Flexible workspaces seen to help Metro Manila employees amid pandemic

Majority of Filipinos are already haggard and drained of energy before even getting to their workplaces. The reason? The long and winding commute.

Nowadays, it has become even more stressful, given the risk of being exposed to COVID-19.

Elizabeth Fuller, the head of growth in Southeast Asia for WeWork, a commercial real estate company providing flexible workspaces, shared insights on what companies could do as more people and industries transition to new practices and working environments.

“We believe that hybrid approach is important,” Fuller told GMA News Online.

“We’re finding, I would say, a couple of different types of fatigue. One is personal, employee fatigue with working from home, and one is from a company perspective,” she said.

According to Fuller, companies should “have some sort of things like all access pass” once it is safe and is in line with government protocols. “Whatever it is, whether it’s in WeWork, that they have flexible options for their employees to work at,” she added.

“A place that is safe and is following the best practices of healthy and safety that have been refreshed because of the pandemic,” she added.

Fuller said they had been seeing “companies taking a couple of small spaces in different buildings.”

For instance, WeWork has offices at Menarco Tower in Taguig City and RCBC Plaza in Makati City.

“In Manila, they can take a small space in Menarco and a small space in RCBC, and have a couple of distributed offices where their employees can decide to go into different offices,” she said.

In this case, Fuller said companies didn’t need to have the entire workforce coming in together at one place.

“The entire corporate entity, they don’t have all a hundred people coming in together,” she said.

“Maybe they take 20% office in one building and 20% office in another and give the remaining 60 headcount access that would allow them to go and use those different offices depending on their preferences,” she added.

Fuller, however, said this setup would depend on the nature of the company and what worked best for it.

“In some cases it’s the type of work they do and each of their companies they can see that some functions are more aligned to working from home than the others, and some people’s family environment are more aligned to working from home, depending on their internet and how many toddlers they have. I think these are two good correlations,” she said.

Fuller said they’re aware of both personal and business concerns.

“So safety first, and then because teamwork is important, collaboration is important, and innovation is important to capturing the coming growth. It is very important that these businesses account for that to find flexible workspace solutions for their employees,” she said.

According to Fuller, remote working is “not a sustainable solution,” which is why WeWork is considering new work models, such as hybrid approaches, to help companies.

Some of the options at WeWork include “WeWork All Access,” which is for those who are “looking to work closer to home, reduce commute times or are just ready for a change of scenery.”

They also have “WeWork on Demand,” which give their customers the “flexibility they need by offering the ability to book a conference room or workspace by the hour or day.”

In the Philippines, WeWork has a total of four spaces—three in Taguig City including Menarco Tower, Milestone, and Uptown Bonifacio Tower, and one in Makati City at RCBC Plaza. – RC, GMA News