International Workplace Group is leading the ‘workspace revolution’ as it looks to add thousands of locations to its network globally.
Richard Morris, CEO of IWG, which owns brand including Regus, Spaces, HQ, No18 and Signature, said the group, a leading provider of flexible workspace, wants to add 500 locations a year globally to its current network of 4,000 sites in 130 countries.
In the 海角视频 alone, Morris said the group wanted to expand from 400 sites to 3,000 in the next five years as businesses look for more flexibility and choice from their workspace provider.
Morris revealed the expansion plans when he spoke at a Manchester Evening News breakfast event in partnership with IWG looking at how technology is changing the way we work.
The event, hosted by award-winning editor and events host Chris Maguire also included panelists Steven Booth, founder and CEO of Autosermo, Aine McTiernan, PwC Scale, North Lead, Scott Warrington, co-founder of School Lettings Services and Muj Choudhury, founder of Voice IQ.
Morris said: “We are leading the workspace revolution and that is to provide on-demand workspace as a service so that businesses and their people have the flexibility, the choice and ability to work where they need, when they need and for however long they need.
“And that’s reflective in our view of how technology in digitalisation is having a profound effect on how people work. We are called International Workplace Group because we believe that the way that the market is developing, there’s going to be a need for a multi-brand and multi-format market because not all customers are the same.
“We know and understand that different customers want different things from their workspace.
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“We have several different brands globally offering different types of workspaces, different styles and price points because we are catering for this broad market where choice, agility and flexibility is paramount.”
He continued: “The needs of today’s office customers are different and that reflects changes in society generally.
“Location is really important. Technology means people don’t have to head into a city centre base every day and so our approach to building our network is to make high quality, conveniently located workspaces available closer to where people live so they don’t have to spend time on commuting.
“There’s a huge emphasis on digital connectivity for buildings too, such as the quality and speed of the internet into that building. You’ll be surprised to see many modern buildings that score pretty low in terms of the strength of their digital connectivity.
“The other thing we see in terms of interior design is there’s less demand now for structured shared desk in offices. Instead, there’s demand for breakout space and formal space where people have the option to work in a more relaxed style while having the opportunity to connect in a physical sense in that building.”
Morris said the plans to expand the number of sites will be accelerated by a franchise programme.
“We can’t do it all in one go,” he said.
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“But we are accelerating the expansion through a franchise programme and we have now signed up our first 10 franchise partners in the 海角视频 and they’ll be taking certain territories of the country, that’s our way to get to 3,000 sites quickly.”
Morris said companies were also beginning to think about how their workspaces mattered when it came to attracting and retaining talent - emphasising how the quality of the workspace combined with an approach to how employers allowed their staff to work was an important differentiator.
“You need to look at how you embrace technology to enable agile working. Flexibility is more than about the hours of the day you work, flexibility is just as much as where you work from as well.
“If you ask a young person to spend thousands of pounds a year on a train season ticket and spend 20 hours a week sitting on a train, they will look at other options. Why would they want to do that when they can live a completely different existence by having a different approach to work?
Steven Booth is founder and CEO of Autosermo, a chatbot specialist based in the city centre.
Autosermo creates chatbots and automated messaging experiences and conversational interfaces for organisations with a high volume of inbound messages.
Asked about how the technology created by Autosermo was helping people in the workplace, Booth said: “Chat boxes free up humans to perform high-value work.
“We don’t want to replace humans as they are the most perfectly designed entity and the most perfect AI machine learning tool there is so we don’t need another one, we just need to free them up to do more of the intelligent work.
“So for collecting information we don’t need humans, we have better digital interfaces that can do that but the intelligent work and improving people’s lives, that needs to be done by humans.
“In sales, people buy from people they don’t buy from computers.”
And what does the office of the future look like?
“I don’t think it looks like a WeWork. We do really buy into this idea of remote working. It’s important that you do have a solid office space where people can come and do their work but at the same time we’re very much about flexible working, set office hours is something of the past.”
In 2017 PwC relocated from its home of 20 years in Barbirolli Square to the iconic No1 Spinningfields - the final commercial property to be constructed in Spinningfields.
The office space was designed to provide a variety of choices to break down barriers, hierarchies and physical separations between teams and to provide total flexibility with a choice of different work settings for the way PwC works now and in the future.
Aine McTiernan, PwC Scale, North Lead, said the new location, as well as a new way of working, has proved to be a major force when it comes to attracting and retaining talent.
In the two years since the move to Spinningfields, PwC has grown its workforce from nearly 900 people to 1,300.
Said McTiernan: “The former office was perfectly nice but it was 20 years old and it was the old-style office with rows of desks. Not only had we outgrown it but the ambition of the business was that we can do so much better.
“The office was designed with staff and clients in mind and includes workspaces that can be used by clients when visiting PwC or when they are between meetings in the city centre.
“The partners don’t have their own offices which was a big cultural shift but there are plenty of rooms within the space that can be used to hold meetings or if you need a quiet space for a whole day you can just book it out.
“Partners are with their clients at least 80% of the week so why should they have designated space for 100% of the week?
“We have full hot desking across all floors which makes this connection between staff and partners easier.
“Professional services firms are often split into consulting, tax services, and audit and although you’re one big firm you don’t always talk to each other. By having an office that is actually one enormous floor plate you meet more people, and it’s about creating that connectivity.
“When you’re 1,300 people and you’re looking to push that growth further, that’s really important.”
She said flexible working is expected by staff but technology has been the catalyst to enable staff to do that.
She said: “Even though we have 1,300 people, they’re not in the office at one time. People are out with clients or working from home. Having the right tech to work flexibly has made a difference in the way people work across a range of ages.”
Scott Warrington is co-founder of School Lettings Services, a Bolton firm which hires out school and college facilities to local community clubs and organisations,
SLS works with 270 schools across England and has around 1,000 staff. The company has recently invested £500,000 in technology to help grow its services but also help staff work remotely.
“Tech is critical for staff to work remotely and stay in contact,” said Warrington.
“We work with 270 schools which means that managers and staff are all around England. We have nearly 1,000 staff and they need a base and platform they can work from. As a director, I need to know they have everything they need and what they’re doing and we use tech that gives us that information.
“We’ve always worked remotely. There’s a lot of weekend and evening work so there’s got to be lots of give and take so if someone has worked late one night but wants to go to the gym the following morning they should be able to do that.”
Muj Choudhury, the founder of Voice IQ, the Manchester-based company behind an AI-powered phone system, believes the notion of a head office is obsolete.
Voice IQ employs 38 staff in offices across Manchester, London, Sri Lanka and Moscow.
Choudhury said: “The reason we have set ourselves up the way we have is not so much because it’s what millennials want, it’s about what suits us.
“We are a knowledge-centric company, people who work for us are engineers, scientists and AI experts and getting those people is one of the toughest things we’ve had to do.
“If we gravitate around a physical location such as central Manchester or central London then our catchment for people becomes small.
“We wanted to ensure that we can attract and recruit people from anywhere on the planet.
“We do the recruitment based on their ability and skill and how good a match they are to our organisation and how well they support the needs of the company. And those people can literally be anywhere. So from the outset, I wasn’t interested in having a centre of gravity where you’re going to pull on people from 20 miles, that made no sense.”
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He continued: “I think that head office mentality will disappear, there will be exceptions for example in manufacturing where you physically have to be on a production line.
“However, outside of those specific industries, the changing nature of work, work-life balance, people needing more time with their families, means people’s working needs are different.
“The notion of having offices spread around where you have a small office nearby somewhere, and you pop in because you need to get away from home or you need to meet other people, is the future.”