Meta has paid £149 million to break the lease on a London office, illustrating big business’s ongoing adoption of hybrid work as the new normal as major companies cut down on office space.
Meta’s move arrives only two years after the tech giant had committed to the 310,000 square feet of office space owned by commercial landlord British Land. The office space, based at 1 Triton Square near Regent’s Park, had undergone significant redevelopment prior to Meta’s commitment being confirmed in 2021.
Meta had yet to move into the office space and had announced last December that it had even been looking to sublet it.
The news broke after British Land had raised the point in a trading update, notifying that it would experience a short-term hit on earnings as Meta had broken the lease for one of two buildings the company rents in the same development.
A Cultural Recalibration of Office Space
The news that Meta was reducing office space fulfils a growing trend of businesses looking to change office space post-pandemic.
Last week, a new study by insurance broking and risk management firm Gallagher found that the majority of UK businesses are either actively reducing their office space or considering doing so to adjust to the rise of hybrid working.
Gallagher recorded that 63 percent are now changing office space due to shifts in ways of working. That figure comrpises over a fifth of businesses planning on moving to smaller offices (21 percent), over one third considering moving to shared office space, and seven percent of businesses having already changed office space.
Zoom is a UC and collaboration vendor that has produced an innovative solution to the challenge of maximising value from office space in the age of hybrid working.
Zoom opened a new “engagement hub” in London last month. The new space is designed to progress from traditional offices to experience and collaboration-focused working hubs that support employee demand for hybrid working practices.
The new building is a multi-purpose hub with built-in Zoom technology, including 75 work points which vary in design and structure to support a range of employee needs and preferences. There are library-style benches, touchdown spaces, agile tables for collaboration, and conventional desks. Workers can book these facilities through Zoom’s workspace reservation tool, allowing them to plan their office workdays.
The work culture shift isn’t limited to tech businesses. HSBC is another large business that recently announced it was reducing office space to accommodate hybrid working and cut costs. This summer, the bank said it was leaving its global HQ in London’s Canary Wharf financial district to move to significantly smaller offices in the City of London before its existing lease ends in 2027.
Hybrid Work Continues To Establish Its Permanent Foothold
The scale of the post-pandemic shift in working is reflected in Gallagher’s research that over two-thirds of UK businesses have introduced hybrid working because of employee demand for greater working flexibility (69 percent).
However, the business consensus seems to be settling on hybrid work — rather than remote work — as the future, with businesses either encouraging or mandating employees to return to the office for some of the work week. This, too, is reflected by Gallagher’s findings — four-fifths of business leaders enforce a mandate for employees to spend some time on-premises.
For example, Zoom’s hub opened at the same time that the company introduced a mandate for its staff who live “within a commutable distance” of the office, which Zoom specifies as within 50 miles, to come on-site two days a week.
Zoom’s move to a hybrid model echoes the policies of many other tech giants. Google’s policy, for example, which was established in April 2022, is three days on-site a week. Apple also works three days a week in the office, a mandate which began in September 2022.
Microsoft currently adopts a hybrid model with workers expected to be on-premises for at least 50 percent of their workweek unless they have special permission.
Amazon’s policy is also three days a week, which was announced in February and instituted in May. The announcement of that policy galvanised hundreds of Amazon employees in Seattle to protest outside the business’s headquarters, and, in July, that policy was expanded upon, with Amazon asking some corporate employees to relocate to new cities.
https://www.uctoday.com/collaboration/meta-maintains-hybrid-work-momentum-by-breaking-lease-on-london-office/
