FlexOffice and Third Workspace as an alternative to head office and home office

New work, hybrid workplace models, replanning of office layouts: whether a multinational corporation, a medium-sized company or a small regional business - there is currently hardly a company that does not have to deal with the question of what its future office strategy should look like. The pandemic-related introduction of remote work and home offices is leaving company offices deserted to an unprecedented extent and making open-plan offices and separate office rooms that were once built for densification look old. The old office world today looks old in the truest sense of the word and has lost its future.

 

There is agreement:

• The traditional, interchangeable company office has lost its appeal.
• More meeting zones and more workspace for collaboration and coworking are necessary.
• Hybrid forms of work and home offices have become established and are the new normal.
• Employees are less and less willing to accept long commutes from their homes to the company.
• Flexibility has become more important for employees and companies in terms of space and time.

 

The office strategy must adapt to the new working world. The key question is: Where and how should employees work? This inevitably leads to the question: How much, where and what kind of space is needed? And what to do with the excess space?
Home office is part of the solution, but only part. Trips to the company office are no longer necessary and home office allows for more flexible work scheduling. However, working from home naturally also has disadvantages:

• Not everyone can or wants to work from home.
• Often, a professional work environment and office infrastructure are lacking.
• The separation between private and professional life is a challenge - workloads have literally moved into one's own home, private retreat and place of work are merging.
• It is no longer so easy to switch off. Homeworkers tend to be online all the time.
• Social contact and exchange with colleagues, customers, and business partners is reduced - understanding, networking, creativity, coworking, and project work are not given enough space.
• There is a lack of spatial variety, a change of scenery.
• The home office and home guests are a security risk - which employer knows who is looking at the screen of the company laptop or who is still in the room during the confidential remote conference?
• Last but not least, tax questions also arise from the company's point of view. Is the manager's place of residence at risk of being classified as a permanent establishment by the tax office if the business is run from home?

 

All of this speaks in favor of FlexOffice and the third workspace as an alternative to the head office and home office. Desks at coworking operators have now become established as third workspaces. However, company office space that is not or no longer needed all the time is particularly ideal office solutions - keyword sharing economy. These offices expand the potential for flexibly usable workspaces immensely: Germany's office space is 500 million square meters in size. Offices that are not constantly used can be found everywhere - in the city and in the country, in exclusive locations, in central locations, in peripheral locations - in other words, wherever a workspace is needed. ShareYourSpace is the digital marketplace for the flexible rental and leasing of desk workstations, meeting and conference rooms and office space. The company of the same name has translated the Airbnb principle into the office world.

 

So why should I commit myself to a conventional office rental contract for many years, to a fixed location, a space, a rent? Extremely inflexible! Why only home office as another option? Employers who see the world as their office and enable employees to work in flex offices and third workspaces have a strong argument in the war for talent and a booster for employee loyalty.

 

Examples: The company based in central Munich could sublet parts of its now oversized headquarters for coworking and thereby save space costs or collect additional rent. The dynamically growing company gains employees in the region - whether from Augsburg, Ingolstadt, Rosenheim, Garmisch-Partenkirchen or somewhere in between - but does not sign long-term, rigid office rental contracts there, but rents flexible workspaces for employees and teams on site (keyword: satellite office, district office). A hybrid model expanded to include the aforementioned flex offices could then look like this:

• 1 day presence at the company headquarters
• 2 days in the home office
• 2 days in the third workspace.

 

Everyone benefits: employers, employees and, last but not least, the environment through the reduction of workplace-related commuting.