From Covid zero to working hero - the five-year office comeback

Selling water to a fish is a tough gig. Or sand in the dessert. Rewind five years ago this week, and our industry was busy selling something it had suddenly become impossible to buy, as lockdown came into force at the end of March 2020.

I remember talking to a lawyer later that year, when face-to-face meeting up was once again allowed. He laughed in my (socially distanced) face when I told him I worked for the trade body that represented workspaces across the UK. His clear, unequivocal message to me was to get out while I could, as “no one is going to go back to working in offices after the pandemic”.

It's worth remembering that this was a genuine topic of conversation at one point. People talked about working remotely as if they’d suddenly seen the light. They considered the future of their caring roles, flexible working, and savings being tied up with where they worked. People’s behaviour changed dramatically – swathes of people saw 2020 as a chance to relocate, many away from their former work places. The number of Londoners fleeing the capital increased by 30% in the post-Covid era. It’s true that it was a turning point for many people and most businesses.

But it wasn’t a complete 180. My optimism for the role workspaces would continue to play came from the fact I had seen what they could deliver, and what they represented for companies and their teams. We represent over 1,000 locations across the UK and I regularly spoke to workplace operators who said that many of their customers were keen to get their teams back into the office, and they could see what had been lost by not having people working alongside each other. The fact is that the enforced break also forced us to really reconsider their value.  

I understand that the lawyer I spoke to, like many others around him, is indeed back to working at least part of the week in an office. A recent estimate was that only around 13% of UK workers are still fully remote. The vast majority have now settled into a hybrid pattern. Even mandates by the likes of Amazon and Asda haven’t led to full office returns.

The workforce are now embracing hybrid working - 70% don’t predict a full office return at all (BBC figures) and 85% across generations actually favour a mix of coming into workspaces and working remotely.

A big part of this new normal is the workspaces teams are coming into. Rather than a market decimated, as that 2020 conversation suggested, the flexible office sector has proved resilient and incredibly adaptable. 2023’s prediction by IWG was growth of 600% in the sector by 2030.

We’ve seen innovation and evolution on a real scale – in a relatively short space of time (given their 300-year history) workspaces have reconfigured on a large scale, to offer more flexible options. We now see much more collaboration areas and more outside space; the emergence of fractional and part-time offices (Space as a Service); local neighbourhood workspaces opening and sector-specialist workspaces cropping up. You name it, we’ve seen it.

Workspaces now don’t need to cater for the full workforce daily, but often do need capacity for when the team is occasionally all in together. Workspaces have swiftly adapted to fit this need. We also increased planning for accessibility in office design, including spaces for neurodiverse team members.  

It’s probably because we’ve realised just how important a shared hub is to most of our companies and that nothing beats face to face collaboration. In a study by Forbes, 94% of executives and 88% of employees reported that in-person collaboration improves the quality of their work. Covid has really sharpened this focus. More and more coffee shops and private members clubs that were once a sea of laptops have reclaimed their tech-free spaces, as we understand there are good, well set up places to work, and places best suited to leisure.

We’ve also seen innovation in the way space is used commercially. It’s not just about traditional offices anymore; businesses are transforming these spaces to serve a variety of needs and increase income streams. Many coworking spaces now feature podcast studios, giving content creators the tools to produce high-quality audio and video right on-site. Some spaces are also being adapted into filming locations for everything from TV ads to online content.  

This five-year anniversary feels particularly significant. Things have felt far from “normal” for some time, but 2025 has started off more settled than the preceding few years, with hybrid working being the accepted position for most, including me. Whether that involves one day in the office or four, it demonstrates the value of bringing colleagues together in a professional working environment on a routine basis is acknowledged by businesses and their staff.

Ours is a collaborative industry, which has also helped with our evolution - we’ve been willing to learn from the success of others - and we often talk about the future of the sector. In terms of the future, we’re increasingly seeing the "hotelification" of office spaces, where workplaces are designed with the same level of flexibility and service-oriented approach as hotels. This shift is transforming traditional office environments into more dynamic, user-friendly spaces, offering amenities like concierge services, wellness facilities, and flexible leasing terms, all aimed at enhancing the overall experience for employees and businesses alike. Undoubtably, this future will be one led by technology, with AI taking a more central role.

One thing the next five years definitely won’t lack is face-to-face collaboration. The thing we most missed in the dark days of 2020 is the thing that will be at the centre of all future workplace plans - human connection.