With 2020 bringing one of the biggest shake-ups to the working world, new ways of working are emerging.
In the aftermath of the widespread adoption of working from home, and the ongoing need to socially distance and adhere to Government regulations, solutions are being found.
As the world quickly embraced distance working, workers have experienced a new culture of flexibility and businesses are assessing the outcomes and significances of this dynamic shift to the way business can operate.
By working from home, modern workers have experienced and embraced the ability to work autonomously and flexibly with either shorter or no commute times.
Because of this, there is a new standard expected in the flexibility of a standard workday by having a mobile workplace, enhancing a team’s work-life balance.
However, the logistics and reality of totally remote and decentralised businesses is still unachievable for most Australian businesses.
At the very least, a centralised hub for essential meetings, storage, key departments and operational support needs to be established.
A ‘hub-and-spoke’ model of business gives companies a modern solution—a main office (the central hub) and then other satellite offices or workspaces (the spokes) that connect and support the hub.
This central hub—a condensed CBD space—functions as a headquarters for the wider business, while the spokes—larger, less urban spaces—provide easily accessible workspaces for employees.
The definition of a hub-and-spoke model is deliberately broad. Your model could include as few spokes as required and does not require each spoke to be uniform in their departments or sizes.
A successful hub-and-spoke model will prioritise employee work-life balance by being closer to their homes and successfully integrate departments or roles that may not have interacted before to innovate and inspire new connections within the business.
The benefits of adopting a hub-and-spoke model for your business can be broken down into several aspects.
This may be obvious but is possibly the most important to consider.
With the hub-and-spoke model, rather than leasing an entire office building in a central location, the same amount of desk space or square meterage can be leased in a financially more effective way.
For example, this model enables you to lease only two floors of CBD space and the remainder of your desks in less urban areas at a more affordable rate with either interchangeable desks or dedicated spaces.
Employees then have the flexibility to book themselves a space in either the ‘hub’ for important meetings or sessions, or any of the more accessible available ‘spokes’ for everyday work.
This model still allows for collaboration for meetings and face-to-face sessions, while empowering employees to control their commutes and work schedules.
Fewer in-office employees means smaller space requirements and reduced real estate costs, directly translating into less overhead costs for your business.
Flexibility in available workspace locations can also reduce attrition.
Some workers said that they loved their preferred locales but also recognised the limited job opportunities there and were grateful for the compromise provided by the hub-and-spoke model.
This can produce a motivation to work harder and stay longer for the business that allows them the opportunity to work closer to home, enjoying shorter commute and greater autonomy over their workday.
This approach is not only beneficial to a company’s bottom line, but it has been proven that flexible working increases productivity, profitability, employee retention and work-life balance.
For businesses, the hub-and-spoke model makes it easier to distribute a workforce while still providing modern, professional spaces with all the necessary equipment.
By using the spokes of the model, employees can also enjoy less commute time, better transport options and more dedicated or flexible space for themselves in the office.
This gives your team the flexibility and time to create a better work-life balance, by cutting down commute time and stress, and creating a less chaotic workspace with all the same social benefits.
Downsizing to a smaller hub and spokes will also shrink your carbon footprint, reducing the energy used in the workspace.
This dovetails with a shorter commute for employees, or the option to work or cycle to the workplace. Having more environmentally friendly practices not only enhances employee and client attitude to your business but contributes to employee loyalty by aligning to their values and reducing their own commuting costs.
While working from home has been a success for some introverts, a recent report by Capita revealed that 77 per cent of businesses said the lack of social contact during working hours has compromised employee wellbeing and affected the overall workplace culture.
Recently, flexibility has become a key recruitment tool.
Businesses that are open to flexible working and workspace immediately widen their talent pool and become a more desirable workspace, attracting more top-tier applicants.
This employee satisfaction also leads to increased productivity, profitability and loyalty from their current workforce.
By giving employees such an amount of choice and autonomy, a business can increase levels of employee engagement, job satisfaction and retention.
For businesses looking for the opportunity to attract a wider pool of talent, prioritise work-life balance of their employees, increase productivity and profitability; the hub-and-spoke office model could be a win-win situation for all.
Many people may look at the hub-and-spoke model and ask why not push the flexibility further into an entirely remote model.
One major concern cited by management and workforce is the potential for people to feel isolated socially and professionally, disconnected from their co-workers and the business.
This can be particularly hurtful in instances where some workers are designated to a space and some are not.
Without in-person check-ins or physical face-to-face meetings, managers may miss opportunities to enhance productivity, access worker satisfaction or build rapport with their team.
This can affect performance, employee evaluations, and the development of interpersonal skills between singular employees or wider teams.
The ability to video conference is a useful tool, but it pales in comparison to an actual physical meeting when engaging with your team.
The physical distance between teams easily and frequently translates into miscommunication and strained relationships, directly affecting not only cultural issues, such as employee satisfaction and retention; but real bottom-line factors such as collaborative success and project organisation.
At the heart of the hub-and-spoke model is flexibility and mobility.
The best option to adopt this flexible, pragmatic and mobile strategy in Australia is to utilise coworking and flexible office spaces.
These ready-to-move-in spaces include established infrastructure and agile set-up if further infrastructure is needed, flexible terms with regards to term length and access, and usually multiple locations within the one region that are accessible via customised membership terms.
Flexible workspaces also include various meeting rooms throughout the building to connect to your team in the spoke offices, while also allowing visitors for physical meetings or to cowork for the day, so that your more remote workers are always welcome to drop in.
Providing the bare bones of the model already, a flexible office space could establish your hub-and-spoke model under one single tenancy and streamline your business even further in one simple step.
You can learn more and find out if the hub-and-spoke model or a flexible workspace is right for your business y talking to Christie Spaces, which provides a variety of workspace options in Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane.
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