Overview
Post-pandemic, the ‘remote working’ vs ‘return to the office’ battle refuses to settle down one way or another, employees preferring the former and a substantial number of corporate employers preferring the latter. Flexibility of work location is more highly rated by employees while both use productivity as a reason why their option is best. Employees value the reduced time wasted commuting and feel they get more done in the home office even while missing social interaction, while employers rate highly the office environment supporting collaboration between colleagues and value being able to ‘see’ their employees working. Alongside this is everyone’s desire to work and live more sustainably.
Tribrid working, flexibly applied, enables both parties to optimise the benefits and minimise the disadvantages from spending some time in each of the three work locations. Coworking space provides not only full local access to office facilities, it also provides for social and collaborative interaction.
SGA can define the optimum balance between the three key work locations, employment site-home office-coworking space, to provide the ultimate in flexibility, productivity and collaboration for professional workers and their employers/clients.
Our Approach
Whether for an urban or rural area, we combine our expertise in economic analysis, homeworking and coworking to optimise the mix of options in work locations both for professionals already living in the area or those who could be attracted to move a residential area that would improve their work-life balance and wellbeing. This is particularly so when considering a new settlement designed on sustainable principles with reduced commuting.
For any area being considered, we investigate historical and future local work patterns for workers and occupations in key industrial and service sectors to predict likely levels of commuting, the proportion of home office professionals and the demand for local coworking space.
Application of our Expertise
While our experience and expertise are frequently used to help public and private developers understand how tribrid working by local residents and workers influences their best allocation of areas for local business and residential use, it is also used by employers with existing offices to understand how tribrid working can improve productivity while reducing the need for permanent, expensive office space. Existing offices can then be partly or fully repurposed. The recruitment and retention of staff is also improved through offering the flexibility of tribrid working.