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Why Serviced Offices should be part of your Leased Portfolio

Posted on by aleks

Serviced offices are increasingly being seen as a standard part of companies’ leased premises portfolios, according to research published earlier this year.

An article in the March 2021 edition of the journal Buildings looked at six co-working strategies under the heading ‘Searching for Flexibility in Corporate Real Estate Portfolio‘.

Based on real-world examples, the research identified six strategies companies are using to improve their flexibility and shift towards more co-working environments:

  1. Swing space
  2. Expansion space
  3. Core and flex
  4. Touchdown space
  5. Testing market
  6. Temporary projects and staff

Together these strategies enable flexibility during times of change, such as:

  1. While headquarters are being renovated
  2. Periods of growth
  3. Diversification of mature businesses
  4. Meeting rooms for satellite workers
  5. New startups
  6. Short-term increases in staff levels

For all of the above, serviced offices are a good option, providing flexible levels of office space for as long as organisations need it, along with on-site meeting rooms for hire and informal spaces for collaboration and conversation.

Serviced offices in their own words

The article includes several interviews with real-world business operators who have found serviced offices the answer to some of the challenges their organisation was facing.

One took up serviced office space as a way to adapt to fluctuating employee numbers and said: “Flexibility is really important in the company at the moment, and that’s one of the things that you get with serviced offices that you cannot get with a traditional office.”

Another explained that, in recent years, their organisation has moved from viewing serviced offices as a solution only for new projects or entering new markets, to a core part of their leased portfolio of business premises.

They said: “One or two years ago we saw serviced offices really like a flexible layer for where we would enter a new country, for example, or we had a project which was very temporary.

“But now, especially what we proved with some offices globally, is that it can also be seen as part of your leased portfolio.”

Make serviced offices a permanent solution

While the flexibility of serviced office leases is still an important factor for many tenants, it is also clear that a growing number of businesses worldwide consider serviced office space to be a long-term part of their business premises rental portfolio.

This is apparent in the UK, where the increasing proportion of serviced offices in London and Manchester, compared with other types of office space in the cities, is an indication that more businesses are using serviced offices, and are choosing to stay for longer.

After an extended period of economic turbulence due to political upheavals, successive economic crises and the lockdown of many businesses during the COVID-19 pandemic, it’s no surprise that companies are looking to the flexibility of serviced offices as a long-term solution for the years ahead.

With our recently opened Millharbour Court Business Centre in London’s Millennium Quarter and our biggest ever development of serviced offices in Telford, the Serviced Office Company continues to provide more of the spaces you need, in the places where you need them.

The Wrong Trousers? How clothing affects ergonomics for office workers

Posted on by aleks

Our serviced offices in Manchester and London are designed to be as comfortable as possible, with ergonomic furniture, relaxation rooms and plenty of different areas for informal conversation and collaboration.

So we’re always interested to learn of possible causes of discomfort in office environments, and ways to overcome them.

One potential pitfall for office workers is the problem of wearing the wrong trousers, which was the focus of research published in the academic journal Procedia Manufacturing 3 and carried out by a team from the University of Minho in Portugal and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

What’s the problem?

The researchers posed a problem for office attire: “A growing number of jobs require workers to sit. Most clothes, except those intended for wheelchair users, were designed for walking or the standing position.

“Clothing designs should be user-oriented and meet users’ needs. Garment design should conform to body position and posture, not just shape and size.”

They proposed that because trousers are designed for standing and walking, they can cause multiple problems once the wearer sits down:

  • Overlapping fabric
  • Uncomfortable seams
  • Pressure exerted by accessories

All of these combine to create compression forces, poor circulation and may lead to thermal discomfort as well.

What’s the solution?

The team suggested trousers designed for the seated position, allowing for a rise at the back and a decrease at the front, adapting to the change in leg length and avoiding seams across the buttocks and lower back.

In the study, they tested regular jeans against FYT jeans, which have four adaptations in a seated position:

  • Less bunched-up fabric behind the knees
  • Hidden elastic in the waistband
  • No patch pockets on the back (to reduce uncomfortable seams)
  • Hidden zipper to increase inseam length in crotch area

The study found significant reductions in compression forces in each area, including over 75% on the back of the knee and 65% on the front of the knee, 55% less compression on the crotch and nearly 90% less on the waist.

What does this mean?

Whether you wear formal office attire or more casual clothes to work, it’s worth considering the seated position when trying on new clothes to see how well they fit.

There are plenty of ways to get a more comfortable fit, ranging from stretch denim jeans, to hidden elastic in the waistbands of smart trousers – there’s something for every dress code.

