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Uncommon biophilic workspaces
92 Plays4 years ago
GUEST / CHRIS DAVIES, CEO of UNCOMMON WORKSPACES IN LONDON, UK
HOST / MATT MORLEY
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Transcript
Introduction and Guest Overview
00:00:11
Speaker
Welcome to the Green and Healthy Places podcast. I'm your host, Matt Morley, founder of Biofilico Healthy Buildings and Biofit Wellness Concepts.
Uncommon's Mission and Expansion Plans
00:00:20
Speaker
This episode, I'm in London, UK with Chris Davies, CEO of Uncommon.
00:00:26
Speaker
flexible workspace brand with four sites around the city and a fifth on the way. Chris has a real estate background as a quantity surveyor. He's a young yet remarkably cool headed boss with clear ideas of where he's taking his business and a lot of it has to do with building a portfolio of green and healthy workspaces across the capital.
Pre-COVID Trends and Biophilic Design
00:00:47
Speaker
We discuss how Uncommon have in a way accelerated existing trends from the pre-COVID workplace industry over the last 18 months, doubling down on their basic quest to create high quality work environments with an abundance of user appeal. Chris goes into how the Uncommon brand integrates biophilia or biophilic design consistently across all of their sites while still allowing for the inherent architectural legacy of each location to shine through.
00:01:14
Speaker
We talk about how their on and offline activity program is designed primarily to offer support for companies interested in maintaining a healthy workforce. We look at their take on Sonic branding via the use of carefully curated playlists, the challenges ahead in their quest to go fully carbon neutral in the future, and the tangible rise in interest in ESG real estate from investors on one side and Uncommon's users, their client base, on the other.
Career Journey of Chris Davies
00:01:40
Speaker
If you enjoy this type of content, please consider subscribing or leave a review. You can find Chris and his wonderful team at uncommon.co.uk. My contact details are in the show notes. Now to us, here's Chris Davies of Uncommon. Chris, welcome to the show. Could you give us a quick intro to your personal background and your role at Uncommon and then we'll sort of jump into the details.
00:02:02
Speaker
Yeah, sure. So I'm CEO at Uncommon. We've been doing this for about just over six years actually now I'm doing
00:02:12
Speaker
in the flexible workspace. I started life off as a surveyor and doing all of the things that good surveyors do and got my accreditations and all that fun stuff and then started to do a bit of residential and then ended up in this wonderful world that is flexible office.
Workspace Location and COVID-19 Adaptations
00:02:29
Speaker
So yeah, it's been a little bit of a roller coaster and it's been an interesting year last year, but we're very much alive and kicking.
00:02:37
Speaker
Well, it's a good sign that you're still going, at least. I know a number of brands have really suffered and perhaps weren't quite bounced back, but you're at four workspaces now spread across London. How are you selecting? What's your process in terms of selecting new sites and new locations? What are the criteria involved in?
00:02:56
Speaker
Yeah, well we've actually got the fifth one on the way. So the fifth one and the selection process actually of all of them has been pretty similar. It's evolved though, that's the thing. We've always been a freehold owning business, so we've always gone in and bought the assets.
00:03:13
Speaker
but it was always focused on the best quality assets we could do in that location and focusing really on from a user point of view. So we would look for assets that would allow us to create offices that all had excellent natural light. And I think that will kind of stand the testament of time. You can't find an office space in any of our buildings that doesn't have natural light.
00:03:36
Speaker
So actually when you stop and think about that from an asset selection point of view, it makes things pretty tricky because of the fact that you think about it like dividing up floor plates and you spend so long thinking, well, it could divide up in this way or not in that way.
00:03:54
Speaker
It means you end up saying no to a lot of buildings. And I guess the journey that we've gone on is we were a bit more zone two focused originally because we were avoiding a lot of the competition that was there at the time.
