WeWork sees opportunity in the end of the corporate headquarters
WeWork Australia boss Balder Tol is seeing more demand for flexible workspaces at a time when there is a move away from the traditional corporate headquarters as result of the pandemic.
“What you see right now is organisations are trying to de-densify their headquarters, de-centralise and leverage a network of office hubs and use space as a transition to figure out where their real estate footprint is going to be,” said Mr Tol, general manager of the company’s Australian operations, during a keynote speech at the 2020 AFR Property Summit on Tuesday.
“What we know is the centralised HQ model is probably going to be less likely and [there will be a] rise of hub-and-spoke models.”
This “work-to-people” model, as Mr Tol referred to it, would present as an opportunity for WeWork and others that offered similar services.
“Despite the changes we’ve seen over the past year, space as a service, WeWork and coworking spaces, have been incredibly well suited to this accelerated change,” he said.
“We know from talking with both our new and existing members that flexibility – especially this year – stands central into any of their decision-making but [also] informs a huge part of the value proposition they want to offer their employees.”
WeWork has been trialling an on-demand product in response to what they expect will to be an increased demand for space that can be used for short amounts of time by typically work-from-home employees, without the strings of a long-term commercial lease.
“During COVID, we had the luxury of being able to pilot a number of initiatives and products that we have seen early demand for but which we anticipate to be increasingly important. We have ‘on-demand’. On-demand is a zero-dollar upfront commitment in order to provide real estate, access to offices and technology at the click of a button.”
Currently being piloted at 12 of the company’s properties in New York City, on-demand is currently offering workspaces starting at $US29 ($40) a day, or reserve meeting rooms starting at $US10 an hour, according to the WeWork website.
“[Users] have access to meeting rooms and access to just our hot-desking. However, we’re developing this model to have access to some of our unique spaces like collaboration areas, the podcast studios as well as provide private offices that are not occupied full-time with the click of a button for an hour, a day, a week … heck, why not by the minute?
“So the sky is the limit and that’s our answer in terms of increased flexibility in what is already a flexible business model.”
He did not comment on specific plans to extend the on-demand product to the Australian market.
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