Even on a very basic level, this research helps to validate the decision to loosen your belt a notch after a particularly large lunch.

Ultimately it’s all about feeling comfortable at work, which in turn can naturally help you to be more productive over the course of a long day sat at your desk.

With the ergonomic furniture in our serviced offices in London and Manchester, you’re off to a good start – and if you ever need to stretch your legs, our kitchen areas, relaxation rooms and scenic surroundings all give you somewhere to go when you need to stand up for a while.

Caveman Comforts: Modern serviced offices meet ancient instincts

Posted on by aleks

When you walk into our modern serviced offices in London and Manchester, our recently opened Millharbour Court Business Centre in Canary Wharf, or our upcoming serviced offices in Telford’s Central Park, you probably won’t see much that reminds you of a Stone Age cave.

However, contemporary office spaces have more in common with cave dwellers’ first work spaces than you might imagine – and certainly much more than the cubicle offices of the late 20th century.

This is the conclusion drawn in a study published in Architecture, Civil Engineering, Environment (Volume 14, Issue 2) which looks at office buildings throughout the centuries and into the 21st century.

The earliest offices

In the article, the authors suggest that the earliest designated workplaces would have been areas of caves that were reserved for “productive action”.

They explain: “There must have been areas in the prehistoric caves and alcoves where man instinctively situated his tools and craft bench and proceeded to craft his tools and weapons, making that part of his living space a workplace.”

Once the first languages were created, they suggest that this early ‘workshop’ would have evolved to become the first ‘office’.

Evolution of open-plan

Open-plan offices might seem like a modern invention too, but they date back to the Mediaeval guildhalls, when guildsmen realised it was more efficient to share their workspaces.

Common rooms for 10-20 workers made better use of space, time and cost, as well as accommodating workbenches and tools more effectively.

Over time, this led to the creation of ‘Uffizi’, workplaces defined by linear corridors flanked by rooms, which would have been occupied by bankers and entrepreneurs.

All of this took place in the first half of the 2nd millennium, with Uffizi from the 1500s having a floor plan very similar to modern serviced offices.

Offices in the UK

It was not until the 1700s that the first custom-built offices in London opened, at the Old Admiralty (Ripley Building) constructed in 1726.

Meanwhile in the USA, the Great Fire of Chicago in 1871 raised questions about fireproof construction – which paved the way for concrete and steel construction.

This enabled even more open-plan offices with glass facades, creating uninterrupted outward views from the interior, something the Renaissance Uffizi had aimed to achieve.

Despite the cubicle-based office layouts of the late 20th century, over the centuries open-plan has always been the ultimate goal, and modern serviced offices deliver on that ambition.

Back to the cave

All of this means that when you rent open-plan office space, you are giving yourself and your workforce an area that caters to some of our earliest instincts as a ‘working’ species.

Prehistoric man recognised the value of having a separate, designated workplace, sensibly arranged and organised for peak productivity and maximum efficiency.

Many centuries later, our serviced offices in Manchester and London continue that trend with contemporary interiors and intuitive layouts.

As we look to the future with our new serviced offices in Telford at St James’ House, our biggest development yet, we can only wonder what the workplace will look like in the years, decades and centuries ahead.

Serviced offices in London support COVID-19 recovery

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Serviced offices in London are likely to play a crucial role as the capital continues to recover from the COVID-19 pandemic.

A Greater London Authority report from early 2021 predicted that serviced offices in London would be “an attractive substitute” to conventional long leases for businesses based in the city.

“With businesses wanting greater flexibility in lease terms, serviced offices may offer – at least in the short term – an attractive substitute for companies that are reluctant to sign long leases in the current environment,” the report stated.

“Carefully managed, good quality serviced office space may see an uptick in demand to accommodate such occupiers, most likely in the outskirts of central London.”

A flexible future

In September 2020, the GLA commissioned a study that found in the city’s Central Activity Zone, businesses expected 72% of their workforce would continue to work at least partially from home in 2021-22.

“The extent to which employers are comfortable with workers contributing from home will be a significant factor in future demand,” the report added.

Combined with the more flexible leases available on serviced offices in London’s CAZ and surrounding areas, we could be looking at this hybrid model continuing for quite some time, as predicted in other recent articles.

Meeting in person

At the same time however, it remains important to see stakeholders and customers face-to-face in some circumstances, making physical meeting rooms in London a valuable asset too.

“Studies show that in-person communication leads to higher compliance to arrangements, suggesting that meetings with high importance may stay physical for the foreseeable future,” the GLA report suggested.