Growth Strategy and User Experience
00:04:07
Speaker
We thought, well, actually that market might get a bit crowded. But then I think over time we've come very centralised really. We've got Holborn, which obviously slapped back in the middle of Midtown and
00:04:18
Speaker
in London. So the reason we've done that is we've just seen the inquiries and we've seen the size of buildings that we can take on and actually manage. It will be double the space that we've currently got. So it's doubling the size of our last asset. And every each time we've basically doubled. So we've been growing that way and growing in our experience, which gives us confidence to take on larger spaces.
00:04:48
Speaker
but it's been the same acquisition strategy really by the best you can. So you're acquiring, you got four sides down on with a sort of zone two strategy and now you've gone right into the centre of the city with Holborn which is site five forthcoming in 2022?
00:05:07
Speaker
Yes, so this will be 2023 actually, because it's full redevelopment. So we've got, in terms of size, we've got Highbury and Fulham, which are probably, the strategy around that was around being close to people's homes. So we want to see that to mind. There are slightly smaller buildings, then we have Borough, which is the building I'm sitting in today, obviously pretty central, and then Liverpool Street, which is a slap bang on top of Liverpool Street Station.
00:05:31
Speaker
So couldn't really be more central if we tried. But it's a great asset, like it's got four sides of natural light. We've got a church next to us, which gives a real bit of the historic element while you're then looking up at all of the giant towers that are down in Bishopsgate. So you really get this nice contrast. Yeah, it's always been about quality. And how have you had to adapt
00:05:56
Speaker
in response to the events of the last 18 months. It's beyond things like sanitizing hand gel. I'm thinking more in terms of how there's so much debate right now about the future of the workplace and how in a sense everything was thrown up in the air and we're just starting to see things settle down again.
Health Measures and Data Utilization
00:06:15
Speaker
From your perspective at the head of Uncommon, how have you or indeed have you adapted your service products, your service and products for clients over the last 18 months?
00:06:26
Speaker
So let's answer that from a product level. We put things in all the way from cameras that can sense the temperature when people walk through the door and then there will be an alert that goes off of someone at a slightly wrong temperature or too high. So then our team can deal with it very discreetly. We've done all of that and everything else that one would expect. But I think we've kind of been approaching it saying, well actually, what do we do before?
00:06:57
Speaker
and what did the market want before? So the reason why I'm saying this is I think all the trends were already there. If we ignore the exact element of what COVID was, but we just go into, well, what were the trends that were already there? The trends were already there for better workspaces, healthier workspaces, greener workspaces.
00:07:16
Speaker
what Covid has done is kind of turbocharged that flywheel. So where we had all those headlines that people were saying the office is dead, actually what the headlines should have really read with bad offices are dead. And that's been evident by the bounce back that we've seen of in us from an uncommon side of we really bounce back strongly. We're kind of almost back to full strength in terms of
00:07:39
Speaker
capacity in the buildings. You go and look at the competition that was actually chatted to one of them about an hour ago and they've done the same. It's because they've got high quality spaces. The stuff that is struggling is this low quality that's got no appeal to anyone from a user point of view. And I think the big thing that always gets me is that I think companies have really worked out that
00:08:02
Speaker
staff are their biggest overheads, 60 to 70% depending on what industry, even up to 80%. If you are then having real estate sitting in your last, call it 20%, somewhere in there, actually if you invest more in that real estate, and it means that your staff are then happier, you can recruit the best quality candidates and you can retain the staff you want, it's an absolute no-brainer to spend that little bit more on your real estate.
00:08:32
Speaker
in those kind of healthier places. So what we need to do as uncommon is make sure we're providing that next generation space that people really want to be in, that they are talking about with their managers that then mean that the decision makers go, we will spend more there because it's a better environment for our team and they get that kind of equation.
