When office and amenities leaders gathered at our Flex/26 London occasion in early March, they got here to attach with friends, study trending worktech improvements, and share finest practices for navigating the altering work surroundings. What they found was that organizations have already crossed the “complexity threshold,” the place conventional approaches to office administration are not sufficient.
Though the group represented many alternative industries, together with enterprise providers, insurance coverage, authorized, accounting, banking, finance, and expertise, they grapple with the identical elementary challenges: managing hybrid work’s uneven demand, securing more and more linked constructing methods, delivering seamless worker experiences, and making assured choices with out complete information.
Key takeaways
- Office complexity has crossed a vital threshold the place conventional administration approaches not scale, as organizations face hybrid work patterns creating uneven demand, constructing methods turning into safety vulnerabilities, and disconnected information stopping assured choices. The answer rethinking how office operations join and talk.
- Probably the most profitable organizations are designing workplaces for expertise and collaboration moderately than merely offering desk stock, dramatically decreasing workstation counts whereas investing in social areas that give workers compelling causes to commute.
- Information has emerged because the important basis for contemporary office technique, however solely when it drives motion moderately than accumulating in dashboards. Organizations that excel are constructing built-in information threads that make operational seamless.
What emerged from the day’s shows and buyer conversations was a clearer image of how main organizations are rethinking office operations and establishing new methods to succeed.
The hybrid work equation: Balancing capability and worker expertise
Raj, CEO of Eptura, opened the occasion with numbers that illustrated most of the essential challenges dealing with facility and office leaders. In London, employees common 2.7 days per week within the workplace, with 60% of UK companies now requiring in-office attendance and two-thirds of workers settling right into a three-day sample.
However behavioral consistency usually masks operational complexity.
Demand is uneven and unpredictable, with midweek focus. Static insurance policies don’t take in the variability properly, Batra defined.
Places of work stay overcrowded Tuesday via Thursday and underutilized on Mondays and Fridays — a sample confirmed via viewers polling the place attendees reported uneven desk reserving throughout the week.
Many organizations are looking for the best measurement for his or her footprints. Sixty-nine % of enormous workplace portfolios have already been considerably decreased, however 45% of UK companies want to broaden or reconfigure present house throughout the subsequent 12-18 months. Organizations aren’t merely shrinking — they’re basically rethinking what their actual property ought to allow.
That’s arduous to do, although, when solely 27% of operational leaders really feel they’ve the correct mix of collaboration to desk house, and globally, 64% of workplace house stays underutilized.
Batra is assured corporations can discover success.
Trying ahead, he instructed that office composition will proceed to evolve, and that “Fifty % of workspaces will develop into areas to socialize and collaborate,” making a elementary shift from excited about workplaces primarily as particular person workstation stock to viewing them as collaborative infrastructure.
Moore Kingston Smith: Rightsizing meets expertise design
Throughout a fireplace chat, Phil Healey, head of amenities at accounting agency Moore Kingston Smith, shared how his agency tackled a singular hybrid work problem. Moore Kingston Smith made a number of acquisitions, creating speedy integration and cultural challenges.
The agency’s response was counterintuitive. Reasonably than merely including capability, they lower desk counts from 380 to 150 whereas fully redesigning their headquarters round expertise moderately than capability.
“To get folks into that workplace is made up of so many alternative aspects of what we have to implement. So, getting folks into, firstly a stunning workplace, house to socialize and we’ve got a very good social committee, we’ve run some good occasions, social quizzes, and many others. We’ve made the areas so there are many collaboration areas.”
“We’ve now obtained the opposite downside the place we’ve obtained too many individuals wanting to come back into our head workplace.”
However success created new operational challenges. Now there are too many individuals who wish to come into the workplace, and peak days nonetheless led to capability shortages, requiring the agency to amass a 50-desk overflow house close to their headquarters. Managing this new dynamic required subtle reserving methods with strict insurance policies: two-week advance reserving home windows and structured group days to make sure predictable stream.
Freshfields: Information as the inspiration for world technique
Leonie Blakeley, amenities supervisor at world regulation agency Freshfields, echoed the vital position of information in navigating the trendy office panorama throughout her session. Her insights come from managing amenities throughout a number of areas globally, the place she runs bimonthly coordination calls that at all times embody information matters.
“Information is my basis. Everyone within the agency, globally, strategically. Information is my core factor that fires me up. It’s the bedrock of why we use the workplaces in the best way that we do. We have now assembly rooms, utilization of assembly rooms, utilization of areas, no matter the kind of house useful resource they is likely to be, is extremely essential, but additionally the information round aspect of issues.”
A knowledge-driven strategy allows strategic actual property choices throughout Freshfields’ world portfolio. Blakeley spends substantial time analyzing utilization information from completely different areas to help “proper sizing” — making certain workplaces are specified accurately via architects and design plans. Standardization throughout areas creates the inspiration for strategic decision-making at scale.
However information with out function falls brief.
“The workplace needs to be a purpose to come back in, be it the folks, be it the expertise, be it the workstation arrange, all the weather that may be an workplace. You have to make a spot of alternative to come back to and that return on anyone’s funding of commuting in, and the cost-time of commuting in.”
The expertise dilemma: Safety and the seamless expertise
The occasion included a more in-depth have a look at a twin problem dealing with fashionable workplaces: constructing methods which might be concurrently safer and extra seamless. These aren’t competing priorities, although. As an alternative, they’re interdependent necessities that organizations should handle collectively.
