Mobile offices

This week the Morgan Pryce offices are being refurbished to present a more client-facing office, which is in line with the clients that they are meeting on a day-to-day basis. We, the staff, have been asked to be mobile in the way they work this week and to spend as little time in the office as possible to avoid getting in the way. 

It has got me thinking about the future of mobile working as I write this article sitting in a quirky coffee shop in the heart of Soho. Is it going to become increasingly more common for office workers to not to come into the office and instead work from home or in fact anywhere. Many firms have moved to cloud- based storage with ever more joining, and with information and applications available online, it is possible  to access everything you need to do your job fully from anywhere that you can get an internet connection. 

The question is whether it is beneficial to a business’s productivity and efficiency not to have workers based in the same place working together in an office environment. The initial financial costs are going to reduce as a major overhead of renting an office will reduce. In the commercial office market you pay per square foot and if you have fewer staff working in the office you can take a smaller space, naturally reducing costs per annum. Companies would tend to create a hot-desking environment so that when employees need to be in the office they can sit down at any desk and get working straight away.

The main argument against mobile working is whether staff will be as efficient and work as hard. If you do not have to get up in the morning to go somewhere where senior staff members are keeping an eye on their team, will you work? On the other hand employees may be more comfortable and relaxed at home while avoiding, which may be a stressful commute which may equate to higher-quality, focused work. 

This news was brought to you by Morgan Pryce, a specialist tenant acquisition agent with offices in Oxford Circus and the City. Morgan Pryce specialises in search, negotiation and project management and works exclusively for tenants.