(Re)Shaping the Future of Financial Services Firms in London

To kickstart the U.K. financial year 2024, let’s face the facts: the economic and geopolitical turbulence of the last three years will undoubtedly have a significant impact on where 2023 and 2024 takes us and the ever-changing world of work. Work remains in a state of constant transition, and we are still in the midst of the economic theatre of late 2022 — particularly in the U.K.

As work continues to evolve, the return to the office and city centers, along with new tech tools and digital transformations in work, life, and the marketplace will continue to shape the future of the Financial Services (FSF) workplace and inform decision making over the coming years.

Fast forward to today, and it could easily be argued that assigned desks and single-use space types have been traded for experience-based settings in the workplace. As we have seen a growth pattern of highly flexible, multi-modal work zones for FSF business, we have also seen a growth in quiet work settings for a majority of employees in financial services who need the office to carry out focus-based work.

Here are three meta trends that will continue to shape the financial services workplace and drive change for business, corporate real estate planning, and decision making:

1. The ‘20s are being defined by rapid change, resilience, and responsibility

Commercial real estate and the workplace are changing in response to the post-pandemic, high-inflation, and hybrid environment. With the current economic climate and outlook slightly bumpy, below are 10 ‘top of mind’ points shared among decision-makers, CEOs, and heads of business in the London market in 2023:

1. Attract employees back to the office.
2. Encourage in-person connectivity for team-learning and collaboration.
3. Find cost-saving opportunities in short-term operations and long-term plans.
4. Create environmental diversity so that employees can choose between work settings.
5. Allow space to connect with teams and clients, as well as space for focus individual work, with a balance of ‘We’ and ‘Me’ space.
6. Embrace, track, and trace ESG in global and local property portfolios, “aligning what we say with what we do. ”
7. Put the big “S” in ESG in real-estate and corporate DEI targets.
8. Drive innovation and client engagement for business growth.
9. Support internal mentoring, growth, and networking.
10. Provide effective work settings your employees need rather than maximizing seating capacity.

From new space-sharing rules that support hybrid work and minimum in-person mandates to trying to weave together corporate ESG goals into demonstrable workplace solutions that can be tracked, recorded, and shared, most organisations look to more effective approaches to real estate before considering space reductions for the future.

Before considering space reduction, it is crucial that the core functions of the workplace not only support business organisation and ethos, but reflect a holistic approach to the needs of employees and teams. Reflecting on the amount of change over the past three years, the need to plan and allow for flexibility remains, especially as workstyle behaviours and technology continue to evolve and create new patterns in how we communicate and carry out individual and group-based work.

One of the best examples of this are businesses that are in transition from top-down to lateral teams and from lateral to agile teams with activity-based work environments. This has disrupted the norm to provide a choice of experience-based spaces that fulfill business needs to support growth, client relationships, and innovation — with potentially less square foot per head.