On June 25th, British Land held what we believe to be London’s first virtual building launch, for the 10th floor of 100 Liverpool Street at our Broadgate campus in the City of London.

Via video link we hosted over 200 of London’s top agents and raised a glass to the fantastic team who have created what I think is London’s best new building, led by my talented colleagues at British Land and working with a great team in Hopkins Architects, contractor Sir Robert McAlpine and engineers AKT II and Chapman BDSP, as well as many others.

Sticking to social distancing parameters we welcomed our home team agents on to the 10th floor’s 3,000 sq ft roof terrace, before showing a ‘premier’ of our new virtual tour, followed by a series of ‘virtual networking’ Zoom calls.

The feedback was great – but would I exchange a virtual launch for a live launch, of the idea of working from home indefinitely? The answer has to be no. Our event was made possible by the incredible tech that is now ubiquitous in our day to day lives. It has also been tech that has ensured that this global work from home experiment has been such a resounding success, in a way that wouldn’t have been possible just a few years ago. But working from home is a short term fix, not a long term solution. I have yet to speak to anyone who isn’t enthusiastic about returning to work.

I have no doubt that some things will change, and the lockdown has opened many people’s eyes to home working, but the idea that this is the death of the office is overblown.

The reason for this is what I call the `Three Cs’ plus the training factor:

• Collaboration: whether a chance encounter or a planned meeting, you just can’t replicate the energy of people being physically together over a video call. It is this energy that drives innovation and creativity, the lifeblood of any business.
• Culture: critical to developing a shared sense of purpose, culture can be maintained but not nurtured in the current environment. This works for longer serving team members, but can lead to sense of isolation or lack of belonging for those who are less established.    
• Camaraderie: People need people, and for many the social aspect – far more than the work itself – is what keeps people committed to a business. And what’s more, the personal relationships that you develop through casual encounters facilitate more effective working together, which drives productivity.
• Learning: so much learning comes through osmosis, by being in the presence of, observing and listening to those around you. This simply can’t be replicated in the current environment. You can set tasks, you can deliver formal training, but our young talent is missing out on so much by being physically distant to their more experienced colleagues.

So where do we go from here? I think we can get a pretty good idea by looking to the most progressive and successful businesses of the last 20 years, particularly tech businesses growing out of Silicon Valley.

These businesses have long recognised that the workplace needs to be more than just a place to work. They have made the link between corporate and real estate strategy, moving beyond the maths of ‘I have 1000 people so I need 100,000 sq ft’ to really thinking about what the purpose of the office is.

For these businesses it is all about creating the best environment and experience, to attract the best people to do their very best for that organisation. A place that reflects their brand, nurtures their culture, and speaks to their customers.  

Through crisis comes opportunity, and now is the time for those businesses not yet on this journey to accelerate the pace of change. Of course, home working will be part of the mix, but far from the only option.

The smartest businesses will be thinking about what their real estate needs to deliver for their business, their people and their customers. This will likely see an acceleration in the shift to more efficient use of space with less waste, which can only be good from a cost and sustainability perspective.  

This will likely see an acceleration of the trend for businesses to reduce their core space, while focusing on better quality real estate and investing more in the experience for their people once there.

At British Land, we believe the role of landlord should become that of partner, and that working together we can deliver an even better experience, and we’ve been working to evolve our offer to respond to this.

Our focus on delivering mixed use campuses in London is about providing not only the best space but the services to our customers, and we can do this through controlling the environment inside and out. This is why we launched Storey to provide more flexibility and Storey Club to improve efficiency of space use; and why we place so much emphasis on our product, ensuring that our spaces are smart and WELL enabled to give our occupiers the platform to create the best workplace experience.

And there is no better example of a building which supports our customers in creating the optimum environment for their people than 100 Liverpool Street. So, after close to 400 hours of Zoom calls it has been great to have escaped from home over the last couple of weeks to start taking customers to our British Land and Storey places. It has been invigorating to meet people in person – I almost forgot how good it was.

Hosting 100 Liverpool Street’s virtual launch alongside our chief executive Chris Grigg and our leasing director Alex Colvin was exciting and innovative – but only made me realise that the real experience of working as part of a team is so much better in the physical rather than virtual world.