WFH is losing its shine | Why demand for flexible working hubs is soaring

Pre-pandemic working from home (WFH) was the holy grail of many an employee’s lofty ambitions for the ultimate state of employment, a utopia of being paid while in pyjamas and fitting in the school run while on a Teams meet, but has it lost its shine and is our primitive need to brush shoulders with an actual human being starting to rise from the ashes?

The Times reports that revenues at IWG, owner of the serviced office brand Regus, grew to a record £3.34billion last year. You’d imagine that it would be a sector that would be faltering not growing, afterall most employers now allow for half the week to be spent WFH. The company reports that the demand is for locations outside of big city centres, closer to where people live, again an anomaly that would not have been imagined pre-COVID or even just post-COVID.

Speaking to the paper, Mark Dixon, IWG’s Chief Executive said, “Offices are a great place to work, but they need to be convenient. What people don’t want to do is commute, at their own cost, long distances. The office most certainly isn’t dead, it’s just moved.”

The human touch

It depends where on the scale you sit. For many introverts, WFH is a blessed relief from the exhaustion of humans but for the mid-tier that oscillate between a total energy re-charge from 24/7 socialising to an emptying down after none, the reality is that we all need a bit of a ‘water cooler’ chat to keep us sane.