Large businesses and corporate companies taking serviced office space is no new thing. For years these businesses have used Regus and other serviced office providers for project spaces, new locations and swing space. But with the serviced office and co-working arena evolving at a rapid pace and new buzzwords such as core and flex entering the corporate real estate world, how can these occupiers’ best utilise this type of space on a global scale?

More recently we have seen large businesses and corporates place their innovation and tech teams into co-working environments as they seek to encourage their staff to collaborate and engage with other fledging start-ups with the hope of tapping in to new innovations. In some cases, we have even seen companies taking whole floors and even buildings or moving their entire businesses into a serviced office. For example IBM and WeWork in New York, where they moved 600 staff into a 70,000 sq ft WeWork.

In addition, some companies are giving staff the opportunity to work flexibly by providing them with a co-working membership. One such example is Microsoft giving 300 of its staff membership to WeWork across New York in order to allow them to work anywhere across the City. Allen & Overy is also set to open an office hub within a serviced office provider to make it easier for staff to work remotely.

We are also expecting IFRS 16, the new accounting regulations that come into effect in January 2019, to have an impact on occupier decisions. We are already aware of some national businesses looking to move to a strategy of having a leased HQ supported by regional centres located in serviced offices as they seek to reduce some of their lease liabilities and allow for greater flexibility.

With more and more large businesses using serviced offices and co-working spaces in new and different ways, what is the right strategy? Should you partner with one provider nationally or even internationally? Or should you work with a variety?

Often a large businesses with a national or global footprint will seek to work with just one provider for ease of use. They know they can trust that provider to offer quality space and look after the local team.

However, given that there are only a handful of truly global serviced office providers, this approach can limit the choice of different types of space available to them in each market, which may have the subsequent effect of them choosing a space that isn’t really the right fit for that local team.

In our experience, more and more corporates are taking advantage of the increasing diversity of providers in each market and selecting one that fits best with the needs of a specific team. This might require more due diligence each time a space is taken, but finding a space that really suits the local team in terms of location, design and cost, has far greater longer term benefits. Not being tied to one provider also gives you leverage and places you in a much stronger position when it comes to negotiation on renewals or a new space.

It really comes down to how much resource and capacity a businesses has to manage one or many different providers and many will outsource real estate needs to a qualified agent in order to navigate through the process. However, the growth in popularity of co-working and serviced space over recent years has really helped to provide a greater choice for larger businesses in terms of how and where they operate.