May 17, 2013
CBRE WorkShop concept is interesting, but is it workable?
I’d like to deal in this article with the arrival yesterday of the long-awaited white paper from CBRE’s thought leadership exercise, The CBRE Workshop. However, I should declare an interest for the sake of transparency. Until June 2012 I was employed by CBRE and reported directly to a couple of the people who are heavily involved in The Workshop idea. I would reassure readers that I am not a disgruntled former employee. I have a huge amount of respect and warm regard towards my erstwhile colleagues and nobody will be happier than me to see them do well.
So, the whitepaper. It is accompanied by a green and pleasantly branded website. Some nice iconography points to the central tenet. It is puffed by repetition of key points. There are plenty of wide open spaces. Giuseppe Boscherini’s illustrations are, as ever, a joy. There’s a pleasingly light sprinkling of data which one could probably counter with other data if one was that way inclined. All of what is said on trends in working habits/workstyles and the preferences of and issues facing landlords and occupiers is or has been incontestably true and said before elsewhere.
The central concept itself (that is, that places designed specifically to enable work that is convenient, flexible, and easily accessible will develop in urban and suburban centres, potentially in retail units or around retail centres, to offer access to a variety of other services, with consumers able to choose which venue to work in depending on their need, location, budget, or corporate program.) is also not new, but the proposed or predicted scale at which the concept would pervade our communities is. And it is here where I start to perceive some fundamental challenges and they are not particularly related to the commercial challenges that are rightly identified in the whitepaper.
Sartre’s best-known play, Huis-clos (No Exit), contains the famous line “L’enfer, c’est les autres,” usually translated as “Hell is other people.” And it is people issues that lie at the heart of the success of a concept such as this one. It pre-supposes an enlightened species of enabled mobile worker who is a natural collaborator with people who she meets only periodically and often has never met before and who do not work for the same business or in the same industry. It also pre-supposes a desire on the part of these people to work in a branch of Tesco, however prettily fitted out. As these knowledge workers make up a relatively small proportion of the total working population and maximum take up is impossible might not the impact in communities be relatively modest.
And what of small local independent businesses that might suffer as a result of the opening of such a centre nearby? Keeping libraries from closing is a vital battle worth fighting but the thought that they would become thriving centres of commerce and work hubs rather misses the point of libraries have been trying to achieve in the first place. I have been to co-working premises and to Jellies and I’ve heard from others who have and the feedback is not promising. Serviced offices have a rather chequered reputation as well. Co-working ventures and public spaces that work the best are heavily curated and require significant ongoing investement and staffing accordingly.
I was curious to see whether it was just me who might find all of this a little puzzling so I shared the ideas posed by the whitepaper with a number of acquaintances who are parents of children in my daughter’s class at school. All of them work, some commuting into London, some from home, some flexibly and some not.  I should note that this was a hugely unscientific process carried out at the school gates and in the pub last night. Not one of the people I discussed it with could quite see the point. Nearly all of them could see that there were bound to be benefits to businesses but they could simply not see how such an idea would help them. Even those with a problematic commute to face after the school run could not see much benefit in having to hop in the car to go to the shopping centre to visit a WorkShop when a comfy sofa, reliable IT and your own choice of décor and musical accompaniment are at home a short walk away. People love choice and freedom. It seems that for some at least they would choose to be free of other people and work from home instead however impractical it might be.
You’re a person. Why not make up your own mind. You can download the whitepaper here: https://www.cbre.eu/portal/page/portal/theworkshop
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Simon Heath is a freelance illustrator and commentator on workplace and facilities management issues and was formerly Head of Operations, Global Workplace Strategies at CBRE. For more of Simon’s worldly, wise and witty writing on all things work and workplace, visit his blog https://workmusing.wordpress.com.
May 20, 2013 @ 10:17 am
Hi Simon,
I’m a believer. Again, disclosure of interest, I’ve spent the last two years working to create an incredibly similar vision in NearDesk (We are mentioned in the report – but only met with CBRE once before they published the paper).
Working at home is wonderful for many. My observation is that many people love working from home some of the time but:
– People struggle with kids/family at home
– Not everyone has a proper home office – and would be on their bed / kitchen table
– We’re inherently social creatures and miss people
Technology means we can work anywhere – and I believe that flexible working should be … flexible! What I choose should be able to be different to what you choose – and what you choose today should be able to be different to what you chose yesterday.
“Anywhere” currently seems to mean: Home / commuting or a coffee shop. I believe there is demand for somewhere more suited to work than a coffee shop – and without a ten hour weekly commute (UK average is 7.5 hours). The number of people working in coffee shops makes me think there is demand for space near home – it is up to the market to figure out what that means. And, like the plethora of restaurants, I do not believe there is one solution.
As you say, proper co-working need curating – but coffee shops do not. I expect a range of options to emerge – from co-working to “coffee shops plus”.
Our mission is a million people working near home one day per week. I look forward to watching the market mature… And the one thing I do expect is surprises!
You’re very welcome to see our “show-home” at Kings Cross
Best
Tom.