Biophilic Design and Brand Identity
00:08:53
Speaker
Okay, so the product level
00:08:55
Speaker
enhancements to do with let's call it you know under the general umbrella of health you mentioned the idea of sort of temperature cameras and things like that are those do you see those as temporary additions or do you think those things could in fact be here to stay or medium term additions um i think you know kind of
00:09:15
Speaker
They'll be in and now really stable. It's got to get more advanced. So, for example, the sensors debate is going on. We're about to put sensors in a lot of our communal spaces. That needs to monitor air quality. That needs to monitor where people are. It needs to monitor
00:09:34
Speaker
any kind of emission that's coming out of the space. We're also making decisions around not using cleaning products and just going basically to someone going around with a massive backpack on and steam cleaning absolutely everything so that you get away from all the kind of toxicity that comes in. So I think what it's doing or done is start a big debate
00:09:59
Speaker
But the debate was, again, already there. We were trying to get there. I think the problem people have is that we don't know the exact endpoint. What do you do with all that data? I don't think people have solved that just yet. We've got a big data strategy that we're trying to put in place about, OK, we collect those data. What are we going to do with it? What does it mean? Who is it of interest to? Because if you don't understand that and you don't get that,
00:10:23
Speaker
why you collect the data. So it's a bit of a chicken neck that you go around around in circles with. But I think really the questions that healthier spaces have kind of started to ask is, well, you've got to be collecting the data on that space to then understand whether it's healthy or not. And I think things will come in time, whether standards come out, whether
00:10:51
Speaker
whether clients are just asking those questions. I think that the fullness of time will say yes, but we're not quite there yet. But as a provider, we've got to make sure we get there. Certainly, from what I can see, you know, you're doing very
00:11:06
Speaker
Beyond construction decisions that one makes, there's then the interior fit out, ventilation. And then beyond that, it's monitoring to check for any crazy spikes in VOC levels or CO2, whatever it might be. So from what I can see of the interiors, you're doing a lot in that sense to create healthy spaces. Part of that clearly is by affiliate. You've described yourself as a business as the sort of
00:11:32
Speaker
holistic and mindful workspace. And so you've got these these on one side, it's about productivity, and it's about work. And on the other side, you've got this sort of health and mindful mind body connection. How do you as CEO, how do you see those two fitting together? Is that just
00:11:51
Speaker
Is that a generational thing, like there's just a certain generation of worker or business that expects those two, the yin and the yang, if you like to sit together, because that seems to be a crucial part of your positioning, right? You combine those two worlds in a way. Yeah, and I think it comes down to
00:12:12
Speaker
Not everything is perfect for everyone and we've got to as a business to be able to provide the optionality for individuals and companies. So for example, what I mean by that is that one person might really want to do the boxing class while the other one wants to do the yoga. You've got to then provide a suitable space that allows that to happen. And that's the challenge is to make sure that you can provide the right environments that are
00:12:40
Speaker
constructive for what they're trying to do and achieve. We can as a business only support and that's our role in this. We want to support companies, we want to support members in making sure they are healthy, kind of focused on what they're doing and that's just by providing the right environments and space and I guess the stage for them to do that. Does that involve a physical space? Does any have some kind of a fitness room or a yoga room within every setup?
00:13:09
Speaker
Yeah, that's the way we tend to approach it and we've done obviously throughout Covid, we did a lot of stuff online, we then done a bunch of health awareness.
00:13:20
Speaker
Well, we did a week of it, but we do a lot of that online as well. There's loads of different ways, but I think it's kind of being flexible around what is working. So we continue to do the online gym classes. We continue to do the physical ones. And it's just evolving your offering to make sure you are doing that for your members, really.
00:13:44
Speaker
The interiors is probably the thing that leaps out from someone looking at your business from the outside in. What's your strategy there in terms of creating some kind of consistent palette or aesthetic across your sites? Do you believe it's more about creating an individual site for each one of the five that you're building or have built already? What's your policy there in terms of the interiors?
00:14:11
Speaker
I think my answer on Interior actually comes into more of a brand question where when you walk through the door of an uncommon, we've done our job if you know that it's an uncommon without seeing the word uncommon. That's the way we approach it because we try and play on people's senses. So we have the various different scents that actually get put through our space. So they smell a certain way.
