Dylan Jones has rightly sounded a warning about the damage the post-pandemic ‘work from home’ culture is doing to London. The key is that it is not just London, it is a global issue. Fortunately, London has the unique opportunity to lead the way once again.
First, the context. Simply put, the pandemic did not create ‘work from home’ culture any more than it made dreary work cubicles even less exciting. What the pandemic did was expose two stark realities that already existed. First, great technology enables people to communicate, work and be productive (to a degree) from anywhere. And second endless rows of partitioned grey cubicles are just bleak (I lived in one in until midnight every night in Manhattan in the 90s).
So along comes the pandemic and everybody works from home. They do not meet anyone. They do not look at plans or documents around a table with their team. They do not go out to lunch, or dinner, or coffee. They do not shoot ideas around the cooler anymore. They do not mentor. They do not learn by watching up close. They do not absorb culture. So how does London take up the global leadership mantle once again and transform the stark contrast of these two realities?
Big city life is faster, more demanding, more dense, more mixed, more fluid, more, in a word, exciting. Many people love cities: to visit, to tour, to live, to learn, to eat, to experience, and yes, to work. The big idea to turn this all around begins with a simple question: why is it that the first six things in the prior sentence all look and feel great, except that last one where we all go to work? Why do we have beautiful tourist destinations, inspiring monuments, great museums, showpiece theatres and signature restaurants and yet mostly boring, functional offices?
I often tell employers looking for great space that we cannot say if their people love their job, but they will love coming to work. Take London’s iconic Olympia. We are reimagining 14 acres of listed 19th century estate to include a state of the art 4,400-person music venue, the UK’s largest new theatre, a jazz club, hotels, independent restaurants, public art exhibitions, a school for the arts in partnership with the BRITs. And yes, we are also building 500,000 sq ft of office space.
In creating the new vision for Olympia, we realised we could harness the creative power of our partners, to reimagine what coming to work actually means. It is about your people being excited to come and do their best work. That means high spaces, healthy green environments, quiet rooms, gathering places for socialising and town halls.
Workspaces with the right tools; from conference and auditorium spaces, to catering services for events, private roof terraces, recording studios and screening rooms. We have learned it can be just as important for working people to love what is on the doorstop of the office: restaurants, entertainment, culture, and arts have a way of inspiring people to come to work and when you get that right, yes, it boosts the economy.
In 2015, we told investors that major cities like New York and London were going to have to make their real estate work harder. The pandemic threw this into sharp relief. Big city life is still faster, denser, more demanding, but it’s also more exciting. More action, more innovation, more creativity: always the first place to show the world what the future has to offer. To be reminded ‘that’s why I work in the city.’
Step out of the office and feel the buzz. Great culture, great entertainment, great restaurants, a place to have a drink – all moments from your desk. The cultural pulse of a place is what people connect to and identify with. Communities are built on that cultural pulse, they are actually not ‘built’ on buildings. If people love coming to work, our city will thrive. Now it is time for London to answer the call and reimagine what it is like to come to work every day, in the greatest city in the world.
Lloyd Lee is managing Partner at Yoo Capital
