The rise of mobile workers will enable Telus Corp. (TSX:T) to save "millions" of dollars in corporate real estate costs and shed 25% of its current bricks-and-mortar footprint when it moves to its new headquarters in 2015.
Other corporations are capitalizing on technological advances that allow employees to work from home – as well as on the trend toward having less overall office space thanks to fewer private offices and more common space.
Telus plans to lease 1.2 million square feet of real estate across Metro Vancouver in 2015, down from the 1.61 million square feet that it currently occupies, Telus senior communications manager Shawn Hall told Business in Vancouver.
"Our employee count is actually going up as our real estate needs are going down," he said.
About 1,000 employees will work at least part-time in 212,000 square feet on nine floors of the $750 million Telus Garden complex that the telecommunications giant is co-developing with Westbank.
"Our goal is to have 30% of our workers be [full time in the office], 30% be fully mobile and 40% partly mobile," said Hall.
Jones Lang Lasalle senior vice-president Norm Taylor has worked with several tenants who seek less office space because technological advancements enable them to do more with less.
He said Corus Entertainment spent a considerable amount of money to build a theatre-style room to hold teleconferences with counterparts across the country.
Corus is now considering downsizing from 36,000 square feet of office space to 25,000 and has told Taylor that it would require that this room be replicated were it to move to new space.
"Their current build-out is individual offices, and they want to get away from all that," said Taylor, who will be on a panel discussing the evolution of workplaces at the November 1 Vancouver Real Estate Leasing Conference at the Vancouver Convention Centre.
Taylor helped Sierra Systems in 2010 slice 25% off its head office real estate costs by chopping one of the four floors that it had leased for years at 1177 West Hastings Street.
"They have endorsed the hotelling concept, which is the mobile worker who does not have their own work station," Taylor said. "You have a filing cabinet on wheels and workers sign into different work stations. Sierra Systems has done that throughout their portfolio across North America."
HOK Architects Inc. principal Joe Pettipas raised the spectre that this trend could affect office furniture manufacturers and retailers because firms increasingly require fewer desks and more comfortable seats for lounges where partners with iPads meet with clients.
Pettipas designed Fraser Milner Casgrain LLP's year-old, 79,000-square-foot office at 250 Howe Street where the firm drastically reduced the size of its law library and spread it over four floors connected by a winding stairwell.
One of the firm's four floors is now a lounge for staff and lawyers who entertain clients.
"They did not decrease their space leased," he said, "but they're using their space in a different way and can now accommodate more people."
Total office space that Telus leases in Metro Vancouver:
1.6 million: square feet in 2012
1.2 million: square feet in 2015 (estimate)
