Pre-pandemic, only being in the office for part of the week was an unthinkable prospect for many workers across the UK. Now, a hybrid setup is common practice and the way we work looks a lot different to the offices of yesteryear.
“I don't think we're going back to full time in the office,” says Phil Ellis, cofounder and director of marketing at flexible workspace company Techspace. “CEOs recognise the workplace is no longer constrained by the four walls of their headquarters.”
But how exactly are common practices changing, and what could be next for the workplace?
Techspace’s new Scaleup Culture Report 2024 surveyed 2k tech employees across the UK to highlight some of the biggest changes in working styles.
Mandated Mondays
Last year, Techspace’s report found that employees overwhelmingly preferred to come into the office on Tuesdays, Wednesdays or Thursdays, with an average of 2.27 days a week.
One year on, and that’s gone up by 48%, to a preference for 3.35 days a week. Attendance on a Monday has almost doubled in the UK compared to last year, from 30% to 57%. Fridays, meanwhile, remain the least popular option.
What we've seen is an attempt to try to manage and maintain the working week so that it's not messy, busy and unproductive
“A lot of companies in the UK have downsized their office requirement whilst increasing the quality of the space,” says Ellis. “This downsizing, combined with increased employee demand, has led to unmanageable surges on popular days.”
Ellis adds that these changes have manifested into mandated days for a lot of companies.
“What we've seen is an attempt to try to manage and maintain the working week so that it's not messy, busy and unproductive; with companies looking to be a lot more intentional about which teams need to be in-office on different days,” he says.
The shift from an office free-for-all to more structured schedules is one that Caroline Hayes, head of people operations at healthcare app Florence, a Techspace member company, has implemented in the past year.
“Our current policy is we have a minimum requirement that employees would be in two days a week, and we have set that quite intentionally as department days so people are together,” she says. “It is not a choose your own adventure.”
Finding a balance
But it wasn’t always this way at Florence. In January 2023, the company’s leadership decided to mandate three days in the office, with everyone in on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays — a setup that was quite standard post-Covid, says Hayes. Over the course of the year, however, it became clear that the arrangement wasn’t the most efficient set up.
“The personal aspect and the departmental aspect wasn't really considered when it was just set as the three days,” says Hayes. “While people continued to want flexibility, [we needed a] balance of both what works for the team and what works for the company.”
Hayes adds that this caused the company to struggle with the vibe in the office. “It became a self fulfilling prophecy in that, if you had a team come into the office and there was nobody else in there, they were like, ‘well, why are we in the office?’” she says.
This sentiment tracks: Techspace’s report found that the respondents ranked social interaction and collaborating in person as the top two attractions of working in the office, unchanged from last year’s survey.
People are much happier to come in, and there's a lot more engagement, a lot more conversation
To tackle the issue, Florence worked with Techspace to move into a smaller office space where there were fewer desks than total employees in the company, and assigned days to specific departments.
“Now that we have set the department days, everybody knows when people are in and if you need to change your days, there's no problem with that. We also use a desk booking system to allow for that. It means that people can come in if they need to, to meet others,” says Hayes, who adds it’s had a “huge effect” on the atmosphere in the office. “People are much happier to come in, and there's a lot more engagement, a lot more conversation.”
Flexible work, flexible offices
The changes in work culture — and the need for flexibility that Florence experienced — have also impacted the type of real estate that companies are after, says Ellis: Techspace’s report found that 79% of companies surveyed are now using flexible office space.
For companies prioritising flexibility, a flexible workspace is ideal, says Ellis: “If you’re tied into a long-term fixed contract and can’t get out of it, you might have to set authoritarian policies in order to get value out of the space, as opposed to choosing what’s right for your team: this is why flexible workspaces are becoming so popular.”
You might say the modern workspace experience is emulating that of a hotel
While there’s no perfect formula, Ellis suggests employers stay flexible.
“You need to build trust and empower people,” he says. “The way to do that is to be transparent around the data and the insights that you're getting, and then be communicative about what you're changing and why.”
The evolution of how companies are using offices also means that flexible spaces like Techspace are changing to meet the new demands — and the company’s newest building, based in Farringdon, is designed to meet the needs of hybrid teams.
“It’s a destination building: we have more amenities on-site than any other building we’ve launched. And by that I mean, if you’ve made the effort to commute to work, in theory you don’t have to leave the building,” says Ellis.
“Location is more important than ever: we've gone as close as we can to one of the best links in London (Farringdon),” he adds. “Of course, it’s also about offering something you can't get at home: the competition these days [for a workspace] is bizarrely the home office as well. If you look at [the new Techspace building], you've got yoga classes, walk-in showers, a podcasting room, event space, a rooftop bar and café, and three terraces.
“You might say the modern workspace experience is emulating that of a hotel, a sort of pull, rather than a push, so that these businesses have all of the attractiveness that they can possibly get in their HQ.”
