Office design has become one of the major challenges in creating the pandemic-era workspace.
Fast Company is reporting that at least three Big Four firms are exploring an approach called "hub and spoke." Sheila Botting, president for the Americas at the commercial real estate company Avison Young, said that she's seen companies such as Deloitte and KPMG, exploring a hub-and-spoke approach. In addition, Byron Carlock, real estate leader at PricewaterhouseCoopers, said, “What I’m hearing about hub and spoke is bigger companies offering drive-to destinations for office opportunities for people to gather without having to get on mass transit." He added, “We were already beginning to see an uptick in suburban leasing, mostly for cost reasons, but now we’re also seeing it for access reasons.”
Firm managers have been faced with the question of how to avoid wasting money on office space while, at the same time, accommodating workers who have taken well to telecommuting but still want to come into the office every so often. The concern is that by maintaining the pre-pandemic mindset of having a big central office, firms will let a lot of square footage go to waste since there will be a lot fewer people there on any given day.
The hub-and-spoke model is a direct answer to this question. The idea, essentially, is to replace one huge central office with several smaller "spokes" offices spread throughout the area, with perhaps a small "hub" office that serves mainly to coordinate. This way, workers can primarily telecommute, but if they need to pop on over to the office, there will be one nearby, so that the don't have to travel to the big central office. Use of space would be scheduled based on needs; for example, one day a spokes office could be used entirely for marketing, while another day could belong to another department.
What's more, even if there are larger numbers of smaller offices, many are still thinking it would be cheaper than leasing a building in the middle of the metro downtown area. It is one of many ways that firms are looking to reconfigure their offices to account for the growing number of remote workers who see far less of the office than they used to.