Office buzz | Flex workspaces set to grow

‘Work from home’ apps and tools are getting more features. Microsoft has just allowed 20 new apps, including Asana, Monday.com, HireVue, and Slido, to be integrated into its Teams meetings apps. The new apps for meetings join the 700-plus that are already available in the Teams App Store, Microsoft said in a blog post. Earlier, Microsoft had also announced that it was expanding participation size in a Teams chat meeting from 300 to 1,000.

Home-grown workplace collaboration and communication platform Flock too has announced more features for an enhanced WFH experience. It is adding capabilities like Advanced Search, a choice of Gifs, emoji reactions, rich message formatting and so on. Well, now that we can chat only virtually for some time with our colleagues, might as well make it fun.

A new report by real estate consultancy JLL says that demand for flexible work spaces, which includes co-working spaces, is going to stay resilient, despite the work from home scenario continuing for a while.

The current market penetration of flexible workspaces in total office space stands at 3 per cent and is expected to reach 4.2 per cent by 2023.

“As corporates return to the workplace, they are likely to further leverage flexible space to reduce capital expenditure and create cost savings, while allowing for split teams and de-densification requirements,” says the report.

While the flex-space market had more than tripled over the last three years, the momentum will be slower, going forward.

The entry of more than 300 flex space operators into the country has commoditised this market.