Economies of scale and adapting to new ways of working: this has been Deloitte’s strategy in the UK since the Covid-19 pandemic. According to information from Financial timesleaves audit and consultancy giant Hill House, one of its buildings on its campus in New Street Square, in the City of London, in May.
Hill House represents more than 17,000 square meters of office space, bringing the floor space the company sold in London in a year to 23,000 square meters. After the initial lockdowns, Deloitte had failed to reopen one of its four offices in New Street Square and also closed a “digital hub”. In total, the company is selling a third of its office space in the capital. Deloitte has extended leases on the two largest buildings on its campus through 2036, leaving 45,000 square feet on the site where the company has been located since 2007.
These major maneuvers will have no impact on employment, a source indicates Financial times. The employees who work in the abandoned buildings have been or will be transferred to the other offices. On the other hand, Deloitte had already decided in 2020 to close offices in Gatwick, Liverpool, Nottingham and Southampton, giving the 500 affected employees the opportunity to keep their jobs if they worked from home full-time.
New management methods
To avoid congestion in its properties in the City, the multinational with 345,000 employees in 150 countries relies on hybrid working and the ‘flex office’, which means that there are more employees available than individual offices. This strategy goes hand in hand with the generalization of telecommuting, while an internal survey found that the majority of staff did not want to come to the office more than two days a week. In 2021, the company asked employees to decide for themselves how often they want to work from home.
Along with the changing way of working after Covid, Deloitte offers the opportunity to save money, especially as the industry faces increased costs to comply with environmental regulations. “We are constantly evaluating our office space needs to reflect changes in the way we work and our sustainability goals”says Stephen Griggs, UK Managing Partner of Deloitte.
The group is known for exploring new management methods, both for itself and for the companies it advises. In 2016, the new headquarters of its French subsidiary had five types of “flexible” work organization tested by a thousand of its employees, starting with shared offices, which had already been put forward for “improve efficiency”†
