We would like to summarize our experience and share our best practices of how flexible and traditional workplaces complement each other. Let us present you with four specific use cases that we have been consistently offering to our clients for nearly four years now, and which may become even more popular in the not-so-distant future:

Core & Flex:

Strategic: deliberate, resulting from workplace strategy, a combination of traditional (core) and flex space. Already envisaged at the time of searching for and contracting target office space.

Temporary (occasional): resulting from current needs, expansion of traditional (core) space by additional office resources in flex - space, available optimal conditions within or near to an office complex already used by the company. Flex space in the corporate workspace inventory was not considered in the initially contracted workspace.

Key decision drivers

• Seeking office strategies that guarantee business resilience and continuity
• Restructuring long-term liabilities
• Reducing costs when increasing/decreasing business operations
• Looking for office strategies with optimal environmental impact – as empty workspaces even generate costs.

Growth:

A strategy for providing maximum flexible workspace in the critical early months of the company’s growing operations, most often implemented intentionally before or during the search for targeted traditional (core) space.

Key decision drivers

• Looking for the most flexible solution for organizing the workspace (in terms of duration and scope of the contract) e.g. while building a new team
• Having a high CAPEX-averse approach - looking for a plug-in solution - workspaces serviced and ready almost overnight

Satellites:

A strategy for when a single, central HQ and employees’ own homes are not enough. A „third place” is added. The network interconnects HQs, homes, and smaller offices within a city (hub in core & spokes in flex) or between numerous cities (satellites in flex) with one central hub (in core).

Key decision drivers

• Strengthening the corporate physical presence in regional markets (e.g. sales reps dealing f2f with clients)
• Having access to local talents pools
• Providing a uniform standard for regional offices based on a particular flex operator’s network
• Employees having a strong desire to shorten their commuting times and be provided with a proper standard of offices when traveling on business

Swing:

One of the most common models to date for combining core & flex space, involving the temporary use of flex space as an entirely alternative to core space, not available at a specific time.

Key decision drivers

• Seeking a combined solution - within a single office space provider, both temporary and permanent
• Moving the company’s headquarters to the target complex sooner than according to the construction schedule – as flex space is usually ready sooner than core space
• Having flexibility in the flex contract to accommodate any changes to the schedule for releasing the target space
• Finding buffer space for the period of searching for new headquarters after the previous lease ends, or for prolonged strategic decisions about relocating to core space