Looking for unlimited flexibility

Companies, just like their employees, value flexibility now more than ever. They look for it in office lease agreements, floor plans and work organization. Are the times of desk jobs and fixed office hours coming to an end? By Beata Socha Sitting on a sofa with my laptop, I look around to see several other people with their devices working for different companies in the same room with me. There’s a Foosball table, a handful of square café-style tables and a kitchen corner with all the typical facilities. It’s not my office, it’s not a café either. It’s an office/café paid by the hour (or minute for the first two hours) located in Warsaw’s Wilanów district. Called AntyCafe “Poza Czasem” (in English: “Outside of Time”), the establishment caters for freelancers as well as regular office folk who, on occasion, telecommute rather than heading into the office. The office/café offers unlimited Wi-Fi, coffee, beverages, snacks and a place where you can settle in with your laptop without the fear of overstaying your welcome, unlike in a typical café. “We have a few regulars who practically live here. We launched in July, but we’re still in the early stages of development. As far as I know, we are the first such place in Warsaw that offers office space by the hour,” said the café’s owner Aleksander Chochłow. Instead of pajamas Teleworking, although not without its flaws, is an increasingly attractive option for employees and their employers. Companies have long been fighting for talent ,and are increasingly open to making concessions in order to make their workers feel valued. From the point of view of the employee, working in a co-working space like this café seems a sensible compromise between working from your bedroom in pajamas and spending two hours a day in traffic. The extra fee (a subscription at the AntyCafe is PLN 149 per month) seems reasonable in comparison to the cost of being stuck in traffic jams, which Deloitte estimated at PLN 3,350 a year for an average driver working in one of Poland’s top seven cities. Whether or not this office model finds its niche remains to be seen, but the fact that 95 percent of Polish firms are SMEs, and that the vast majority of them are self-employed freelancers, definitely adds to the demand for such a working environment. Co-working space But, extreme cases aside, flexibility seems to be one of the top priorities for all companies looking for office space these days. “Signing long leases now, unless you are a huge corporation, is increasingly a thing of the past. And, even in a corporate environment, people are using the office like a hotel, sitting every day in a different place,” said Hadley Dean, CEO of Compass Offices EMEA. Compass is a new player on the Polish market, currently offering its co-working office space in two locations: Plac Unii and Rondo 1. Its main competitor, Regus has been on the Polish market since the 1990s. In its early days, Regus leased offices to international companies that were setting up their first outposts in CEE. Now it has 14 locations, including five outside the capital. Its latest addition, the Zana building in Lublin, was launched in 2015 and caters mainly for tech and media firms. Atlas shrugged The search for flexibility is, however, bigger than start-ups and freelancers. Major corporations are well aware of the trend as well. “The prevailing trend currently seen in the market is to make offices more flexible and comfortable, so that they can easily house more employees within the same space,” said Agnieszka Kawęcka, head of Business Development at Reesco, a fit-out and interior design firm. Desk sharing, quiet workrooms and phone booths – these can all be found in today’s modern office space. Increasingly often you can also see games rooms, green and recreational areas, showers and locker rooms. “Office space flexibility is a clear signal from the employer: ‘I focus on my employees and their needs.’ In today’s world an office worker has to be dynamic, mobile and creative, which needs to be reflected in his or her working environment,” said Kawęcka. Increasing the efficiency of how office space is used naturally requires larger initial outlays, but it seems to pay off over time. “Apart from increasing work comfort and aesthetic factors, companies also seek savings when redesigning their office space. The more flexible a solution is, the more expensive it is initially, but it also makes any future changes easier and cheaper, when for example, a company switches from one project onto the next,” added Kawęcka. Removable partition walls and maximizing sunlight is what companies want these days to ensure they can adapt to changing schedules and project requirements. More or less Optimizing the existing space will not be enough though, if a company is looking to shave off a large chunk of its overheads – a lesson many firms learned after 2008. “Floor plans that were used even five years ago did not take into consideration the fact that the office is never 100 percent occupied, and in some months falls to a mere 30 percent,” explained Kawęcka. Now, during a period of healthy economic growth and solid forecasts for the next few years, companies seem more concerned about whether the building they are in will allow them to grow harmoniously. “The flexibility of the lease has become more important for tenants, particularly in the BPO/SSC business. They want to be able to expand or reduce the space they occupy depending on the firm’s current conditions and needs. Just as companies increase or reduce their employment based on the number of projects they are working on,” said Katarzyna Kubicka, senior leasing manager for offices and hotels at Echo Investment. Put that in writing It’s not only the space itself where companies seek flexibility. “Tenants, especially corporate clients, often ask to include a ‘break option’ within the agreement,” explained Karol Patynowski, Associate Director responsible for Tenant Representation at JLL. “The landlord has the obligation to take part of the ‘unwanted’ space or propose the lease of additional space. In the case of expansion, the tenant might have the opportunity to select a specific space, in a specific place and at a specific time (pre-defined option) or may have the right of lease privilege according to space availability,” he added. Patynowski admitted however, that it is mainly the landlords of older office buildings who sometimes have to include break options in order to compete with newer and technically better schemes. In the case of the latter, the standard lease length is still the invariable 60 months. Other provisions that companies sometimes wish to include in their lease agreements include subleasing, rent revisions and options for renewal, Patynowski said. And with the market being the way it is, they will likely get more and more of what they want