‘Work as a set of activities, not a place’: How companies reducing the office footprint are reallocating capital

By Jessica Davies

When Oisin Hanrahan, CEO of Angi — the $7 billion parent company of home-improvement brands Angie’s List, HomeAdvisor and Handy — decided to move the company to a hybrid work setup, he, like so many other leaders, realized it likely would not need so much office space.

Reinvesting that capital into his team and company culture initiatives was, for him, the only choice.

Hanrahan’s view of the physical office is that it should reflect a company’s mission. Hanrahan recently took the company through a rebrand and at the same time worked with leaders and employees to develop a mission and values statement. With a hybrid workforce, he’s dedicated to investing in efforts that will rally his team around their new mission and values and help build and strengthen relationships across teams.

In terms of reinvesting, so far much of that has involved travel and events — “bringing people together, but doing so in a more deliberative, thoughtful way,” said Hanrahan. In mid-July, the company, for example, sponsored two off-sites in New York. Bringing in speakers and coaches will be part of the plan going forward. “We’re thinking about what the team needs,” Hanrahan add.

“As you think about deploying capital, look to what your leadership and your team want to do in terms of building a stronger culture, and see whether you can experiment with those things,” he advised his fellow CEOs.

As for what’s happening to its physical space, Angi plans to reduce the footprint of two of its three offices in the U.S. In doing so, it is eliminating all personal offices (including that of the CEO) in favor of an open office plan and more conference rooms. “A greater percentage of space than ever before is being dedicated to group working,” Hanrahan said, calling it an experiment that could evolve along with the company’s future needs. The plan “lends itself to a flatter organization, it feels more approachable and breaks down barrier between the leadership and the folks who run the business,” he said. “I’m super positive about it.”

Daniel Anstandig, cofounder and CEO of Futuri, an AI-powered audience-engagement platform that serves media companies like Nexstar and Cox Media Group, has observed that as many firms shrink their space, they are reinvesting in their tech infrastructure, in particular services that facilitate hybrid work. Other companies are evaluating where their offices are located, and whether less costly markets would enable them to reinvest in developing talent and better facilitate the working preferences and wellbeing of their people.

“There’s a new reality and awareness that just closing an office is not enough: there has to be more of an investment in the wellbeing of a team and how it’s going to be coordinated around the mindset of a team,” Anstandig said.

When it comes to decisions around reallocating capital that would’ve spent on office space, “companies and business leaders should be oriented around work as a set of activities, not as a place,” said Joel Steinhaus, CEO of Daybase, a network of …read more

Source:: Digiday