Speaker 1: You're listening to Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Masser and
Speaker 1: Bloomberg Quick Takes Tim Stinovic on Bloomberg Radio. Well, safe
Speaker 1: to say one of the most talked about topics as
Speaker 1: we move beyond the pandemic is how we work hybrid
Speaker 1: working from home business travelers. So many questions about how
Speaker 1: things look post pandemic, how much of what we had
Speaker 1: to do during the pandemic, and how much really stays
Speaker 1: with us. Looking into that we work, which is out
Speaker 1: with a new blind survey of US employees and sea
Speaker 1: level execs. Here with what they found. Sham get them all.
Speaker 1: He is president and chief operating officer we work, and
Speaker 1: Sean joins us on the phone in San Francisco. So,
Speaker 1: I'm nice to have you here on Bloomberg. How are you.
Speaker 1: I'm doing great. Thank you so much Carol for having
Speaker 1: me join you. Well, it's great to have you here
Speaker 1: and listen. You guys have a great window into truly
Speaker 1: how we're all working and how we expect to work.
Speaker 1: Tell us about this survey, who you talked to and
Speaker 1: what you found out. Sure, we ask a market research
Speaker 1: company to reach out to a thousand C suite executives
Speaker 1: as well as a thous and not C suite executives
Speaker 1: and talk to them about what the future holds in
Speaker 1: terms of hybrid work environment and like. And what was
Speaker 1: fascinating is you saw that employees want to have some
Speaker 1: control over the mix they have of coming into a
Speaker 1: headquarters office working from home, we're going into a satellite
Speaker 1: office or remote office of some kind, and that match
Speaker 1: suite executives said the same thing, that they're willing to
Speaker 1: give that degree of control really part of it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's I find that interesting because there were some other
Speaker 1: research that we've been talking about over the last couple
Speaker 1: of weeks where you know, there's some disconnect between kind
Speaker 1: of what employees or what companies think how well this
Speaker 1: working from home is going versus employees who want the
Speaker 1: flexibility but they also want that face time. I think
Speaker 1: that's absolutely right. But there's a lot of common ground
Speaker 1: as well, and a lot of it depends on the
Speaker 1: nature of the job, the nature of the company, what
Speaker 1: kind of culture they have, and how they deliver the
Speaker 1: value to the to the end user. One thing that
Speaker 1: you have a lot of commonality around is you're starting
Speaker 1: to build the consensus in many environments where you'd look
Speaker 1: at it sort of there's a one third, one third,
Speaker 1: one third kind of model where you're hearing a lot
Speaker 1: of people say, what we'd like to have is one
Speaker 1: third in the headquarters office. What I'd like to have
Speaker 1: is one third or something like that working from home,
Speaker 1: and what I'd like to have is about a third
Speaker 1: where I'm working from a satellite office or a disparate office.
Speaker 1: And in fact, two thirds of employees are saying that's
Speaker 1: what they like, which is to spend a good amount
Speaker 1: of their time moving between multiple locations, and you have
Speaker 1: sev C suite. They're saying, absolutely, we'd be very happy
Speaker 1: with our employees operating in some form of a hybrid model,
Speaker 1: depending on what's appropriate for my particular kind of environment. Well,
Speaker 1: I want to just say to kind of add on
Speaker 1: to this um anecdotal evidence, but not really it's actual evidence.
Speaker 1: One of our market watchers came on early in and said,
Speaker 1: we set off, we set up our shut offices excuse me,
Speaker 1: in New York City, moved out to Connecticut, and then
Speaker 1: decided that when we need space, will just rent it,
Speaker 1: you know, whether it's we work or something else. You know,
Speaker 1: when we need our employees to get together. Are you
Speaker 1: seeing this translate into you know, future business. Are you
Speaker 1: seeing numbers to hire a people who want to tap
Speaker 1: into we work offices because they just need it temporarily
Speaker 1: to bring their their teams together, who have been working
Speaker 1: from home and who are maybe expected to continue to
Speaker 1: work that way. You see, is that part of its
Speaker 1: temporary and part of it is it's a permanent flexibility.
