How to Save $240,000 on Your Office Real Estate in Three Years

Flex space could save companies up to 60 percent in costs, which can be invested in building the business. In such a challenging time from a financial perspective, that’s significant. Rather than gambling, there’s now an algorithm to better understand your office space investment risks.

Fifty percent of workplaces will soon be asked to pull off the ultimate balancing act. Once solely the home of physical traditional office space, they will now be tasked with combining work from home and third-party solutions as well. On every continent, this perplexing, vexing question is being asked by HR teams, CEOs and employees alike: How in the world are we meant to go back to work after months of coronavirus-induced telecommuting, and just exactly will it look like?

I don’t believe the extreme all-or-nothing approach is the answer.

Modern workers have evolved and changed, and so have their needs. Hybrid work schedules weren’t created by the coronavirus — they were already a frequent thing, and flexibility in on-call hours has been becoming more prevalent for decades, thanks to technological advances that enabled connectivity and availability becoming more advanced in turn. Our workplaces were always hybrid and flexible; Coronavirus merely pushed forward what was already in motion.
So for most companies, the answer will not be an all or nothing solution. It will be something more measured. We will have to go back to the office, because the office is more than just the work we do at our desks. It’s our community, our connection and in many ways, our tribe. But we won’t have to go back to the office in the exact way the we did before, in the exact hours and patterns we did before, because we have learned, and proved to ourselves and our coworkers, that life, business and deals go on even when we don’t leave the house or even get out of our pajamas.

And what’s more cost-effective for employers?

Bringing everyone back to the office, keeping them all at home, or landing somewhere in between? Well, there’s a way you can know for certain:

At Mindspace, we thrive in the gray space between assumptions, and we know that creativity, originality and functionality all happen best when we share both space and ideas. We’ve been working in the shared office space world for years, and so we’ve created an algorithm in a form of a simple calculator, to help you see just how many thousands of dollars you can save by shifting from traditional offices to a flexible (aka coworking) workspace. It’s easy to use: just punch your specifics into the calculator and the benefits to your workplace for the post-Covid-19 era will be calculated for you, in clear dollars/euros and cents.

Nothing feels certain these days.

So your best weapon is flexibility and cost-effectiveness, especially in the short term. To help grow your business and keep things flexible, think about where costs can be saved. That conference room that you use only once or twice a week? Why are you paying for it 24/7? What about the lounge? The lobby? The restrooms? Those costs can be split, and spread out. And your business, in turn, can be strengthened and steadied.

There has perhaps never been a more important moment to weigh every option available when it comes to moving back into office space after so much time at home. Our calculator makes it easier. It removes a lot of uncertainty.

Here’s an example: our calculator shows a savings of $244,000 over three years for a company of 25 people when choosing a flexible office over a traditional office in San Francisco. The amount you save will of course depend on a variety of office-specific parameters, but the savings come from slashes in costs for cleaning, maintenance, Internet, equipment and insurance. Our thinking is clear: Why not split the cost of all of these services with other companies rather than spend your time organizing them and taking on the burden of their costs yourself?

In short: switching to flex space could save companies up to 60 percent in costs.

Think about the investment that can mean for you, and how much of a building block that can become. You don’t need to gamble. You just need to understand the risks.

It’s also important to keep your eyes on the long game while you think about short-term survival too. For most companies, generally around year four/five, t he costs of a traditional workspace begin to dip compared to that of a flexible space. So keep that long-term outlook in mind even while you’re thinking about your short-term, post-pandemic response.

In this moment however, flex spaces are a sweet spot for many. They’re a safe middle ground. And we know that for a lot of employers, anything shared brings up fears of germs. We get it. So that’s why we’ve worked together with other office providers and heightened our cleaning, sanitization and cleanliness in all spaces and on all high-touch surfaces.

The right business decisions are worth more than ever before. And the right data is what drives those decisions; We’re here to support.