It added three other reasons why in-person working is advantageous over full-time working from home:

  • To facilitate employee learning and to ‘be there’ to see economic outcomes
  • To experience the shared environment of an office and company culture
  • To develop interpersonal relationships more strongly than by remote contact alone

Serviced offices in London support all of these outcomes, by providing informal areas like kitchens and relaxation rooms, as well as meeting rooms for hire for more formal interactions.

A beating heart

The report called the Central Activity Zone “the beating heart of London’s global city” and noted the link between human networks and the infrastructure that enables them.

In Central London this includes elements like public transport, light rail, the Underground and roads; the supply of food and other goods; and long-distance travel links such as airports.

We are unlikely to see a significant shift away from the UK’s largest cities in this sense, even as employee preferences move towards more flexible, hybrid and home-based models.

That’s why serviced offices in London and other major city economies like Manchester are so important to the upcoming recovery, to bridge the gap between the infrastructure we have and the ways we want to work.

Get in touch

If you would like to ride the tide of economic recovery that is already underway, the Serviced Office Company can help by providing access to versatile business premises and support services in Central London and Manchester.

Call us today to find out more and together, we can get London back to work.

Accelerate your human organisation with serviced office space

Posted on by aleks

The COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated the trend towards ‘human organisations’ that put the comfort and interests of people first, according to a recent report.

In March, the Corporate Culture Group published the Human Organisation Report, which noted the impact of the pandemic a year after the first lockdowns began.

“While the pandemic has challenged the ways we work, the bigger question is about the purpose of work. What is it for? And how does a shift to home working affect traditional hierarchies?” the report asks.

“A more fully human world of work is emerging. It’s a world that is dramatically different to today’s model. But what is it and how do you bring it to life in your organisation?”

What is a human organisation?

The human organisation trend is driven not only by the response to the pandemic. The report identifies three completely separate threads pushing this shift:

  • COVID-19
  • Climate crisis
  • Credit crunch

These three C’s have combined over the past decade to demand three R’s from organisations: Resilience, Relationships and Recovery.

All of this came to a head during lockdown, when the nature of work itself shifted seismically overnight.

Work stopped being about going to a central location every day, and instead became about the people who were able to be productive while staying at home.

The post-pandemic human organisation

As we move beyond the strictest lockdowns, it is no longer necessary for entire workforces to stay home and work in isolation.

But there may never be a complete bounce back to monolithic workplaces with many hundreds or thousands of people on-site at once.

Instead, the report notes that 90% of employees want to spend some time at home, but 2-3 days a week in the office.

Flexible workplaces have taken on new significance as a way to cater for this varying demand over short periods such as a typical working week.

How serviced office space can help

Serviced offices, meeting rooms and virtual office services all combine to cater to this emerging hybrid home/office model of working.

In serviced office space, organisations gain access to modern, comfortable and open-plan areas that facilitate collaboration, innovation and productivity.

At the same time, employees can work seamlessly from home, making use of virtual office services where appropriate to forward correspondence.

Finally, the flexibility of meeting rooms for hire, breakout rooms and informal collaborative spaces like kitchen areas all adds to the opportunities to innovate in the way we all approach the working day.

Be more human

The global nature of the pandemic means this shift is happening everywhere, all at once, and organisations must keep pace with it to embrace the humanity of their workforce.

Even if you work as a sole trader, serviced offices and virtual office services give you more versatility to put out a professional image, while working the way you want to in the years ahead.

If you want to move away from crowded central locations and benefit from the flexibility of serviced offices in London and Manchester, to support your Relationships, Resilience and Recovery, contact the Serviced Office Company today.

How to handle high-traffic areas in COVID-safe offices

Posted on by aleks

One of the concepts that sprung up almost overnight during the pandemic was that of COVID-safe offices (or COVID-secure offices, to use the government’s original preferred term).

Like other indoor spaces, keeping offices COVID-safe is a combination of sensible hygiene by occupants, regular surface cleaning, interpersonal distance where possible, and plenty of good ventilation.

For the most part this is not very difficult to achieve:
• Avoid face-to-face seating plans
• Add physical barriers where distance is not possible
• Open windows and/or use air filtration

But what’s the answer to keeping offices COVID-secure in busy areas with poor ventilation, such as corridors, meeting rooms, lifts and stairwells?

Newly published research by the University of Cambridge has looked at answering this very question, with some practical conclusions that office managers can implement quickly and quite easily.

Redesigning open-plan offices

The research paper was written by Jiayu Pan, Tze Yeung Cho and Dr Ronita Bardhan, all of the University of Cambridge, and presented at the CIBSE Technical Symposium in the UK on July 13th-14th.

In the study, the authors looked at two open-plan floors of an office with quite dense seating, and about 180 desks on each floor.

