BCBusiness

the commute to work never really went away, or in Europe, where everyone is very much back to the office.) Then, in the middle, there is a hothouse of blooming variations as employers try to figure out what they can do to ensure there is some in-person face time among employees. "They're pushing hard to get people back," says Scarlett. "They're telling me, over the long term, you can't schedule a Zoom call to innovate. One client says innovation is down 50 percent." One of those pushes is the effort by employers to lease or create the kind of central city office spaces meant to seduce employees into wanting to be there, with cool hang-out spaces, proximity to interest- ing downtown-ish activities, and hip design. Like what Nicola is doing with its turnkey spaces in the Mount Pleasant industrial district and else- where, or what other major office-space owners are trying to create in and around their large buildings. Another option that's emerging: Yes, work in an of- fice, but it will be a lot closer to the suburb where you're living. There will be some attractive add-ons: gyms and lounges and coffee shops and daycares. But one of the biggest perks that the downtown offices can't always guarantee: easy commuting and easy parking. No hour-long journeys from home to the central business district or $30-a-day parking charges. That's something that other office providers are trying to get ahead of. The giant work- share company International Workplace Group (far bigger and far less troubled than WeWork) has opened multiple offices in small towns and suburbs in the last couple of years, ranging from Chilliwack to Vernon in B.C. Managers want their employees to be able to con- nect and are willing to come to them to do that, says IWG's Canada manager, Terri Poz- niak: "It's very difficult to build company culture digitally. And 21 B C B U S I N E S S . C A O C T O B E R 2 0 24 N i c o l a W e al t h R e al E s t a t e culture is critical to the success of a company. You feed off each other." IWG now has 29 locations in the province, with four in Sur- rey, three in Burnaby and two in Langley, among others. It has maintained its downtown Vancouver centres, but the growth is elsewhere. The suburban offices are or- ganized in a variety of ways to suit the likely subset of tenants. One location in Surrey is filled with translators, immigration consultants and psychologists, while another location caters to larger team space require- ments for engineering firms, tech companies and construc- tion project teams. That move to the suburbs is showing all the signs of becom- ing a baked-in pattern. The most recent data from Trans- Link, the Lower Mainland's transit agency, shows that transit ridership is booming in the suburbs. It's at 123 percent of pre- COVID levels in Surrey and Langley and 111 percent in Maple Ridge/Pitt Meadows. In Vancouver and Burnaby, meanwhile, it has recovered to only 72 to 76 percent of former ridership. (Don't be deceived, though: half of the million or so daily trips in the region are still in the central area.) The Colliers survey, aimed at sussing out developing trends, also noted that there are a lot of small businesses in the office markets outside of downtowns and small busi- nesses were half as likely as big international businesses to say they favour hybrid work over full-on in-person. They also were more likely to say they were going to continue to lease the same amount of space. "The higher reliance on office space and shorter commute times for employees at small businesses are contributing factors to the difference in the effect of hybrid work between primary and secondary mar- kets," the report concluded. There will be many more reports, surveys, analyses and experiments to come as everyone tries to navigate the changing world. It's going to fluctuate over time. Employers get to insist that employees come in to the office when unemployment is high and people feel like they don't have a lot of negotiating power. That approach doesn't work so much when unem- ployment is low or when the employees are in a high-de- mand field and can walk away any time to an employer who gives them the freedom to live wherever they want. Both McQueen and Pozniak say that, for now, the employees are still holding the steering wheel. "But when the labour market changes," says McQueen, "there [will be] more of a stick to get people back." She'll be watching to see if the tide turns, as will millions of others.

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