Speaker 1: And I think that's the part that actually is going
Speaker 1: to be even more interesting. So you have some people
Speaker 1: that right now large companies are turning around and saying, Okay,
Speaker 1: we need to bring our people back because we believe
Speaker 1: that productivity will be higher if we move away from
Speaker 1: a complete work from home environment and bring our people together,
Speaker 1: have them collaborate and be able to work together in
Speaker 1: a more traditional kind of environment for at least part
Speaker 1: of their day. But then you have a lot of
Speaker 1: people who are looking at the world and saying, because
Speaker 1: the way that we're working is evolving as quickly as
Speaker 1: it is, we're not really committing to the next fifteen
Speaker 1: years to commit to an office space. So what we'd
Speaker 1: really like to do is commit to something for three
Speaker 1: to five years. Is we can kind of see that
Speaker 1: far and so let's do that and then as as
Speaker 1: things play themselves out a little bit clearer than we
Speaker 1: can decide if we need to accord you into bigger,
Speaker 1: we need to accord you into smaller, and we want
Speaker 1: to have that kind of flexibility on an ongoing basis.
Speaker 1: So you have that that's going on. And also the
Speaker 1: nature of the space that people want is change it.
Speaker 1: You know, if I'm going to bring people in, what
Speaker 1: I'd like them to do is collaborate, which means I
Speaker 1: need to configure my office in a very different way
Speaker 1: than I used to when I had people come in
Speaker 1: just to have head down space where they're working on
Speaker 1: their own. But does that mean you guys are seeing
Speaker 1: um science. I want to talk a bit more about
Speaker 1: the survey, and we're going to take a break, do
Speaker 1: some news and come back. But in terms of we work,
Speaker 1: are you you seeing people kind of reach out to
Speaker 1: you increasingly because they need your services, because they've shut
Speaker 1: down kind of on their their own workspace because they
Speaker 1: want they're going to have this hybrid environment. Absolutely. So,
Speaker 1: I think one thing that people oftentimes don't recognize about
Speaker 1: the footprint that we work at roughly half our business
Speaker 1: comes to large enterprises, and so we've hit historic We've
Speaker 1: done a lot of work with them, and they in
Speaker 1: particular are coming to us and say, because we're changing
Speaker 1: this environment, help us design a footprint that works in
Speaker 1: a different way than the footprint we used to have.
Speaker 1: We also have half our business coming from small medium
Speaker 1: sized enterprises and traditional single person operation and they're coming
Speaker 1: back in in much more rapid where than the large
Speaker 1: companies are right now. So we're seeing them come back
Speaker 1: into a more normalized work environment in certain geographies, and
Speaker 1: we're seeing a geographically business. You know, we have a
Speaker 1: thirty eight country footprint and we've got about fifty million
Speaker 1: square feet around the world. We're getting to see it
Speaker 1: in a lot of different environments. From the same time, Hey,
Speaker 1: sham I teased with our news anchor Charlie Palette about
Speaker 1: what he would be willing to sack office in terms
Speaker 1: of a benefit or perk. You guys have some research
Speaker 1: on that tell us a little bit about it absolutely
Speaker 1: so that the answer is six of employees would be
Speaker 1: willing to not only trade off something, but they'd be
Speaker 1: willing to actually pay out of pocket to be able
Speaker 1: to have some control and be able to actually get
Speaker 1: another space that they could go work at that's different
Speaker 1: from their headquarters. Pay out of their pockets, pay out
Speaker 1: of their pocket. That's how valuable people find this flexibility
Speaker 1: to be. And the other stat that that jumped out
Speaker 1: at me is employees would be willing to give up
Speaker 1: at least one benefit or perk, including healthcare coverage, cash bonuses,
Speaker 1: paid time off for the freedom to choose their work environment. Absolutely. Absolutely,
Speaker 1: So it's a very different environment we're talking about than
Speaker 1: what it used to look like years ago. So you know,
Speaker 1: it's interesting too because one of the findings is that
Speaker 1: the majority three quarters of the C suite saying that
Speaker 1: they're likely to give their employees a stipend to work
Speaker 1: from home or coworking space. I mean, when it comes
Speaker 1: down to it, for a company, if they don't have
Speaker 1: to house as many employees, I mean, that's a big
Speaker 1: line item on the balance sheet. That's a big out
Speaker 1: line item on the balance sheet. The other thing that
Speaker 1: people are really interested in is engagement, royalty and being
Speaker 1: able to build that that culture. And one of the
Speaker 1: things I found most striking is when we looked at
Speaker 1: what the mix was and asked employees, How engaged are
Speaker 1: you and how how highly do you recommend your company?
