After a gap of two years, the return to offices has gathered momentum with ebbing Covid-19 cases, signifying positive occupier confidence with 74% of the occupiers looking towards distributed workspaces as a strategy to shift from location-centric to people-centric workspaces, mentioned a C-Suite Survey conducted by real estate consultancy firm Colliers and co-working player Awfis.
“As the third wave of Covid-19 started waning in February, the return to office gained momentum. As a result, by June 2022 about 34-35% of the of companies saw about 75-100% of employees back in office (includes hybrid work). Going ahead, we feel employers would center workplans around flexibility,” said the study titled ‘Workplace & Flexibility’ that surveyed about 150 companies across six top cities – Hyderabad, Bengaluru, Mumbai, Chennai, Delhi NCR and Pune.
The survey also found that about 74% of companies are eyeing distributed workspaces as a strategy to make the shift from location-centric to people-centric workspaces, that will give employees flexibility and result in productivity gains for companies.
Pointing out that a distributed workspace strategy is the way to go in this new era of experiential workplaces, Ramesh Nair, CEO India & managing director, market development Asia, Colliers, said occupiers are prefering to house their teams in flex centres across cities.
“This shift in strategy also reflects in leasing trends with flex operators leasing about 3.5 million sq feet of space in H1 2022 accounting for about 13% of overall leasing across the top six cities, which is almost three-fourths of the flex leasing that took place in entire 2021,” he said.
While the share of flex in overall leasing in H1 2022 was highest in Pune at 34%, it was followed by Delhi NCR at 19%, Mumbai with 16%, Bengaluru with 15% and Hyderabad and Chennai with 8% each.
Here Nair also pointed out that as companies focus on balancing business goals and employee wellbeing, over half the IT/ITeS companies surveyed are opting for a distributed work model. “We can see opportunities for flex spaces both in metro and non-metro cities where total flex spaces are likely to grow by over two-fold to 5.5 million sq feet by 2022 end,” he added.
Awfis founder & CEO Amit Ramani said going forward the number of occupier companies opting for flex centres for their workspace requirement would increase to 77%. “We expect exceptional demand in the future, driven largely by large corporates for de-densification of existing traditional offices, Ramani said.
This story appeared in the 3 August, 2022 issue of ET HRWorld and was originally published at: Return to office highest in consultancy companies, telcos