The changing business & Property landscape

As many people are getting back to their place of work, offices are beginning to come to life again. Shops, bars and restaurants, they’re slowly making a comeback and warehouses and manufacturing units are generally carrying on as they have been throughout the last year or so.

We’re working with many of our clients at the moment to try and make sense of how Covid’s changed their property requirements now and looking at the next few years as well. Many clients are looking around their offices and wondering if they’ll ever be at capacity again. Others have seen demand for products and services soar, requiring more warehouse and manufacturing space. Our clients in the leisure and retail sector have had a mixed time, some suffering greatly from the enforced closure of their businesses, whilst others have had record breaking years in the fast food sector in particular, driving demand for new sites and properties.

Working from home…does it work?

Our HR team have seen that for the majority of businesses that have found themselves working from home during lockdown, under the right circumstances, working from home does actually work. But there are of course tasks which naturally lend themselves to work better from the office or workplace. So a blended approach may be the way for many.

It’s therefore important to find the right balance. Employees will have different opinions on what works best for them, but it’s important that these arrangements also suit the business. We can support employers in setting a framework around working arrangements and building a solution which optimizes the productivity of their workforce whilst offering them the flexibility that many will now expect.

It’s not just businesses who have had a hard time…

Our landlord clients have had a difficult time as well, balancing their needs to receive rents to service their debt or pay their bills against the genuine interest in supporting their tenants through tough times in their businesses. Whatever your business has experienced, it’s very likely that your property and workforce needs before Covid are very different now.

It’s important for employers to review the current requirements of their business, and analyse if they have the workforce to meet their needs going forward and then ensure the property required to operate efficiently matches up. With the end in sight for the ‘coronavirus act’ protection to tenants who are in arrears of rent and the furlough schemes support tailing off over the coming months, now’s the right time to be thinking very carefully about your workforce and property and make some proactive decisions.