Amid talk that many of the biggest employers internationally ultimately want their workers back on-site full-time, there are those, too, who are convinced we are never going back to the way work used to, well, work.
Stephen Carolan seems slightly perplexed by the notion that the massive upheaval witnessed since 2020 or so could somehow be undone as managers decide that on-site office working was really best for their companies all along.
“It’s like saying to the people who came to the cities during the industrial revolution, ‘Will you all go back to the fields, please?’”
Carolan has more skin in the game than most. The Mayo native is National Hubs Network (NHN) programme manager at the Western Development Commission.
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His role is to oversee the Government-backed scheme intended to establish a network of 400 connected hubs across the country within two years, comprising 22,000 desks. Some 18,000 desks are in place at the minute, with an occupancy rate of 77 per cent, according to Carolan.
Other organisations or individuals set them up and run them but the NHN aims to monitor the facilities, work towards improving standards and provide centralised services like online booking.
The prominence of the hubs has grown considerably over the past couple of years but there are those who would have regarded the results of a KPMG survey back in October that suggests two-thirds of CEOs at 1,300 of the world’s biggest firms anticipate their workforces being back in the office within years, as a significant body blow to the booming network.
Carolan, though, is adamant the types of facilities that have sprung up across the country offer too much to their communities and to the companies with a firm eye on the bottom line for the momentum behind their growth and development to be halted now.
“If you really follow the patterns of what these big companies have been saying, there have been big splashes around suggestions they’re all heading back to the office and this idea the rest of us will follow,” he says. “But when you look at the pattern of announcements you see that really they are still trying to figure out what actually works here, they don’t actually know yet.”
While there has undoubtedly been a growing number of business leaders willing to risk upsetting their workforces by requiring a growing proportion of their working week to be spent at the office, the tight labour market means employees still retain a good deal of leverage in the matter.
Hybrid has increasingly become the norm across a range of sectors with sometimes slightly uneasy compromises being reached on precisely how many days people are expected to appear at their desks. A recent Dublin Chamber survey of members found office attendance on Fridays was continuing to fall as members increasingly focused on core days in midweek.
An Ibec survey in October found employee expectations around remote and hybrid working was the factor most commonly cited as impacting on businesses.
Companies from across a wide range of sectors reported ongoing problems recruiting talent but these grew substantially when the jobs advertised were for completely on-site roles and the numbers suggested that whatever might happen if the job market softens, employers are willing to make compromises at the moment in order to hire and keep the right people.
This, suggests Carolan, is where the hubs come in and he believes it is not a short-term phenomenon.
“We’re attending a lot of conferences, talking to people internationally and what we are constantly hearing is that things have changed for good. The genie is out of the bottle in terms of where people work.
“The hub, the home and the HQ, we think that over time companies will embrace that mix as a solution. It won’t be just one thing, the mix will be a vital tool in their recruitment.”
Working solely from home, he believes, will continue to work for a minority of people while being on-site is clearly a necessity in a lot of employment situations.
Where there are options, however, a growing body of research suggests people embrace a hybrid pattern with hubs, he argues, allowing them to avoid issues like long commutes or the hugely expensive costs of housing associated with cities, especially Dublin.
“A lot of people worked from home during the pandemic and saw benefits in that but we’re social creatures, we crave engagement,” says Carolan. “Employers want that, too, they are wary of the people who are working for them experiencing burnout which studies internationally suggest can be a particular problem for people working exclusively at home. Hubs, like company HQs, can give you that ‘water cooler moment’ thing that people talk about but the fact that you are around people who aren’t necessarily working for the same company as you can be a very healthy thing, too.”
The reasons for this, he suggests, are partially about the potential to take the competitive edge out of those relationships between employees of different companies but can also be about unexpected collaborations producing benefits for employers or entrepreneurs.
“You can have someone working on some, you know, hot start-up, and he can be interacting with somebody who’s working for an accountancy firm and that second person unlocks a problem for the start up because the person running it doesn’t have a finance background. It’s all a bit serendipitous but those kinds of things are happening all the time.”
Climate change, he suggests, is impacting on long-term thinking around issues like commutes while house prices are very much a factor of the here and now.
He notes a Dublin-based accounting firm that has a portion of its workforce located at a hub in rural Waterford.
“They don’t have to endure the crazy prices, the stress of the commute times, all that kind of thing. I think that’s a huge consideration for a growing number of companies,” he says.
The multinationals might be operating at a different level but Carolan says the network in engaging with a growing number of sizeable corporates who see the potential to aid their recruitment and retention efforts by locating clusters of staff at hubs that effectively serve as local offices.
“They’ll contact us and say what have you got in Sligo or Leitrim or wherever and we’ll talk to them about what their needs are. We’ll work with them and the operators of the hubs to find something what works for them.”
There are, he says, a wide range of facilities; five categories, everything ranging from community spaces up to high spec, technologically-orientated ones. Those involved in the network meet a variety of minimum standards and their potential to attract business increases as improvements are made.
“We’ve done a lot of work with the people running the individual hubs to improve access [key fob systems that allow round the clock access], the installation of audio visual systems and just the look and feel of places because if you want to sell your facility to a business customer it can’t be a breezy community centre with a desk in the corner.
“A lot of money has been invested, there are a number of different funds supported by different Government departments and a lot of private operators have invested heavily, too.
“What we are getting then is people using them in different ways. Meeting rooms would be a big thing. Companies would use hotels a lot and many of them would be great but some companies have cyber security issues and find that the systems in the hubs are more secure than the open wifi in a hotel.”
The list of success stories the organisation points to, most obviously in terms of local start-ups that have thrived or firms who have been able to employ staff across a wide range of counties by using the network, is impressive.
And standout success stories like the Ipsos MRBI employee Aoife O’Connor who moved back from Dublin to Belmullet during the pandemic and then ended up hiring around 60 local people to work for the company at two hubs in the area show what can be done.
Just a few miles up the road from Carolan’s home near Castlebar, an €8 million investment, most of it by Mayo County Council in Ballina and the Urban Regeneration Development Fund, has allowed for a remarkable conversion of an old military barracks into a facility with 150 workspaces that will, it is intended, allow an anchor tenant and mix of other users to bring a range of new workers to the town centre.
It is due to open in February and will get the network one hub closer to its target of 400 by the end of 2025.
What’s the number now? “Three hundred and thirty five,” says Carolan before pausing to check his screen. “Three hundred and thirty six,” he corrects himself.
“It’s going up all the time,” he says, clearly confident the trajectory will be maintained regardless of what the global CEOs say their preferences are.
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