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magazine
office
Beam me
up Penson
Meeting the needs of today’s on-the-go
professionals, Regus has announced deals with
Shell and SNCF in France that could pave the
way for a network of drop-in business centres
in train stations and motorway service centres
across Europe.
With the number of people working on the
move expected to increase from one billion to 1.3
billion globally by 2013, there is a growing need
for instant, flexible workplaces outside the home
or office where people can drop-in, respond to
email messages, arrange meetings and make calls.
Regus’s trial with Shell and SNCF gives
travellers access to workspaces for as few as 10
minutes at a time, with a full range of business
support services including video communication,
printing, copying and scanning.
The first Regus/Shell business lounge has been
opened at the Limours-Janvry service station
on the A10 south-west of Paris. If successful, it
could lead to the establishment of Regus business
lounges at Shell forecourts across Europe.
In November, Regus announced that it had
signed a deal with SNCF, the French national
railway company, to open an initial six drop-in
business centres in its railway stations.
Celia Donne, Regional Director at Regus, said:
“The rapid rise of the mobile worker gives us an
excellent opportunity to extend our core offering
beyond offices. Technology is a key driver in the
growth of a mobile workforce, but the increase
in demand for drop-in business centres has come
from mobile workers who still need a place to
think or to make a private phone call.”
A recent Regus-sponsored study by ZZA
User Responsive Environments,
Why place still
matters in the digital age; third place working
in easy reach of home
, found that working in
‘third places’ outside the office or home, such as
business centres, clubs, libraries and coffee shops,
is becoming the new norm.
The report reveals that ‘third place’ working
brings a range of benefits, including improved
work-life balance, reduced stress and greater
productivity for employees, as well as cost-
effectiveness, scalability and a reduced property
commitment for businesses.
According to Regus, the vast majority of
interviewees (some 17,000 globally) don’t want
to work at home but prefer to work amongst
other workers, with access to technology and
facilities not available at home or on the road.
www.regus.co.uk
Regus takes to road and rail to
meet needs of mobile workers
If you’re a Star Wars or Star Trek fan,
there’s only one place to work, the Google
Engineering HQ in Buckingham Palace Road,
London. One of a series of workspaces
being created for Google by architecture
& interior design firm Penson, the space-
age offices feature a mixture of spaces
for privacy and collaboration, including
gaming rooms, music studios, the Tech
Talk auditorium and flight pods. Following
a tradition from its earliest days in the
UK when Google selected wallpaper with
a blackboard finish in its MWB Business
Exchange serviced offices, most of the walls
in the new offices are magnetic whiteboard
laminates on which Googlers can scribble or
display notices, documents and diagrams.
www.pensongroup.com
Photos courtesy of Penson