The brand new assault floor: Buildings and the constructed surroundings
Twenty-seven % of UK buildings have reported cyber incidents linked to constructing administration methods — a sobering statistic that illustrates how the convergence of operational expertise and IT creates new vulnerabilities. When constructing methods hook up with enterprise networks — HVAC speaking to company networks, entry management syncing with HR methods, assembly room shows connecting to calendars — they cease being purely amenities infrastructure and develop into potential vectors for safety breaches.
Batra emphasised the shift, explaining that constructing administration methods at the moment are interconnected with enterprise IT networks, making the bodily constructing itself a part of an organization’s digital infrastructure. He cautioned that good buildings characterize a brand new class of operational and digital threat, requiring administration requirements as rigorous as these utilized to all different mission-critical methods.
The frictionless crucial: Know-how for high-stakes environments
On the similar time, organizations should ship seamless expertise experiences. In high-pressure environments the place time equals cash, friction carries actual price.
In follow, then, the definition of frictionless extends far past simply the assembly room to incorporate catering, customer administration, wayfinding, and all of the supporting providers that assist folks navigate the house. Whereas it may be as simple as reserving a room, the true problem comes when attempting to make sure everybody on-site has the help they should ship distinctive service.
Graeme Roberts, office design supervisor at Royal London, is pursuing integration via each sensor expertise and AI. The group makes use of sensors to seize occupancy information, which Roberts is working to combine instantly into automated check-in workflows. Past present automation, he’s exploring how AI can enhance service supply throughout reserving and office features.
“Making folks’s expertise seamless is what I wish to get to utilizing desk reserving, assembly room reserving, checking into your desks, all that type of stuff needs to be seamless. Folks shouldn’t want to consider it,” he stated.
The information visibility problem: Connecting disconnected methods
Batra’s keynote highlighted a structural difficulty underlying many operational challenges. “The constructed surroundings has crossed a complexity threshold,” he defined, “and the problem is how elements work collectively as a system.”
Meg Swanson, Eptura’s chief product officer, described the state of affairs utilizing present market information. Area utilization globally averages 49% — far beneath the 74% goal — but organizations face mounting operational complexity. Upkeep work orders have elevated 12 months over 12 months, whereas regardless of all of the office expertise accessible, 50% of corporations nonetheless depend on electronic mail for ticketing requests.
Their remarks matched what attendees are already feeling. In a stay ballot, 31 respondents recognized lack of trusted information to show what’s working as their main problem, far outpacing different issues like time spent reserving areas at 18 votes, or coordination difficulties at 10 votes.
The answer begins with pulling the whole lot collectively, and Swanson highlighted a give attention to ensuring that’s a digital thread, that the whole lot integrates and works collectively.”
In his presentation, Michael Robbins, director of options engineering at Eptura, defined how a unified platform creates this thread by unifying information throughout actual property, occupancy, property, and office exercise.
“Each interplay, whether or not somebody’s reserving a desk, submitting a ticket, it now occurs in a extra linked manner the place we’re making the office greater than one thing that’s simply bodily, it’s digital,” he stated.
Palms-on workshops and insightful classes
The occasion additionally helped attendees develop instruments to handle information visibility downside. A hands-on workshop targeted on creating sensible office scorecards, the place tables collaborated to outline targeted metrics that management may leverage for stronger decision-making.
Attendees labored to construct brief scorecard aligned to a single end result with clear possession and evaluation cadence, which facilitators known as a “entrance web page” view. Individuals additionally recognized one metric they might realistically act on, turning the summary problem of proving what’s working into concrete subsequent steps.
The sensible strategy displays the broader shift attendees should navigate, the transfer from information assortment to information utilization, from intuition-based choices to evidence-driven technique.
Past the collaborative workshop, finest follow classes addressed the precise operational challenges surfaced all through the day. Attendees realized easy methods to use group reserving workflows to handle structured hybrid patterns utilizing Eptura, instantly tackling the midweek bottleneck Healey described at Moore Kingston Smith. Periods lined how reservation information from desk bookings feeds into house planning instruments, enabling the type of utilization evaluation Blakeley emphasised at Freshfields.
Individuals additionally explored easy methods to flag upkeep conflicts with future bookings to reduce workspace disruption, which is the operational friction Roberts at Royal London works to remove via his concierge strategy.
Understanding the worth of partnerships
Virginia Miracle, chief buyer officer at Eptura, led a session on what organizations ought to anticipate from their office expertise partnerships. She outlined three core expectations: readability moderately than misalignment, partnership moderately than transactional relationships, and worth moderately than simply options.
The session emphasised that fashionable office expertise is software program plus experience, delivered throughout a number of channels when organizations want it.
Miracle described this as a hierarchy, like Maslow’s, with:
- Dependable help kinds the inspiration
- Adoption and relationship-building create confidence
- ROI and outcomes ship the enterprise worth that justified the funding
For organizations navigating the complexity threshold described all through the occasion, this framework provided a sensible lens for evaluating not simply what expertise does, however how vendor relationships allow sustained operational excellence.
Be part of the dialog
Occasions like Flex/26 London create house for the type of peer-to-peer studying and strategic conversations that form how organizations strategy office complexity. If the insights shared right here resonated with your personal challenges or in the event you’re trying to join with others navigating related transformations, discover our thrilling upcoming occasions.
Ceaselessly requested questions
By Erin Sevitz
As Vice President of Content material and Buyer Advertising at Eptura, Erin Sevitz oversees groups accountable for offering worktech insights and interesting 25 million Eptura customers worldwide. With over 10 years in thought management on office administration and the constructed surroundings, Erin brings deep business data to her position. Beforehand, she led communications for the Worldwide Facility Administration Affiliation, a world nonprofit devoted to skilled improvement for office strategists and constructing managers, and served as editor in chief for IFMA’s FMJ journal.