Speaker 1: The ones that were more engaged and the ones that
Speaker 1: were less engaged tended to want to be in the
Speaker 1: headquarters about the same So I was a little surprising,
Speaker 1: but both of them wanted to be in headquarters about
Speaker 1: a third of their attack. What was interesting is that
Speaker 1: people who were more engaged wanted to be homeless and
Speaker 1: preferred to be in either in a coworking space or
Speaker 1: in some sort of satellite office, versus the people were
Speaker 1: less engaged who tended to want to be home more.
Speaker 1: So it's interesting is the ones that want that are
Speaker 1: actually engaged tend to want to be in headquarters and
Speaker 1: in satellite office or coworking environment at home less, and
Speaker 1: the ones who want to be home more tend to
Speaker 1: be the ones that are less engaged. So let me
Speaker 1: ask you something, because I'm just thinking folks are going
Speaker 1: to be like, well, yeah, of course we work is
Speaker 1: going to be saying, you know, showing a survey where
Speaker 1: people you know will rent space to get together and
Speaker 1: that they'll want the flexibility because this is certainly your book.
Speaker 1: So what would you say to something like somebody like
Speaker 1: that although you know, to be fair, we've been seeing
Speaker 1: kind of this trend happen over the last decade, this
Speaker 1: flexibility in the working environment. But what would you say
Speaker 1: to somebody's like, well, of course you guys are going
Speaker 1: to be, you know, talking about something like this. It's
Speaker 1: something that we're very interested and that's what we're talking
Speaker 1: about before the break. We obviously have this big foot
Speaker 1: that we've been able to see what's happened in China,
Speaker 1: We've been able to see what's happening in the Far East,
Speaker 1: what's happening in Europe, and what's happening in the US,
Speaker 1: what's happening in Latin America, and how this is playing
Speaker 1: itself out. And what we're seeing across the board is
Speaker 1: that people want to have their right now on So
Speaker 1: from our perspective as a business, if somebody wants to
Speaker 1: lease a headquarters from us, will lease in the headquarters.
Speaker 1: If they want to have flexible space, will lease the
Speaker 1: flexible space. So work from home or work from not
Speaker 1: in headquarters is to our interest. So all of those
Speaker 1: play out in the same way, and that's been sort
Speaker 1: of the macro trend that the company has been built on.
Speaker 1: So this particular thing I think is more informative about
Speaker 1: what we're actually seeing. It's very consistent with what we're
Speaker 1: seeing of the marketplace, and and what you're going to
Speaker 1: see is that people are increasingly interested in how do
Speaker 1: I retain my people, how do I do it in
Speaker 1: a way that's consistent with the value that I need
Speaker 1: to deliver to my end user, and how does that
Speaker 1: different bite department and create much more a custom model
Speaker 1: than everybody comes in nine to five every day into headquarters.
Speaker 1: And that's what we're seeing. And this is just sort
Speaker 1: of a a more refined view so that other people
Speaker 1: can see what we're seeing in ourselves. Just go about
Speaker 1: thirty seconds left. I think that's really important that you,
Speaker 1: like a lot of other Mobile CEOs that I've been
Speaker 1: talking to, said, you know, listen, we saw the virus
Speaker 1: in the Impact early because we were over in Asia.
Speaker 1: We've also seen the recovery earlier because we are in Asia.
Speaker 1: But what you're seeing in China is showing that people
Speaker 1: want this flexibility and they want to do it differently.
Speaker 1: And just got about thirty seconds here. Well that's what
Speaker 1: we've started to say, right, So in China, we've got
Speaker 1: the people back in Asia, if we've probably got seventy
Speaker 1: percent of people back in general. In Europe we're probably
Speaker 1: seeing something that operates a little more like fifty. And
Speaker 1: in the US it's in the high thirties that we're
Speaker 1: back to kind of normal and and you're starting to
Speaker 1: see things like we have a set of offerings where
Speaker 1: people can go into any building, and that's where we're
Speaker 1: seeing a lot of pick up on as well. So
Speaker 1: people who say, Okay, I want to be able to
Speaker 1: choose where I go at any moment in time. So
Speaker 1: I think this is something we've been building to. Technologies
Speaker 1: played a tough out and now we're started to see
Speaker 1: it come to a head, right, the innovation, the disruption,
Speaker 1: it just kind of continues here. Hey, Sham, thank you
Speaker 1: so much. Really appreciate it. Sham, get them all. President,
Speaker 1: Chief operating officer over at we work, joining us on
Speaker 1: the phone in San Francisco,