With the coronavirus pandemic potentially bringing about a permanent uptick in remote working, contract caterers will need to innovate and invest to help the office maintain its appeal, writes David Burrows.
Of the 32.6m people in employment, 1.7m people worked mainly from home last year, according to the Office for National Statistics. However, 8.7m (27%) say they have worked from home. Thanks to Covid-19 the figures for this year could well look much different. With millions more now forced to work remotely full-time, the big question for those who service commercial offices is: how many people will actually prefer the one at home?
We don’t yet know the answer but already there is speculation. “… as the coronavirus pandemic has dislodged workers, tech evangelists have proposed that they can slip the surly bonds of their desks permanently,” the FT’s leader noted at the weekend. “The purpose-built office […] is outmoded, they argue.”
Some staff may jump at the chance to work this way beyond the lockdown. In the UK the average daily commute is 59 minutes (both ways combined) according to the TUC, rising to 79 minutes for Londoners. These are getting longer each year, too, while rail fares continue to rise – which makes the kitchen table seem particularly inviting.
Businesses are certainly monitoring the situation very closely, assessing everything from productivity and the quality of virtual meeting spaces to staff wellbeing during this lockdown period. Calculating whether remote working pays off or not won’t be easy but the benefits for businesses could be hard for some to ignore. Imagine, for example, the cost savings if 10%, even 5%, of a corporate’s workforce is found to work perfectly well remotely?
Corporate clients will also be weighing up a host of investments and options to reinvigorate their workforce and ensure productivity quickly recovers – and is maintained or even enhanced. As well as a potential drop in numbers working from offices, there is a worry that some clients will see a funky coffee shop with top-class baristas, or a food hall with personalised nutrition programmes for staff, as nice-to-have rather than a have-to-have.
“Employee satisfaction is more often derived from simple measures such as investing in high-quality, comfortable furniture and providing refreshments, not the hay bales and hammocks cited by study recipients as being among the most pointless attempts at creating an Instagrammable office,” notes Cary Cooper, Professor of organisational psychology and health at the University of Manchester in a recent blog for The Conservation. Approval-seeking “quirky perks” can actually annoy office workers, he adds.
Professor Cooper also suggests that the more antisocial the working patterns are, the more likely it is that staff will form stronger relationships – and this, after all, is one of the biggest sources of happiness. He explains: “Workplaces that make it easy for their people to socialise effectively foster a casual attitude to relationship-building. Harsher work environments, like those based outdoors, drive people to build stronger relationships.”
What does this mean for office workers though? Maybe if more staff are going to work remotely more of the time, they will need spaces in which to catch up, engage, work and, of course, laugh? “We all expect the coronavirus pandemic will cause major shifts in how we experience the world,” notes Janet Pogue McLaurin, an expert in how the physical workplace can impact work at global architecture firm Gensler. “So, when this crisis ends, we may well discover there have been fundamental changes in the way we work and in workplace design. But we know the workplace still matters.”
This is something contract caterers must keep front-of-mind. These are dark days for this sector, after all, with offices closed and no-one to serve. Talk of increased remote working and fewer office workers will only feed any anxieties. But there is plenty of research showing how great work spaces can help produce great workers – and food is often at the heart of it.
The most innovative employees are at least two times more likely to have access to, and use, cafeterias, coffee shops and outdoor spaces; they also report two times more access to speciality coffee, according to Gensler’s 2016 US workplace survey. Caterers have acted upon this flat white economy: Compass has set up a barista academy to “raise the bar” on its hot beverage offers – because otherwise people will simply head out onto the high street. It’s worth noting that workers don’t want this for free (only around one in two people say free snacks or coffee are deal-breakers), but it has to represent value for money.
The UKHospitality foodservice management report for 2019 indicated a number of trends shaping the sector, with street food, meat-free and healthier eating all high priorities. Google, for example, has revamped its canteens with 300 cafés and 1,450 or so micro-kitchens at its offices across the globe. Gensler was involved. “It was a major part of the draw to join [an] organisation so that talent felt taken care of, coddled – and that included food,” the firm’s director Collin Burry told the FT recently.
Not every company is a Google, but there are well-reported benefits to offering decent food – and coffee – to staff. The experience of this sector in delivering this should not be underestimated. Indeed, one fast-growing trend involves personalisation: it’s a way of “tempting customers to eat at your outlet”, notes Bidfood, with one in four people willing to pay more for such a service. However, it remains a relatively untapped market in foodservice, with just one in 10 of those surveyed by UKH last year seeing it as a technological driver. The provision of deliveries could also provide succour as clients look to drive down costs.
Of course, none of this innovation will come for free. The cost benefits will need to be proven and argued. But as much as staff are mulling over whether they like sending their first emails of the day in their pyjamas, their bosses will be thinking of ways to ensure that when they do come in, the commute is worth it. As the FT notes, talk of the end of the office is “greatly exaggerated”. “Making offices into spaces where employees want to be is not frivolous but an increasingly important part of corporate culture.” Contract caterers know that and it’s up to them to prove their part in it.
