WHERE DO YOU WORK? WHERE WOULD YOU LIKE TO WORK?

Our workplaces have been slowly adapting for years,

Last year, thanks to coronavirus, nearly half of the working population did some work from home, according to the Office of National Statistics.

A year on, are they returning to their offices?

The picture is mixed. According to accountants KPMG’s latest CEO survey, three quarters of companies will wait for governments in key markets to encourage businesses to return to normal.

A significant majority (90 per cent) of CEOs intend to ask employees to report when they have been vaccinated.

Will this mean that employers are going to reduce their office space capacity? In the same survey, just 17 per cent of business leaders are planning to downsize their company’s physical footprint, which is markedly down on the 69 per cent who said they would do so when asked last August.

The Nationwide Building Society, which has its head office in Swindon, announced in March that it will allow its staff to work from anywhere.

The building society wants its offices to provide more collaborative spaces for staff and it is one of the companies which has come out and said that it will reduce its office real estate.

Some of the world’s biggest businesses were trying to get other staff back into offices as early as last summer.

Manufacturing company Dyson was encouraging its office-based staff to return to work at its huge and beautifully designed Malmesbury campus, though at that time many of its staff were disinclined to do so.

Fast forward six months and it seems that employee’s views are changing. Many people have become tired of working from home and want to get back to the office as soon as possible, albeit with more flexibility to work from home one or two days a week.

There is also the view, reportedly held by James Dyson and the boss of Goldman Sachs, David Solomon, that the best ideas and innovations come from face-to-face, physical collaborations, something that can never be as successful via online conferencing such as Zoom or Teams.

So where does that leave the employers and employees who want to return to work but also want to ensure their workplace is Covid-safe?

Those who provide shared workspace have to set the example and one of the most well-known workspace providers in the UK is WeWork.

Mathieu Proust, WeWork’s General Manager UK and Ireland, said: "Health and safety is clearly front of mind for every business, and workers need to know that when they return to the office, it is to a space that prioritises their safety.

“We've invested significantly in space modifications over the last 12 months. We introduced measures to prioritise personal space, increased frequency and scope of cleaning, enhanced heating and ventilations systems to improve air quality, and provided sanitisation products in abundance.

“We’re also adapting our spaces in line with how we believe offices will be used moving forward – as centres for collaboration and in-person innovation. As businesses embrace more flexible ways of working, access to WeWork’s more than 850 locations across the world gives employees choice on how, when and where they work."

Future workspace leases

As businesses look to offer more flexible working for their staff, it’s likely that they will move away from large offices that accommodate all employees to smaller offices which won’t be able to accommodate everyone at the same time.

If that’s the case, according to Anthony Goodfellow, Head of Real Estate at law firm Harrison Clark Rickerbys, the way that leases are documented may need to change.

“It can, on occasions, take a long time to negotiate a relatively simple 10-year lease that sets out the relevant rights and obligations of both parties and the resulting document can easily run to 80 pages. This is incompatible with the need for shorter, more flexible agreements.”

The Model Commercial Lease suite of documents provides the answer, he said. “It provides standardised leases that act as a starting point for the negotiation of important commercial and legal terms.”

The Model Commercial Lease was originally commissioned by the British Property Federation. It aims to achieve a balance between landlords’ requirements to protect the capital value of their assets and the practical requirements of tenants’ occupation. Precedent leases for office, retail, industrial and food and drink are all available for free.

“Use of the Model Commercial Lease does not prevent law firms and their clients including their preferred amendments,” added Anthony. “It simply means that parties can see what has been changed from the standard position and then focus on the key points. In this way, agreements can be reached much more easily.”