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In 2005 Milton Friedman, renowned journalist from the New York Times, released ‘The World is Flat’. Whilst we aren’t about to engage a debate on the spherical nature of the planet, it’s important to frame how the acceleration of technology over the last 20 years has shaped both business and the workplace.
Friedman argued that the technology was the great leveler. Bringing us closer together and essentially making the world ‘flat’. Within the world of CRE and workspace there are some very real truths demonstrating the global nature of how we work:
But these truths don’t represent an easy or linear path to delivering workspace at scale to globally distributed workforces. The reality is that whilst hiring is ‘easier’ through access to a global market, accurately forecasting headcount and their requirements remains a dark art. We review the leading factors driving headcount uncertainty, the procurement challenges leaders currently face and how flexibility through on-demand can help.
Technology has brought a multitude of solutions to the world but, as far as we know, it’s not been able to accurately predict the future. With the best will in the world, headcount predictions largely rely on traditional methods and these are often unreliable, especially given the number of ‘Black Swans’ impacting the market place in recent years.
With headcount volumes notoriously difficult to predict, workplace and CRE leaders are also faced with the additional challenge of need uncertainty. Pre-pandemic office requirements were relatively fixed, but the rate of change has accelerated, as has the range of working styles.
The final factor driving uncertainty is what type of workplace policy to pursue. Because of the aforementioned factors it can be difficult for business leaders to assess what policy is best for their organization. As a result, we’ve seen u-turns, knee-jerk reactions and RTO mandate double downs. This makes it hard to accurately forecast mid and long term CRE requirements.
One antidote to uncertainty is flexibility. Whilst technology might have amplified complexity it has also enabled new solutions to emerge. On-demand networks break the constraints of traditional real estate by offering access to thousands of workspaces without the need to commit to long term CRE investments.
Leveraging on-demand workspace allows organizations to:
The main advantage of on-demand is the ability to flex requirements up or down as requirements dictate. You only pay for the space used, as oppose to with traditional real-estate where you pay for the space that may be used. This means costs are always tied to utilization and investment risk is significantly reduced. .
On-demand is flexible, but this doesn’t mean that you lose control. In fact, much of the flexibility comes from the range of controls you can implement, meaning you can adjust alongside your workplace policy. For example, you can geo-fence workspace bookings if you want to drive down attendance to your own offices or you can control costs through individual spend limits or budget allocation.
On-demand with Desana provides a single legal agreement to use the services of thousands of workspace providers, with no additional procurement. Once you’ve onboarded your entire workforce with Desana they’ll have access to global workspaces on-demand.
Because we’ve integrated event space into our on-demand network offering we’re able to provide a variety of spaces for work including hospitality locations, conference rooms, meeting rooms, and private day offices, as well as hot desks.
The speed of on-demand removes a lot of the challenges that marketplace uncertainty can bring in terms of headcount forecasting. Knowing that you can switch on global bookings instantly should you increase team numbers means you can guarantee a consistent workplace experience for new members, without committing to fixed overheads.
There has always been risk associated with traditional real estate investments. However, on-demand can be leveraged to reduce risk in a number of ways:
Decision bias for future real estate investments can also be removed through the provision of granular usage data. Unified global reporting helps organizations make intelligent real estate decisions. One example of this is a global software customer who changed the location of their fixed office investment based on real-time on-demand usage feedback.
Thanks to the advent of on-demand workspace, headcount forecasting and decision making on global workspace provision no longer needs to be the risky gamble it once was. Data and flexibility are enabling businesses to react quickly and efficiently, with certainty that their employees will be supported to deliver their best work, however many of them there may be.
Image credit: Huckletree Oxford Circus - available to book on Desana OnDemand
