With a mission to inform, empower, celebrate and advocate for British Columbia's current and aspiring business leaders, BCBusiness go behind the headlines and bring readers face to face with the key issues and people driving business in B.C.
Issue link: http://digital.canadawide.com/i/1406705
business long before WeWork— called International Workplace Group (IWG). Fontaine will use other IWG sites for downtown meetings or to provide other employ- ees with out-of-home office space. When he wants a company-bonding event, he organizes a lunch at a restaurant, usually about once a month. That pattern is what Wayne Berger, CEO of the Americas for IWG, says the company is seeing everywhere. "Driving to one cen- tric location doesn't really make sense," he argues. Although IWG has some down- town properties among its 30 B.C. loca- tions, Berger says it will expand more in the suburbs. But not everyone is choosing the ditch- all-permanent-office-space route. S C E N A R I O 2 : Best Buy Canada, the Vancouver-based company that now has 12,000 employees across the country, gave up its corporate head office in an industrial park in south Burnaby—140,000 square feet with room for all 1,200 employees. It's now waiting to move into a new building in Vancouver's hip Mount Pleasant industrial area, but where it will have half the space and only 300 desks. Staff will come to the office less frequently, but when they do, they'll be in a more interesting place, with lots of meeting room, plus access to Van- couver restaurants and activities. For Jerome Rodriguez, the new work plan is thrilling. Rodriguez, 53, is part of a team that designs learning modules for Best Buy employees, everything from policy compliance to product knowledge. He'd been doing hybrid work even before the pandemic, sometimes commuting to Burnaby from his home in Maple Ridge, sometimes working at home. The new sys- tem, put in place during the pandemic, will allow him and his team to continue that. "It changed our workflow for the better." S C E N A R I O 3 : Other companies aren't planning any substantial changes imme- diately. At the law firm of Young Ander- son, with offices that were home to about 35 people near Vancouver's downtown Supreme Court building pre-pandemic, it's mostly status quo. "We're not think- ing of downsizing," says partner Sukhbir Manhas. The firm had been planning a quarter-million-dollar renovation to cre- ate more internal offices in its 10,000 square feet. That's not going ahead. Some people do want to stay working at home, at least part of the week. But others don't. "The clear message I'm getting is that they do want to be in the office and have the amenities associated with a full office," Manhas says. Younger employees, in par- ticular, want to get out of their tiny condos and have some room to work. The parale- gal and clerical staff need access to printers and secure systems for legal documents. So they're back. S C E N A R I O 4 : Some companies have always been work-from-home forward. Now, they're increasing that. Telus Corp., one of B.C.'s largest employers, has pushed flexible work since 2010. Before the pan- demic, the company had 25 percent of people in its offices, with the rest either on flexible arrangements or, for a few, completely remote. Post-pandemic, only 10 percent will have an office desk. It's meant rethinking the company's space. The old layout was 65 percent work- stations, 35 percent meeting rooms. That's going to be flipped. Over time, there will be a slight reduction in square footage—and no wholesale move to a Surrey tower, as had been pondered. "We're thinking of offices as places to go with purpose," says Jennifer Anquetil, Telus' director of people and cul- ture. "Our spaces are going to be designed with more opportunities for connection." S O W H E R E W I L L E V E R Y O N E L I V E ? Lise Oakley couldn't imagine ever leaving Vancouver, after escaping from Chilliwack as a gay teen and finding a more sympatico world in the bustling city. Oakley, 38, and her partner and six-year-old son thought they were going to stay forever in their East Vancouver co-op. But shortly after the pandemic started, they started to look at SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2021 BCBUSINESS 43 SOURCE: BRITISH COLUMBIA REAL ESTATE ASSOCIATION R E A L E S TAT E R E P O R T 2 0 2 1 H O U S I N G F U T U R E S Here's where home prices throughout the province are headed this year and next, according to a May forecast by the British Columbia Real Estate Association 2020 2021 FORECAST 2022 FORECAST VICTORIA $777,993 $866,200 $880,000 13% 11.3% 1.6% VANCOUVER ISLAND 531,086 622,000 655,300 8.6% 17.1% 5.4% POWELL RIVER 420,586 490,000 500,000 SUNSHINE COAST 15.8% 16.5% 2% GREATER VANCOUVER 1,066,199 1,174,300 1,198,500 8% 10.1% 2.1% FRASER VALLEY 826,005 969,400 994,700 14.4% 17.4% 2.6% CHILLIWACK AND DISTRICT 577,279 692,900 716,400 10.3% 20% 3.4% KAMLOOPS AND DISTRICT 458,827 538,100 552,700 9.6% 17.3% 2.7% INTERIOR 588,195 676,600 696,000 16.1% 15% 2.9% SOUTH PEACE RIVER 258,122 291,000 295,800 –0.1% 12.7% 1.6% KOOTENAY 383,924 459,700 479,400 11.3% 19.7% 4.3% B.C. NORTHERN 332,890 392,000 405,000 7.1% 17.8% 3.3% B.C. AVERAGE 781,765 893,800 921,800 11.6% 14.3% 3.1% A V E R A G E M L S P R I C E B O A R D A R E A