the open-plan office area.

Importantly, they found that most of the surveyed employees did not feel that privacy was a problem when working in an open-plan setting – but some female staff wanted to be able to spend at least some of their time away from the main shared office space.

Again, most of those employees said meeting rooms were a good solution to this. In addition to our meeting rooms in Manchester and London, we also provide less formal breakout rooms and kitchen areas, so your staff have plenty of options when taking a break away from their desk.

We’re proud of our serviced offices – and we hope you’ll love them enough to show your friends and family! With natural light, pot plants, meeting rooms for hire and other versatile breakout spaces too, we aim to give you and your employees everything you need to work in complete comfort.

Virtual offices – work from home with a central London address

Posted on by aleks

Working from home has been a growing trend in recent years but the events of 2020 have required many people to adopt an even more flexible approach to the way they do business.

If you have been surprised by your ability to work productively from home, a virtual office in London or Manchester could be an ideal long-term solution as we all start to get back to work.

Virtual offices give you a physical address and geographic landline telephone number in a desirable location like central London, Manchester city centre or Salford Quays.

A professional postcode helps to put the right impression across to your clients – even while you work from your home office or kitchen table.

No need for physical premises?

For some people, virtual offices in Manchester and London are a way to have a physical address when you don’t need any premises.

This might be because your business is mobile or because you travel a lot, simply working from the nearest available internet connection or sending out products from any local post office.

There are many different reasons why you might not need an office to work from, but still want a professional postal address and telephone number – virtual offices are the answer to those seemingly contradictory needs.

Ready to return to work?

We are currently living in uncertain times, as social distancing measures are likely to affect the way we work for several months to come. However, things will gradually return to more normality.

By using a virtual office in London or Manchester, you can achieve some continuity. At this time when more people are working from home, you get all of the benefits already mentioned above.

As we move beyond social distancing, in-person meetings can start to take place again. Whenever that happens, we have meeting rooms in Manchester and London ready to hire as and when you need them.

Importantly, our meeting rooms are located at the same addresses as our virtual offices – so again, you get some crucial continuity as your business returns to normal.

Transition from virtual to physical office space

Finally, if you expect to need physical office space in the future, but are not yet ready to take that leap, a virtual office address is an excellent stepping stone.

It allows you to test the water, to identify your local market in the area around your office address – you could even have virtual offices in London and Manchester to give you a presence in both the north and the south.

As your business grows, and especially if you find you are holding more face-to-face meetings in the future, we have serviced offices available at our premises, so you can make a smooth transition from virtual to physical office space when the time is right.

If you would like to know more about virtual offices and how they can give you professional contact details while you continue to work from home, please get in touch and we will be happy to help you decide which of our locations would be best for your business.