#WRKPLC

Welcome to my newsletter?#WRKPLC ?which will be published every 2 weeks. This is where I will share my thoughts on interesting headlines and emerging topics from the past two weeks, plus cool office designs and opinion pieces. If you don't get a lot of time to keep up with the news,?#WRKPLC ?will do the heavy lifting for you.

NEED TO KNOW / Here’s why London office rent has hardly dropped

With the rise of home and remote working, the London office market has seen a big jump in vacancy rates. It’s reported to be as high as 31 million sq ft according to CoStar.

So with all that available space, surely the rental costs for office space have gone down? Well, not exactly. There are a few things at play here as not only are tenant expectations now higher, but landlords have also had to offer longer rent-free periods and the gap between Grade A space and Grade B space has grown dramatically.

Tenants have changed their priorities during the pandemic and now during the ongoing return to the office saga, it’s become about quality, not quantity. Occupiers are downsizing in favour of higher quality space with access to better amenities.

This article ?does a fantastic job of explaining complex terminology and framing up the current state of the London office market.

FUTURE OF WORK / Attracting employees back to the workplace is a top priority

Global powerhouse Gensler has published new data from a poll of CoreNet members to understand new workplace insights and the current priorities in different organisations.

The top priorities should not be a surprise to you but seeing the data does reaffirm what is sometimes overlooked in the RTO debate. 55% of the survey respondents stated that attracting staff back to the workplace was the top priority in their organisation. All in all, not that surprising as so many leaders have expressed the challenge of getting people back into the office. Let’s not forget?Apple’s return-to-office backlash ?last month which resulted in petitions from the staff!

However, what is worth noting from the poll is that 87% of respondents believe that the primary purpose of the office is to collaborate within teams. Is that the magic bullet we needed to hear to design more collaborative spaces? Well, it’s slightly more complex than that. You can?read the full blog ?for a deeper dive into how organisations can attract employees back to the workplace.

VIRAL TREND / Quiet quitting is old news,?FatFIRE ?is the latest viral trend

Where quiet quitting put a pretty negative spin on our working lives with so many of us unhappy enough in our jobs to do the bare minimum and enjoy a work/life balance, FatFIRE is the other end of the spectrum.

FatFIRE is the philosophy being adopted by a group of people, hosted through Reddit, who are seeking to make as much money as possible, as quickly as they can, and leave the rat race in good time to enjoy life.?

So why FatFIRE? Well, Fat refers to a large nest egg which you’ll need in later life and FIRE stands for Financial Independence, Retire Early. This may well be the plan for a lot of us already, just without the alliterative forum thread title.?

Read more here on Forbes . (Subscription required.)

FUTURE OF WORK / The 4-day week here to stay?

A pilot scheme is taking place where over 70 companies were put on a revised timetable of a 4-day working week while being paid 100% of their salary. Is this too good to be true?

For some, this is a hard concept to grasp due to the obvious challenges around suddenly losing a day in your week while those around you, clients and suppliers, do not. However, of the firms taking part in the trial, 86% have said that they would keep the 4-day week after the trial and that is working well for the business.

The trial is being run by the aptly named group, 4 Day Week, to shift to a shorter working week. Some more traditional companies are said to have found the shift trickier than others but overall it's been positive.

For me, this sounds great but in reality, I think there are more important challenges that need to be addressed/solved when it comes to the workplace and our ways of working. For some companies only just coming to terms with hybrid, the thought of a 4-day week may seem like a bit of a stretch.

Check out the?full BBC article here.?

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