As well as the open-plan desk areas, the floors had several features common to serviced offices:

• Meeting rooms and alternative working areas
• Kitchen areas with tea making facilities and seats
• Communal access to restrooms and printers

They modelled the movement of employees using planned ‘stops’ like stairs, lifts and desks, as well as ad hoc ‘interests’ like restrooms and kitchen areas.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the busiest areas proved to be the corridor, areas nearest the lift and stairs, and the nearest meeting rooms.

Sensible strategies to be COVID-safe

The researchers suggested a number of reasonable strategies to help make busy offices more COVID-secure, including:

• Separate flows of in and out traffic, especially where multiple lifts or stairways are available.
• Using more distant meeting rooms and multiple meeting rooms to spread out personnel.
• Back-to-back and side-by-side seating plans, rather than face-to-face across a desk with no barrier.

They especially highlighted corridors as a place where personnel are more likely to be densely packed at busy times.

Staggered arrival and departure times, reminders about social distancing, and hygiene precautions like hand-washing and alcohol gel could all help to alleviate this.

How serviced offices are COVID-secure

At The Serviced Office Company we are working hard to keep all our serviced offices COVID-secure, in line with changing guidance and best practice on hygiene and cleaning.

We give you the flexibility to lay out your seating plan the way you want it, whether that involves physical barriers between desks, or an unusual configuration to avoid employees facing each other directly.

Our on-site meeting rooms are cleaned regularly and we offer virtual office services so if you want to have more staff working remotely – or want to move to home-based working entirely – you can do so seamlessly while retaining a professional office address and contact details.

To find out more about any of our services, or if you would like to discuss any COVID-related concerns and how our serviced offices can help, please don’t hesitate to contact us today.

Can serviced offices save the post-pandemic world?

Posted on by aleks

A newly published paper calls on city planners to “transform the city” and “save the climate” by applying the lessons learned during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Diana Reckien, at the Department of Urban and Regional Planning and Geo-Information Management at the University of Twente, Enschede in the Netherlands, published her study in the journal Planning Theory & Practice.

She wrote: “SARS-CoV-2 achieved what climate change science and advocacy have not been able to achieve in more than 30 years… profound, system-relevant changes were possible in timeframes of days to weeks only.”

Worldwide CO2 emissions fell 6% in 2020, but as economic activity bounced back towards the end of the year, emissions increased 2% in December 2020 compared with the previous year.

Learning the lessons from COVID-19

Ms Reckien says there are four ways to tackle climate change and COVID-19 together:

  1. Re-greening cities
  2. Re-adjusting inner cities and office spaces
  3. Re-structuring neighbourhoods
  4. Re-moving transportation systems

Serviced offices can support these ambitions in a variety of ways:

  1. By embracing green areas, waterside locations and outdoor spaces.
  2. By reducing urban density and creating office spaces out of central business districts.
  3. By allowing decentralised, self-contained communities of residential, commercial and office space.
  4. By prioritising easy access via public transport instead of private vehicles.

The benefits of these strategies are clear for the environment, by allowing more natural greenery to grow, as well as reducing carbon miles for commuters.

But there are also advantages for a post-pandemic world with one eye still on infectious disease control, as there is less movement of the workforce on a daily basis, and less crowded workplaces with plenty of fresh air.

How SOC’s serviced offices in London and Manchester can help

The Serviced Office Company’s serviced offices in London and Manchester have been designed to meet as many of the above needs as possible, even in our locations that opened before the pandemic began.

We have always prioritised access to open air and natural surroundings, with our serviced offices in London overlooking the River Thames, and our serviced offices in Manchester adjacent to Salford Quays.

Public transport is a priority via the DLR Canary Wharf station in London, or the Metrolink in Manchester.

And our serviced offices in Manchester are located just outside the city centre, meaning there’s no need to head into the busiest business areas just to get to and from work.

Find out more

If you’d like to know more about our serviced offices in Manchester and London, including the new locations we have recently opened or have under development, please contact us and we’ll be happy to talk to you about all our premises.

As well as our well-appointed serviced offices, we also have on-site meeting rooms in Manchester and London, for when you need an extra private space for an interview, meeting or training session.

Finally, we have virtual offices in London and Manchester to give you a professional, physical contact address and telephone number, while you are free to work from home or anywhere else – ideal if you want to limit your time in a physical office after the pandemic.

How Hollywood embraced serviced offices

Posted on by aleks

Walk into our serviced offices in London and Manchester and you’ll find yourself in modern, spacious surroundings with ergonomic furniture and plenty of natural light – but offices haven’t always been this way.

Movies and TV shows provide a visual history of how office space has changed over the decades, according to an article in the journal Megaron, charting the trend towards many of the features found in modern-day serviced offices.

