Environments Matter More Than We Think – And That Should Matter to Businesses

By Jamie Apostolou, CEO of Second Home

Ask anyone why they took one job over another and they’ll give you ten reasons to justify the decision even if none of them quite hold up. The salary, the role, the responsibility, the commute – all just background noise. What actually makes people change positions – one of the biggest decisions we face in life –  is likely to be driven by the fact that there is just more happening at the new job. More energy, more excitement, more thinking, etc. It’s the least useful answer in recruitment, and the most honest one.

And that’s true of where we work too. Some organisations just carry a frisson of excitement, a sense of the possible. So, they get the best candidates, the best graduates, the best opportunities. And from the outside, it seems… unquantifiable. Because, it’s just another business, right? But it’s not, because just like graduates choose to move to London, full of the knowledge that if they can just carve a niche there, they will succeed, the best candidates choose to work there. So, what is the difference that’s creating such obvious distinctions?

Offices have always been the default. Designed for productivity and efficiency, they evolved as almost carbon copies, with every business’ space looking alike. Picked from a catalogue of options, rows of desks, uniform layouts, spaces built for supervision and process. And no one questioned it because there were few alternatives and anything different was too disruptive (before the word was coined as positive).   And then Covid, and WFH and hybrid working, and then people don’t want to return to the office, and why would they? It’s an environment with zero appeal. But rather than addressing that, businesses are trying to do more of the same, but add snacks and games. Shocker, that it’s not working as well as expected.

Employees aren’t looking for rigidly organised desks, albeit encased in double-height atria and marble surfaces. Luxury is nice, but it’s not worth the commute if it means slipping back into the same old cubicles – even if they have a better, more premium finish or a guest chef. People simply aren’t drawn to be in those spaces because it’s not the building materials that matter, but rather the ethos that drives the space. And that’s where businesses are going wrong. A successful office isn’t about the amenities it has to offer, but what the space does and means to the people inside it.

There’s a particular malfunction plaguing the contemporary office that makes being in the office almost pointless. The videocall. It made work possible during lockdown. It facilitated WFH for years. But now, we’re expecting employees to drag themselves in to sit and communicate through a screen. Rendering the entire exercise moot. The whole point of being in a shared physical office is to encourage collaboration, spontaneous exchange, ideas, and energy. And that just doesn’t happen when a screen is involved, and you have to click an icon to let the virtual room know you wish to speak. And that loss of energy, let alone spontaneity,  has nothing to do with the hybrid work model, and everything to do with poor organisational clarity.

And this lack of clarity is underscored by generational divide. The return to the Zoom™Office made at least a degree of sense for the workers who grew up in the traditional office environment. But for those who entered the workplace during or after Covid, the limitations and ironies are all too clear. They don’t see the point of returning to the office because they’ve never experienced the corridor conversations, the accidental introductions, or the post-meeting pivots. And they’re not experiencing them now in the shiny new offices they’re expected to attend. Instead, they’re having curated discussions through screens, just as they’d have done at home. And that’s the point that businesses are missing, and it’s limiting not only their team’s potential, but the business’ as well.

A well-organised office has nothing to do with added extras. A destination office that employees are attracted to doesn’t need to have an ebike charging room. It needs energy. And a space where that energy can be generated, used, exchanged, and enlarged upon. A space where people can mingle, and where idle exchanges are encouraged and can grow. Where privacy and focus are always possible, but where movement is natural, and nature is used to soften acoustics, restore attention, and create the conditions that improve the quality of thinking. A truly functional office space is one where different people and different ideas can collide naturally and make something new. Without the need for constant curation. Working in the way that the brain actually functions.

That’s what we set out to build at Second Home. Our spaces in London and Lisbon put freelancers, founders and established teams in the same building, with a cultural program that features industry leaders, writers, and big thinkers.  We also provide a menu filled, healthy affordable food – we call it the ‘Worker’s Lunch’ – giving our members that communal space to eat and collaboration.  And most importantly we have diversity across industry, all  running alongside each other, so the interaction happens organically via intentional design – both in space and programming.

And it makes financial sense, too. Contemporary businesses can’t risk being tied to traditional office leases. Headcount is no longer static and predictable. Technology is evolving at such a pace no one really knows for certain what their business will look like from one year to the next; how it will function, what infrastructure it will need. When you hire out an office within a shared work environment, you have that built in flexibility to scale – up or down – depending on your current needs. It’s simply a more intelligent way to operate.

The traditional office is dying. It’s had its day, it’s done its thing, and it’s served its purpose completely. But now it’s time for something new. An approach to business that feeds creativity and makes people not just willing, but eager to leave home, face the traffic or the crowded train, and commute. To be with other people and share ideas and spaces and actually work, side by side, with colleagues who appreciate them and enjoy their company.

And it’s the companies that realise that that will continue to attract the talent, to gain the attention, to be the destination. They’ll be the ones who build the ideas because they’ll have both the people and the conditions to foster them.

And those competitor brands with their shiny, luxurious offices filled with cookie-cutter cubicles, will continue to wonder why they’re being left behind.