Attracting Talent in the Age of Competition

With the job market now back to normal – or, perhaps, even better than before the pandemic – competition for attracting talent is heating up. Businesses are pulling out all the stops in order to appeal to prospective employees, with many business owners choosing to enhance their commercial office space to make themselves stand out. In this piece, Centrick will be guiding you through the best ways to attract talent in the age of competition by considering what post-pandemic job-hunters are looking for, and how to provide your employees with a reason to work for you, and stay with your business.

Creating an Exceptional Space

To appeal to as many talented employees as possible, it’s vital that you enhance your working environment to ensure that it maintains its appeal to both existing and prospective employees. Employees are becoming increasingly critical of workplace flexibility, resulting in the doubling of pre-pandemic numbers of flexible workspaces. This goes beyond the dichotomy of home and office working but has started to impact the way individuals perceive their office space. The office has now become a hub for social interaction, which we have grown to appreciate more since the imposition of lockdown. Collaboration thrives within open and communal spaces, with the typical rows of desks in plain, commercial spaces simply not standing out and therefore not attracting the brightest talent. Instead, communal spaces are encouraged to become more open to promote cross-collaboration. Pixar serves as an ideal example of this, with their deconstruction of departmental segregation allowing all staff members, irrespective of their specific job role, to interact with each other and subsequently learn more about the company.

Why Does Commercial Space Matter?

Commercial spaces provide more than just a collection of square feet from which you conduct a business. Offices are becoming vital for the formulation of brand and company identities, signalling to the working population the values, ethics and beliefs of your business. Many business owners have gone to extreme lengths in order to convey this, with the likes of Google implementing slides into their offices to demonstrate their vigour and quirkiness. Although this is a more off-the-wall approach, it does demonstrate that large, global businesses value their commercial spaces, and work hard to make them a differentiating factor against competitors. At Centrick, we’ve implemented our brand identity into the bricks and mortar of our offices – our glass-walled meeting rooms reflect our transparency with clients and staff alike, and all our office locations are central and commutable to enhance our accessibility.

Connectivity Attracts Talent

Speaking of office locations, the concept of connectivity is paramount to attracting talent in the age of competition. Not only does literal, physical location determine how many candidates you can attract, but the utilisation of digital connectivity is becoming increasingly important post-pandemic. Hybrid working models are providing employees with a level of flexibility hitherto unheard of, with many businesses opting to promote home working as one of their employee perks. In fact, a study carried out by the University of Strathclyde discovered that fewer than one in ten workers wanted to return to the office full-time once the pandemic restrictions eased. The fusion of home and office working is dependent upon technological connectivity via cloud-based operations, which allow for collaboration between clients and employees regardless of their physical distance. Providing your teams with the means to connect to their co-workers, and build relationships with their clients, depends upon up-to-date technology – high quality laptops, professional mobile phones, and telephone headsets must have the capacity to make the transition between home-working and office-working as seamlessly as possible in order to attract and retain employees.

Finding the Perfect Space

The perfect office space is paramount to securing the best talent your industry has to offer, but finding the best commercial space is far from easy. That’s why Centrick’s Commercial Team are available to help: whether you are searching for your first commercial property purchase, or you are simply looking for your next office lease, we have decades of experience to help you find the best space for you and your teams. We pride ourselves on offering an exceptional range of commercial units to our clients – including off-market properties that you won’t find anywhere else – and act as an office agent for hundreds of businesses and investors across the UK.

Get in touch with Centrick Commercial below or check out our range of commercial offerings here.

Written By

Jenna Coghlan

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