How will today’s workforce change the geographical footprint of tomorrow ’s workspace? The ‘Hub and Spoke’ model: Case studies

COVID-19 has forced companies to introduce remote working practices at a wholescale level, a trend that had slowly been increasing over the last decade. Both positives and negatives have emerged as we all wrestle with the implications of removing the office from our daily routine. For the majority of the workforce, the lack of a long commute has been a huge benefit to the employee from a cost and time perspective, but is that reason enough to envisage a radically altered office experience? As companies look at new workplace strategies that allow them to retain the best staff, we anticipate a period of test, measure, learn and adapt from the majority of progressive corporate real estate (CRE) teams. They have to balance the need to retain their corporate culture and identity, imbue a sense direction and a positive sense of collaboration while hybrid working experiments are carried out. One solution that many clients and contacts have referred to within their testing strategy is the dispersed portfolio model, or ‘Hub and Spoke’. The Instant Group and its partners in the project, Hickey & Associates, explored the impact of a people-focused, agile disaggregated portfolio. The aim was to understand what benefits could exist to both the employee and employer by adopting such a strategy and what factors should be considered by a company looking to test such a model. The findings showed the types of location that appear highly suited to satellite offices, alongside the benefits from a cost perspective the employer could expect to see. Surprisingly, large time savings can also be achieved by employees on an annual basis; it is not uncommon for those used to commuting an hour and a half a day to save over 35 standard working days a year. While these outcomes are positive, difficulties do exist — not only from a business perspective in ensuring senior stakeholders are spread across the portfolio, but also from a purely real estate perspective. In many of the locations highlighted, supply of quality office stock is limited, and future developments are far less prevalent than in major cities. This suggests that while the methodology stacks up on paper, there will be practical challenges for businesses that are slower to react, unless we see a major change in commercial real estate investment and development.