In the years since the pandemic, much has been written about the changing world of work. Mike Wiseman outlines how office campuses can provide high-quality, attractive workplaces that attract and retain key talent.

The trend of companies placing greater emphasis on the wellbeing of their people accelerated significantly during the pandemic and continues apace as businesses now look at ways to attract staff back to the workplace following the mass move to work from home when Covid struck.

I talk to businesses looking for office space every day about the key to their success – ‘our people’ is always one of the top answers they give me.
But in a world where competition for the best talent is fierce, and younger workers have greater opportunities to move jobs than they did a few decades ago, how do you attract and retain the best staff? And how do you encourage them back under one roof so they can collaborate, learn and a strong culture can thrive?

Real estate is a key part of the equation, and businesses are thinking differently about what types of space to take for their teams.

Gone are the days of staff sitting in dark cubicles in faceless offices on isolated business parks, with nothing but a café around the corner as an option for lunch. To attract high-performing teams back to the office, the experience of coming to work must be more appealing than sitting at home – but how can you deliver that?

British Land owns and manages three ‘campuses’ in central London. As owners of the buildings and the spaces around them, we are able to create vibrant, safe places where we can influence the experience around the building – which, increasingly, is as important to tenants as what goes on inside.

Since the pandemic, we’ve seen huge interest in office space on these campuses. They are located in central London, adjacent to big transport hubs such as Paddington, Liverpool Street and Euston, and they offer a range of restaurants, bars, shops, gyms, as well as outdoor, green areas for taking breaks from the working day. All these factors make the experience of coming to the office more enjoyable and productive.

But aside from having a happy workforce together under one roof, what other benefits are there to taking space on a campus? Businesses are increasingly focused on how to run their portfolios more efficiently, and we are seeing this in two ways.

Office flexibility

We take a long-term approach and build to the highest environmental standards, meaning all of our buildings are operationally best in class and support our customers in achieving their owns sustainability objectives. But being part of a campus allows our customers to benefit from economies of scale and resource sharing, which further reduces their environmental impact. Initiatives such as consolidated deliveries lower transport emissions while share infrastructure, such as energy systems, allows for more efficient use of resources – such as using the waste heat from our offices at Canada Water to heat the apartments above them.
The second is flexibility. We want to help our office customers run more efficient real estate portfolios and the campus model enables them to do that. In the world of rapidly changing business needs, cost pressures, changing world of work, and AI impact, flexibility is key and growth businesses can have a clear trajectory on our campuses – they can take a small amount of space now and grow into bigger space somewhere else on our campus in the future.

They also have access to Storey Club, spaces within one building which provide meeting rooms on demand for any tenant on our campus. This is an efficient way for a business to ensure it’s not wasting space with meeting rooms sitting empty all day on its own floors.

Cluster together

On top of this, being part of a campus allows communities of businesses to cluster together, sharing ideas, building relationships and doing business together. We have witnessed the positive effects of clustering first-hand at our Broadgate campus in the City over the past eight years, creating spaces for small fintech firms, allowing them to grow. This then attracted law and financial services businesses to the campus who wanted to be part of the ecosystem.
We are replicating this approach at Regent’s Place, our campus in London’s Knowledge Quarter. Here, science and technology businesses can work side by side with the biggest names in tech like Google and Meta and take advantage of its location just a stone’s throw from institutions such as the Wellcome Trust, the Francis Crick Institute and the Alan Turing Institute, but also create their own network on the campus itself. The nature of such innovative businesses means they will inevitably go through a period of rapid change so being able to access the flexibility that a campus offers is really important to them.

As we see the world of work continue to evolve, workers are becoming ever more discerning about the type of environment in which they want to spend their day, and companies are responding by providing high-quality, attractive workplaces within amenity-rich, engaging places. A campus can deliver all of that and more; it can be a key part of the puzzle of how to keep your people happy – and willing to stay.

This article was originally published in Personnel Today on 22 October 2024.