Technology has vastly reshaped the modern workplace and continues to do so with each passing year. Companies realize that the old office-based model is no longer applicable to the contemporary world. There's no need to hire legions of people who all travel into a central hub to do tasks. It can all be done remotely at a much lower cost with the right cloud communication devices.

Offices are expensive. The cost of the buildings themselves constitutes a significant portion of the price, as does the location. Each business in a city competes with all others for office space, pushing costs up. Those close to the major transport hubs in the centre to astronomical levels. Renting a prestigious downtown office for the exclusive use of your business isn't cheap.

The New Ways That People Work

The way that people work is changing for both cultural and technological reasons. Companies increasingly acknowledge that far from being risky, giving employees more autonomy over how they use their time can help improve their productivity enormously. People are a lot happier when they feel as if they are masters of their time.

Technology is changing things too. The internet was the first phase of this, allowing home computers to double up as offices by linking to the world wide web. The cloud, however, has arguably been even more transformative. With the cloud, an employee can access the company portal from any device and sign in to use whatever software they need.

Keeping in touch with colleagues and collaborating with others is enhanced by digital tools. Progressive companies can see the benefits of this and have realized that there isn't any point paying for expensive offices anymore. Most people are happy to work by themselves without sharing a vast room with all of the other people in the organization. They use digital communication tools when they need them and, if not, get on with their work.

The financial crisis at the end of the last decade may have played a significant role in changing how we work also. One of the interesting things about the recent recession was that both workers and employers both saw the need to abandon the traditional 9 to 5 working hours to protect their jobs.

The result of this was so-called "smart working." Here, employers adjusted the hours they employed people according to how much they needed them, doing away with old-fashioned 35-hour contracts in the process. People, therefore, didn't need to be in the office from dawn until dusk. It made much more sense to let them come and go as they please.

The last ten years, therefore, has shaped the way that people work enormously. It's also led to a series of innovations designed to make it easier for progressive employers to offer their team flexible working options while reducing costs. We discuss them below.

Alternatives To Traditional Offices

Traditional offices come with a host of disadvantages. Perhaps most egregious is the fact that companies have to pay high monthly rents, even if they don't use their offices all the time. A startup, for instance, might only need to use its offices a couple of times during the week to meet with VCs - the rest of the time its surplus to requirements. Yet, it still has to pay full price.

Entrepreneurs in the office space realized this and began offering companies a range of alternatives which could drive down costs and provide other benefits, such as cutting carbon footprint.

Serviced Offices

Serviced offices are one step up from traditional rented offices. When renting a conventional office, it's the responsibility of the company to fit it out, install sockets and the internet, and provide desks and computers. But a serviced office is different.

The idea behind a serviced office is to provide companies with a space that, theoretically, they could move into immediately and begin work. Companies still have to pay a monthly fee, usually more than if they just rented the space alone, but they avoid the hassle of fitting out the new space.

Serviced offices eliminate moving time too. While firms moving to traditional spaces must delay while contractors install all the necessary infrastructure, those going to a serviced office don't.

Some serviced offices come with additional facilities designed to meet the needs of your particular business activities. Providers will often offer things like meeting rooms, receptions teams, and in-office maintenance staff, such as cleaners. The idea is to eliminate as much admin on your behalf as possible so that you can move in straight away and start work. All the cleaning and office admin is already taken care of for you.

The problem with serviced offices, of course, is that they still demand that you pay high rents and commit to a minimum term. Sure, all of the services that you need are there, but you can't just pay for the office facilities you use by the hour, and that makes it expensive.

Virtual Offices

Virtual offices are a step up from serviced offices. Like the latter, they can provide all of the things you need on-site, like receptionists, but they don't attempt to lock you into lengthy contracts. You get a prestigious CBD address and you pay for the meeting room space when you need it - no more, no less.

A virtual office isn't something "in the cloud" or "digital" - it's still a physical office. But the beautiful thing about it is that you only pay for the office time that you use. You're not locked into a contract and don't have to pay rent or business rates for months or years on end.

Like serviced offices, virtual offices can provide a range of additional facilities that you can use, depending on your needs. For instance, when you need to meet with clients or make presentations, you can rent out meeting rooms on an hourly basis. You only pay, therefore, for what you use, freeing up office space for other companies to use.

Virtual offices offer businesses like yours a host of advantages. The main advantage is, arguably, reduced cost. Virtual offices tend to work out as a fraction of the price of full-time traditionally-rented spaces. These types of offices also make it easier for you to retain your staff. Most people prefer telecommuting instead of travelling into the office every day in their car or on the train.

Finally, virtual offices let your company get closer to its green objectives. By sharing resources with other companies and reducing the number of people commuting into work every day, you slash your total carbon output.

Hot Desks

The last approach that progressive businesses are experimenting with is hot desks.

The idea of hot desking isn't anything new: it's something that businesses have been using for a long time. But thanks to the advent of the cloud, it's becoming easier to organize. HR can create rotas for who will occupy each desk in the office and when using software which they can then update over the cloud and display to each member of the organization.

Hot desking is the brainchild of Erik Veldoen's activity-based working theory. His idea was to reduce the total number of working spaces in the office to encourage people to find new places to work on problems and solve them.

In his view, you don't need to provide a desk for every person in your organization. Nothing is stopping you from letting multiple people use the same workstations at different times of the day when they're needed in the office.

Hot desking has since become a popular tool for businesses who offer flexible hours or who have mobile workforces. There's simply no need for each person to have a station that they call their own. People turn up at the office and then work at the available desks. It's that simple.

Companies that try it often notice quite a few benefits from using hot desks. The main is the reduction of mess. When people don't have a desk of their own, clutter doesn't build up as much. The office remains tidy and much easier for cleaning staff to manage at the end of the working day.

Hot desking also enables companies to rent smaller office spaces. If you know that your organization will use a maximum of ten desks at once, you don't need office space for twenty, even if you employ twenty people. Hot desking allows you to save considerably on rent while avoiding any damage to your productivity or bottom line.

When it comes to choosing any one of these alternatives, there isn't a right or wrong answer: it all depends on the needs of your firm.

A plumbing company, for instance, might benefit from hot desking. A core staff directs operations from a central office, while individual plumbers in the field come and go as they please.

Startups, on the other hand, might benefit more from virtual offices. Founders on a tight budget can pay for meeting rooms by the hour to meet VCs and clients, and then stop paying the moment they no longer need the space.

NO minimum term
NO long term contracts