Standout takeaways from the Flexible Workspace (FlexSA) Conference 2022

May’s conference was jam packed full of amazing speakers from in and around the world of the flexible workspace!

Themes and trends centred around sustainability and wellbeing from various perspectives as well repurposing data, energy, partnerships and making clever use of marketing.

What made the biggest impact to me was how vital it is now for operators and landlords to really work in partnership and collaborate with flexible workspace members and tenants. Only then can we truly make a difference in creating a sustainable environment.

But how can we do this and what do we need to consider?

“We have to come at it from a humble perspective because we don’t have all of the answers” James Manning Grosvenor Property – Senior Transformation Manager – Sustainability & Innovation.

What are flexible workspace members / tenants asking for and how can owner / operators help with this?

1. Members are asking for data and measurements primarily around energy consumption and what measures are landlords and operators looking at to address this.
2. Ariane Ephraim of (Sustainability Manager of Workspace Group) reported that they’d surveyed 300 SME’s in London – 60% have net zero carbon goals & 40% said sustainability considerations were key when accepting / rejecting office workspace memberships and leases.

What are owner / operators doing about this?

Interestingly there were mixed answers and much depended on the scale of the property companies and the age of their buildings. Those with a far larger network of workspaces found it more efficient and manageable to put effective sustainable practices and data reporting measures in place compared to those owner / operators with single or a small network of buildings. It’s also more problematic to implement similar measures in older buildings due to the nature of the materials and structures. Here’s some of the ideas and what’s already being done:

1. Building performance evaluations
2. Data dashboards within each building measuring energy consumption, water consumption so that members can self-service against their corporate strategies
3. Rather than building from scratch, many owners are renovating, creating new internals rather than building from ground up as so much material is involved in foundation level.

If you’d like some help on how to map out flexible working transformations for your team then you can book a discovery call with Suzanne:

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