Why flexibility and workplace experience are reshaping corporate real estate

Since the pandemic, the first answer to empty offices was a mandate to come in for a set few days a week. Some of it worked, but the companies making real progress have taken a different route. They’ve asked where their people want to work, how they want to work and what work they actually do together. Then they’ve built spaces worth the commute.

That shift has changed the role of the corporate real estate leader. They used to be a deal-maker and project manager. Today, they are the product owner for the workplace and they’re under pressure from three directions at once. They need to deliver a consistently great experience across a global portfolio. They need to move quickly, but they’re tied to long leases, with empty buildings burning cash in places they no longer need and too little space where the talent is. And they’re doing all of this with smaller teams and more complex projects.

What corporate real estate leaders want from flex partners is pretty clear. Space good enough to encourage people to return, lease terms that let them grow and contract, someone to take design and build off their desk in non-core markets, and genuine hospitality.

Flex should be the obvious answer, and demand from large companies has never been higher, but there’s a disconnect that is becoming clear, which is that much of that demand doesn’t fit how flex operators make money. Large companies want big, open-plan floors. It’s great when a large AI company takes 400 desks for 18 months, until they leave and the void period wipes out the returns on the whole building.

So the product has changed. Enterprise flex is now manifesting itself through new approaches and product types. If a team needs its own space, we find, design, build and run it, with the capex folded into the monthly cost. If a company is planning an HQ, we put flex alongside it to grow into. In New York recently, we worked with a large enterprise customer occupying four floors of its own with two floors of Industrious next door and room to expand, cutting total occupancy cost by around 17% over 10 years. If a company is sitting on surplus space, we build it out as flex, monetise it and let them grow back into it.

But flexibility only answers where and for how long. It doesn’t answer the question that matters most, which is ‘why would anyone choose to come into the office?’ “If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up people to collect wood and don’t assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea.”

This was written by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry in ‘The Little Prince’ and is a line I often come back to when thinking about some of the challenges facing heads of corporate real estate in today’s world. They want to create workplaces that attract people to the office rather than force them.

This is where flex operators have an advantage, learned through years of experience delivering service and hospitality. We are the industry’s test lab, our customers don’t sign 10-year leases. Our customers sign for three, six or 12 months, and if they don’t use or love the product, they leave.

We’ve had to learn how to deliver hospitality that is excellent, repeatable and affordable at scale, that makes people want to be in their workplaces and we find out very quickly what works and what doesn’t. Trying, testing, failing and iterating help us know that our customers love puzzle boards, come to the office more often if we can remember their first name and are delighted when we celebrate their birthdays as if it was one of our own teams.

Mandates told people to come in. Flexible products put the right space in the right place. But neither makes anyone want to be there. Experience does. A space that feels looked after, a team that knows your name. Hospitality is no longer a layer on top of the real estate. It’s the reason the real estate gets used and those leaders that understand and deliver that will create workplaces that remain inherently relevant, flexible and aspirational for years to come.