Stay In The Loop.

Post-COVID downsizing sees serviced office demand surge

The predicted trend for businesses to work more from serviced offices in the post-pandemic period may be starting to emerge, according to a Birmingham-based serviced offices consultancy.

KWB Office help prospective tenants to match with available serviced office space across the West Midlands and have been saying since the start of the year that the second quarter of 2021 would be a positive time for the sector.

But director John Bryce now says the speed and scale of the upturn in demand for serviced office space has been surprising, even against those high expectations.

He adds that in the months ahead, even relatively large office-based businesses may move towards this more distributed model, supported by staff working from their own homes.

“If this momentum continues, and there’s no reason to think otherwise, I believe we’ll soon see companies which previously had 30,000 sq ft or even 40,000 sq ft looking to downsize and then use remote working – either from home or serviced offices – to create more flexible models,” he said.

Why adopt remote working post-pandemic?

March 23rd 2021 marks the one-year anniversary of the day UK employees were told to work from home if possible, as part of the first national lockdown of the Coronavirus pandemic.

Over the past 12 months, businesses have had to adapt quickly, multiple times to different guidelines, and those with smaller offices in multiple locations have had a natural advantage when it comes to putting staff into protective ‘bubbles’.

A small branch office is a natural bubble and, even if all the employees are forced to self-isolate due to a Coronavirus breakout, other offices are less likely to be affected.

With virtual offices, employees can also continue to work from home seamlessly, even if they are unable to attend the physical workplace due to self-isolation.

But why continue to adopt this practice as we move into the second half of 2021 and the vaccine roll-out reaches all UK adults?

Safeguarding the future with serviced offices

Even once everyone in the UK is vaccinated, there is still the risk of new variants of Coronavirus emerging in other countries around the world and bypassing the immunisation once they reach our population.

For the foreseeable future, it makes sense for businesses to adopt a risk-averse approach to large open workplaces, in favour of setting up smaller branch locations in serviced offices, as well as virtual offices for those who continue to work from home.

Serviced Office Company can support this, with multiple locations for our serviced offices in Manchester and London, as well as full virtual office services for correspondence forwarding and so on.

We hope businesses in the UK and abroad can get back to normal as soon as possible, with no more surprises in store, but we are also ready to adapt immediately if conditions change again before the pandemic is fully over.

If you would like to know more, contact us today, and we can help your business to take an optimistic but realistic view of the months and years that lie ahead, as we all emerge from this period of global lockdown.