Shift could signal trend
AMP Wealth Management has announced it will move out of its Auckland and Wellington central city offices, striking fear into the hearts of office owners everywhere.
The specialist KiwiSaver provider said its Covid-19 move to working from home was successful and staff did not want to return to the old ways of working.
Instead it will move into smaller premises outside the central city areas for staff and clients who needed to interact physically.
‘‘We have been working towards creating a truly flexible work model for a couple of years, so we’re seizing the opportunities and learnings over the last couple of months to accelerate our plans,’’ chief executive Blair Vernon said.
A survey of his staff found 70 per cent preferred to combine working from home and the office, 22 per cent wanted to work primarily from home, and only 8 per cent wanted to work from the office all the time.
‘‘The idea that you can only be productive or do work if you’re in an office has long been the source of endless debates, but as we’ve seen through Covid-19, the reality is that your place of work can literally almost be anywhere, whether that’s an office building or your spare room with the right setup and technology enablement,’’ Vernon said.
Vernon believed other businesses would follow. Cutting its office footprint and staff commutes would help support the company’s sustainability targets, which included switching the staff vehicles to electric.
The views of AMP staff are backed by a survey of Kiwi office occupiers and investors by commercial real estate consultancy Collier International.
Its most recent survey showed 77 per cent of occupiers indicated they wanted to continue working from home one or two days a week.
But this might not translate into a reduction in office space, said Colliers’ communications director, Chris Dibble. Threequarters of occupiers planned to keep their footprints the same or increase it over the next year.
While there had been concern about central cities being hollowed out if big businesses did not return, Colliers’ director of office leasing in Christchurch, Brynn Burrows, said the workfrom-home trend was in a honeymoon phase.
‘‘There’s been a lot of general chat about the idea, but I don’t think that it’s been properly thought through,’’ he said.
‘‘Some of the difficulty is around how you quantify the amount you should pay your staff working from home for things like power, data, and consumables. All those are a given in the workplace but if staff are working from home all the time, employers will need to address fair reimbursement.’’
There was also a health and safety aspect to working from home, Burrows said.
‘‘Employers will need to ensure each workspace is appropriate with considerations such as desk height and style of chair, lighting, security of files and so on.’’
Burrows said many home environments were not fit for purpose and people with children or those in flats might need somewhere other than their homes.
Mixing with colleagues, brainstorming and keeping engaged were the office’s great advantages.
‘‘I worry that there would be a tendency for people to feel isolated if they’re working from home – there’s no-one to chat with or bounce ideas off,’’ he said.