Work.club: having it done for you
We partnered with work.club, not just for their office design expertise, but because we know a move is a huge job and they have the tools to carry it. Jules Hooijdonk, who is commercially responsible for work. club and .re-group, shares how having someone else take care of the hard parts can make the difference.
Designing an office for your people, future-fitting the space, locking every call before the design freeze, then managing the people who build it: it’s a job on top of a job. So for anyone who does not have the luxury of time, is in need of flexibility, or just wants to reduce their footprint, work.club offers an alternative.
Its menu of options ranges from an empty floor for you to customise to a turnkey space where the fit-out and day-to-day infrastructure are already taken care of. Its club models also give tenants access to shared spaces for working, meeting and socialising beyond the space they lease. It isn’t necessarily the cheaper option on paper. But the monthly price only tells some of the story. When you take on a space yourself, you also take on the fit-out, the infrastructure, the people required to run it and the cost of changing it when your needs inevitably shift.
Interpreting the invoice
As work.club commercial and place strategy manager Jules Hooijdonk puts it, the real estate industry is a vague one on pricing. A direct comparison isn’t always available, making it hard to make informed, objective decisions.
“What you have nowadays with the traditional brokers is that everybody holds their cards close to their chest. So you don’t know what’s available. One offer is with furniture, the other one is without. It’s always hard to really explain the difference between different quotes. So it’s really for us as well to help them understand what the offer is,” Jules tells us.
He explains work.club offers a menu of options and, while leasing a floor and adding the services yourself will have a lower upfront rate per square metre, services can add up fast.
“If you don’t have a receptionist taken care of, you need to hire a receptionist yourself, meaning you need to pay a salary for a receptionist. If you need to do all the fit-out yourself, all these things add up, so while the office lease you pay per month is lower, the total cost will actually be higher,” he says.
For companies that don’t want to take on that investment themselves, the turnkey model shifts the equation.
Pay for the space you genuinely use
The benefit isn’t just getting the construction work out of your hands. It’s being able to move into a functioning workplace built for flexibility and community, and only paying for the space you really need.
In a hybrid culture, that often means less than your total headcount, but with the flexibility to welcome everyone into the space should they want it.
“Most of the focus is put on the communal spaces.
The ones you walk into when you come into the building, where you’d have the phone booths where you can work, but also the quieter spaces, and all these extras,” says Jules. “That gives some breathing space for all these clients. You don’t pay for all these extra spaces, and it gives them flexibility.”
It also means spaces for social interaction, the main driver for getting people into the office, are prioritised.
“What you have in a clubhouse is a space where you can socially interact with people. That can be over a coffee with your colleague, but it can also be that you have an event space, where you could have a podium, where you could have stand-ups, where you could organise drinks and parties, or even inspirational, TEDx-type talks.”
Build in room to change
While work.club attracts clients across a range of headcounts, for growing companies in particular, the flexibility they offer makes the most sense.
“What we actually see with most companies is that they don’t know what’s going to happen in a couple of years’ time,” says Jules. “Looking a year ahead is already a challenge.”
Standard agreements run for a minimum of 12 months, with tenants typically staying for at least three years and up to five. Jules compares it to a phone subscription: you might sign up for the initial flexibility and stay for the service.
“I have a subscription I can cancel every month, but I’ve been with the same provider for three years already, because why would I get the hassle of changing all these things while I’m still happy with the service they provide?”
An office move will always come with trade-offs and decisions around how to best manage your budget and what’s considered value. For companies without the time, expertise or appetite to manage every part of a fit-out, having someone else take care of the hard parts can mean more than a smoother move. It can mean a workplace that is ready for the people using it today, flexible enough for what comes next, and one less full-time job to take on along the way.
Looking for a space?
See what work.club has available, from an empty floor you fit out yourself to a turnkey office that’s ready on day one. Agreements start at twelve months.
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