Office requirements are changing: time to take the bull by the horns?

Jack Moore, Partner at Page Kirk Chartered Accountants in Nottingham, discusses the dilemma now facing businesses over the costs of office space and the desire of many staff to work – at least part of the time – from home.

All businesses have been required to adapt their working practices in response to the Covid pandemic to some degree. Whilst we are not out of the woods yet, it is feasible to think that the worst of the storm has been weathered. Perhaps it is time that more businesses started thinking proactively about their office space requirements, and what the future of working looks like for them, rather than continuing to operate reactively in response to the ever-changing Covid landscape. It might be time to make a firm decision and take control of the work-from-home vs work-from-office situation for your employees. One which best suits your business and prevents you from constantly ricocheting between the two as you negotiate the merry-go-round of Government advice.

Clearly the physical space requirements of some businesses are indispensable under any circumstances – think of warehousing for a business which manages its own stock, or a physical location for a restaurant business. For many service businesses though, occupying physical office space is less of an absolute necessity and more of an age-old practice which may be on the verge of revolution.

Establishment overheads (such as office rent costs; light and heating bills; business rates charges, buildings and contents insurance and repairs, maintenance and cleaning costs) often form the bulk of a service business' profit & loss account. Imagine what your bottom line would look like if you were able to make a significant reduction to those costs, without any detriment to being able to maintain your standards of working practices. We have seen over the last 21 months that businesses can operate effectively without the requirement for people to visit the office every day as a matter of course.

If you do have employees working in separate locations, it is imperative that you manage communication. For any business which chooses to let its employees work remotely either full-time or on a part-time basis as part of their working practices, effective communication channels are an absolute necessity. Your business will be saving a significant amount of cost by reducing its establishment overheads, so there will be plenty in the wallet for you to make sure that your business spends what it needs to have the best communication tools and software in place. The aim in this respect is to implement an ecosystem of communication tools which makes it just as quick and easy for people to communicate with each other as it would if they were working from the same location. There is a plethora of apps and software out there which can be employed to achieve this.

We humans are social creatures and so, naturally, dictating that your employees will no longer spend their working week alongside their colleagues at the office – and will instead be spending more of their hours working in isolation – may not be a popular decision. You need to know your staff and consider the impact of this decision on their motivation and, ultimately, their output. The end goal, when considering your next move here, is to improve and grow your business, and limiting office numbers or removing a central office entirely may simply not be the best strategy for you.

Many major corporations have surveyed their staff across the UK in their thousands now, and the overwhelming consensus seems to be that most people would like the flexibility to work from a central office location 2/3 days per week, with the option and freedom to work from home some of the time. Perhaps a hybrid arrangement which offers the best of both worlds is the future for many work environments?

We aren't your standard accountancy firm. Their aim is to add real value and insight for our clients by sitting alongside them as trusted advisor. If you would like an accountant who can take on that role and discuss the practicalities involved in running your business, contact us on 0115 955 5500 or email enquiries@pagekirk.co.uk.