The authors from Abdullah Gul University in Turkey look at how film and television portray offices from different time periods, as a way to identify the features of those eras, as well as to predict the future needs of a more flexible and mobile workforce.

The emergence of office space

Offices have existed for centuries but early examples were very large buildings often used for government, administration or as large company headquarters.

As the Second Industrial Revolution progressed into the 20th century, a wider range of businesses began to take up office space, driven by the rise in white-collar workers.

Early offices were often very large and open-plan, designed for easy observation by managers, and had few personal belongings on individuals’ desks.

By the 1960s, this had started to change. The TV series Mad Men, set in 1960s America, features smaller offices, separated by partitions, with many more personal possessions on show.

Modern serviced office space

Small cubicles became a feature throughout the 1980s-90s, as shown in the movie Office Space in 1999, but since the start of the 21st century, this has changed significantly.

The researchers note the 2002 film 40 Days and 40 Nights, which takes place in a renovated office building with modern furniture, kitchen facilities and comfortable seating areas.

In 2015, The Intern depicted an open-plan office with no partitions between employees, and even allowed people to work in different parts of the office on portable laptop computers – something that was not possible during the 20th century.

“Under the influence of the technological developments of the 2000s, employees can work in various places inside or outside the office, thanks to their laptops,” the researchers note.

“The workspace has become a comfortable space like home, in order to provide a sense of belonging,” they add.

Serviced office space for the future

The article is particularly relevant in light of the recent Coronavirus outbreak, which has forced many more people to work flexibly and from home, an overnight trend that is unlikely to reverse fully in the years to come.

But even as the COVID-19 pandemic fades, serviced office space will continue to provide the kinds of facilities – comfortable, well-equipped offices, convenient kitchen areas, meeting rooms for hire and chill out rooms – that have been on-trend throughout the past one or two decades.

As we move into the future together, the flexibility of serviced offices will also mean workplaces can adapt more quickly to emerging trends and technologies.

We don’t know where this will lead over the next 10-20 years, but we will continue to ensure our serviced offices in London and Manchester offer the very best fixtures, fittings and workspace for all our customers.

Serviced offices, co-working spaces and incubators: what’s the difference?

Posted on by aleks

A lot of the time, co-working spaces are mentioned in the same breath as hot-desking, serviced office, incubators and accelerators.

But what are the similarities and differences between those? And why are serviced offices so popular, especially among new start-ups, small businesses and rapidly growing brands?

Serviced offices and co-working spaces

Writing in the journal Urban Studies in summer 2021, a team from the London School of Economics and Political Science, University College London and DIW Berlin explained some of the common features of serviced offices.

They wrote: “Serviced offices are aimed at established businesses: fully fitted-out office buildings offering modular space where the emphasis is on input-sharing.

“Co-working spaces have similarities with incubators in terms of physical setup, input-sharing and business models aimed at early-stage firms.”

This is all true, although we would add that our serviced offices in London and Manchester have helped many businesses get off the ground, starting from a very early stage indeed.

Incubators and accelerators

Access to accelerators and incubators is much tighter than to general serviced offices and co-working spaces.

For example, to be allowed office space in an incubator, you may need to be engaged in a specific type of business activity, and may have to commit to certain tasks, such as meetings with business mentors.

The LSE team wrote: “Accelerators and incubators are distinct from other smaller, denser spaces in the extent to which participants are selected and their interactions are structured or curated by providers.”

For new entrepreneurs, this can be very helpful, by providing a guiding light to help you understand your chosen industry and how to run a business; however, the tighter rules and restrictions are not for everyone.

Which is better?

Overall, co-working space is a broad spectrum. At the thin end of that wedge, there’s business accelerators and incubators, places where access is extremely limited, while at the broad end there are much more open-access facilities like hot-desking and internet cafes.

Serviced offices provide a middle ground. You get your own private office space on flexible, affordable terms, suitable for SMEs looking to keep close control of your overheads.

Access is not limited to a specific sector or high-growth market, so you’re free to explore whatever business ideas you might have, without interference.

Co-working areas in serviced offices

Although our serviced offices in London and Manchester provide private offices, you also have access to communal areas where you can meet with other entrepreneurs based in the building.

These include the kitchen areas, chill out and breakout rooms, as well as the reception area at the main entrance to the building.

You also share access to meeting rooms on-site, and these can be booked in advance as and when you need them, so it’s always clear who should be using the room.

Altogether, this adds up to a highly flexible way to get professional, private office space in Manchester and London, to support your business whether it’s in its infancy, or you just prefer the flexible terms of serviced offices for mature businesses.