Founder, NearDesk.com
May 20, 2013 @ 6:22 pm
Hi Simon,
Another believer here. You know from your involvement with those who are involved directly in shaping the workplace that there’s plenty of us like Tom and myself who feel passionately about changing the how and where of work.
Taking a wider look, the research our sector has done fits neatly with others too. For example Frost & Sullivans’ mega trends include increasing urbanisation. As we gravitate even more towards cities the space people call home will be relatively small, typically unsuitable for work as well as rest & play.
In fact this has always been the case for those entering the workplace who have their own accommodation – that’s why ‘the coffice’ has sprung up as they seek a more suitable place to work than their flat.
Look at the image on page 5 of the report (see I did download it!). It’s the younger generation that this is aimed at.
This concurs with what are seeing in terms of space becoming available. There’s plenty of developers putting their money into CBRE’s vision and opening up trendy workhubs aimed at the younger market. And take up is high.
Maybe explains the results of your own survey at the school gate (mine would be the same!)
May 20, 2013 @ 7:22 pm
Hi Tom.
Thanks so much for your comments, which are very much appreciated. I agree with you about the compromises that come with working from home. I also think that people tend to just muddle by. Coffee shops and so on are used in short bursts and as decompression space where you can still (mostly) guarantee connectivity. I know that people do use them almost as a second office but their suitability is not good. The commercial model is also a challenge. It’s one thing to buy a coffee to justify a spot in Starbucks for emailing or prepping for a meeting it’s another to pay for a seat in a co-working hub, especially if you can’t claim the cost back on expenses. One of the options proposed by WorkShop is that you’d use your corporate program. As with corporate preferred travel and accommodation options this would likely be at the budget end for all but senior execs and this lowest common denominator approach will probably mean a loss of flexibility over choice and a “cattle-class” experience. I hope you guys get it right. I’d love to be proven wrong at the mass market end but I suspect it’ll remain very much a mixed bag.
Simon
May 20, 2013 @ 8:01 pm
Hi Adrian.
Thanks for your comments also. I admire what you, Tom and others are aiming for enormously and share that passion. I don’t class myself as an unbeliever (this is going to happen in some form or another) but I do see significant challenges to extending the franchise for all, not just a narrow youth demographic. The workforce is not made up entirely of young thrusting knowledge workers. One day in the very near future they’ll have kids and mortgages (somehow); the retirement age is being pushed back and we are staying fitter for work for longer. I know there is research out there that points to increasing urbanisation (I’ve even bothered to read some of it) and I also know there is research that poses an equally compelling counterpoint. It is perhaps ironic that the changing mores of retail consumers from physical to online purchasing has resulted in the very gaps in the high street that might become retail/work hubs to house the people who do most of their shopping online.
May 29, 2013 @ 3:30 pm
It is difficult to see who is going to take CBRE up on this idea. I give credit for forward thinking, but the infrastructure for what they are proposing already exists with current business centres, co-working space, clubs, hubs and even coffee shops.
Property developers are highly risk averse (at least to any further risk over and above that of buying/building/refurbishing property speculatively in the first place).
Co-working spaces appear to be built as specialist hubs by interested parties and do not easily make money, partly because they tend to include mentors and business resources as part of what they do.
I would have thought more business centres would look at trying to create co-working space, as I am doing, but there is probably a good reason why more are not trying: I, for example, am overwhelmed with apathy from the business community. These things seem to work best in creative and technology environments.
However, as a business centre, at least I am set up for it and it feels like a natural progression – co-opting retail spaces for this would seem to be an expensive and risky diversification.
Serviced office spaces have done well as an increasingly viable alternative to lease/purchase, but even we will need to adapt if all the research on agile working is to be believed.
(BTW, I agree with the comments on research: you can pretty much use the data to shore up whichever argument you want to put forth.)
This is why I see services like Desk Wanted and Near Desk (I subscribe to both) being invaluable. They are probably ahead of demand at the moment, but as the market grows will aggregate information and enable interested parties to tap into a network of suitable spaces.
If some of these spaces are grown out of surplus retail space, that a landlord can exploit, then fine. I can even see this being an integral part of future multi-tenanted office buildings, to add a level of flexibility to lease options.
But I imagine it would be incidental for a landlord, not core strategy.
And going back to the research rationale, I think statements like ‘…people would have greater choice of where they live…’ might be in danger of overstating the case somewhat.
July 25, 2013 @ 6:34 am
I can see the value for individuals or small teams, but the way the paper positions itself seems to be about these kinds of spaces becoming part of a mainstream mass market. I would have thought for this to occur that you would have to then see large numbers of corporate memberships. Aside from agreeing with Simons comment on the lowest common denominator cattle class experience – it’s hard to envisage just how corporates would use the space. If I need flexibility, can work alone and can’t commute to the corporate HQ on either an occasional or even semi regular basis then probably the reason I’m doing so is that I need to be at home. If I’m a regular remote worker, the I can see some real issues arising in terms of security and relationships over the longer term – what ties me to my employer and do I have more of a relationship with my new coworking colleagues than my remote team? Is that a benefit or potentially a negative for my employer? Whilst the white paper touches on these issues, in my view, eh have not really been addressed in detail.