How can Corporate Real-Estate professionals (CREs) help their clients take a more efficient, eco-friendly approach to workspace?

Sustainability in business is no longer an ideal – it’s a must. Aside from the ethical reasons for reducing your carbon footprint in the midst of the climate crisis, being environmentally responsible is crucial for remaining competitive.

Businesses who fail to move with the times and adapt to a lower-impact way of working appear outdated and less relevant to the customers they serve. According to Accenture, nearly two thirds of consumers (63%) prefer to buy products and services from companies that share their personal values and beliefs – and are turning away from those who don’t. Setting and exceeding sustainability goals as part of a company’s Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) programme is vital for building trust and credibility in the eyes of today’s consumers, in a world where minimising our environmental impact is becoming the norm.

Being green also helps businesses stay competitive – by, ultimately, saving them money. Finding opportunities to be more sustainable means stripping out inefficiencies and waste, which impacts their bottom line (as well as the planet). So the business case for being green is that it simultaneously boosts a company’s profits as well as its reputation.

For CRE professionals, the growing demand for sustainable business operations presents a real opportunity to rethink the way their clients are using workspace. For a start, it could mean finding ways to reduce the carbon footprint of employees commuting to a city-centre office. One option is to add flexspace to a company’s real-estate portfolio that makes use of locations closer to where employees actually live. According to a recent report from Regus, the introduction of a local flexspace (and the subsequent shorter commutes) saves 118 metric tonnes of carbon a year.

When it comes to workspace, corporations are increasingly employing a “hub and spoke” model. This means having a central headquarters where certain departments are permanently based (the hub), while also making use of disparate flexspace locations (spokes) that are closer to where certain employees need to be – be it their home, or their clients. This can help to cut down on the waste that comes with leasing larger spaces than are really needed. Instead of hiring a fixed amount of office space that’s never fully used, flexspace allows businesses to upscale or downsize the amount of workspace they need in line with headcounts and working patterns. 

As part of the IWG Enterprise Plan, businesses have on-demand access to 3,500 drop-in locations– all bookable via the app – giving CREs a bespoke and sustainable approach to sourcing workspace for their clients whenever and wherever they need it.

This knowledge can help CREs make data-driven (and more accurate) decisions about leasing office space in the future, since they will be able to predict a client’s true workspace needs based on previous behaviour.

In short, innovations that allow a company to lease workspace in a way that’s more in line with their employees’ working patterns not only helps to save time, money and resources – but also means CREs can deliver better value for their clients while doing their bit for the planet too.

Contact enterprise.sales@iwgplc.com to see how IWG’s Enterprise Plan could help you manage your client’s real-estate portfolio