00:14:36
Speaker
That may change, but it's one of the sensory elements that we play with. We then have the music that's going through the space that changes throughout the working day and week. So Thursday, it's a little bit more up tempo and upbeat than it would be on a Monday morning. But again, it's something that you're subconsciously noticing as you go through. Then you couple it with, well, how do I feel in this space? What are the physical products that are in this space? What does this chair feel like? All of those sensory elements that you're there with.
00:15:07
Speaker
In terms of each site, we very much approach each site as what does a building tell us when you walk in there. Holborn, for example, has got a lot of historic architecture that's in this space already, even down to things that were
00:15:25
Speaker
put in like the original doors, the old tiles that have been put through the building and what you kind of do is you go well let's listen to that language that the building's already got and then let's play that through into our color palette and that's how we kind of generate really upwards a scheme out of it and there's there is another point of
00:15:50
Speaker
While we're not dictating, and it's definitely wrong, I think you end up with a Starbucks and McDonald's type effect if you just do the same thing in every site. We want to have different colours there, but they all have to work together and they all have to sing the same tune as the building, otherwise it just doesn't feel authentic.
00:16:10
Speaker
and so it's always a kind of balance of doing that while then learning from the mistakes of the past and we have made over the last five, six years quite a few mistakes in design and they're not really mistakes, what they are is kind of
00:16:26
Speaker
Points that we change and learn like you need to get your real estate working well for you and hard like it's when you buy it It's a big investment. So if something isn't being used then it must evolve and change like we sit here and go, okay well These high chain tables have really worked well on this side people love sitting on them. Let's in the next side put lots of those in and
00:16:48
Speaker
If you've got an area that doesn't, then it won't kind of survive for the next design. So it's that kind of iterative process mixed with the building and the area that really dictates how we're going to kind of set out the building really. Would it be fair to say that once you'd settled upon this
00:17:10
Speaker
strong presence of biophilia in your sites. That worked, it got positive feedback, it seemed to do the job and then you've kept that consistent because it is one of your strong points,
Innovations in Workspace Design
00:17:20
Speaker
right? It's a sort of biophilic design that's really quite unique. Yeah, like that runs through, it's the design of Holman that I've literally just been doing the last month or so. It's one of the key things that we've designed into when we're talking about
00:17:35
Speaker
very, I guess, traditional M&E-type conversations, like all mechanical bits that are going in. But we're also saying, this is where we're going to be pushing this green wall. This is where we're going to be creating this environment. And it's really, I guess, essential to our DNA now.
00:17:54
Speaker
I can't think of it in common without it. So it's part of the DNA, it's part of the brand, but it kind of goes about saying we design almost around it now, knowing that it's got a big part of the design.
00:18:11
Speaker
But you certainly, you've got that logged in. It looks beautiful and I know how functional it can be in terms of tangible benefits for people spending time in those spaces.
The Role of ESG in Strategy
00:18:21
Speaker
You're playing in that space of sort of sound and light, which again, I think is really quite next level in terms of workspace design. I'm not seeing a lot of that out there.
00:18:34
Speaker
How does that play into your stance on CSR or increasingly calling it ESG? Does it play through from biophilia into a stance on environmental management, for example? Is there a joined up position at a company level for that? Yeah, we've been working very, very hard to make sure we get there on that from a kind of an ESG type point of view.
00:19:01
Speaker
It's really, I guess, the next battleground for office space. We will be in, we're increasingly being asked about our strategy and policies on it. I believe that it will get to the point within London that buildings will be just unlettable unless you've got a very set defined strategy, whether that's mostly or probably around carbon at this stage.
00:19:30
Speaker
Yeah, we try to make sure we've got a holistic approach to it, that we're kind of looking at various bits and going after a few awards, whether that is being B Corp certified, doing all of our kind of science-based targeting kind of approach. The problem is with the world that we've been going through is just trying to say, well, what is right? What is the best accreditation to go through? How should we judge ourselves?
00:19:54
Speaker
And it's a pretty gray area at the moment. I think a lot of people will struggle with it. And we've just been committing more and more resources to make sure that we kind of leave the pack on it. We will be able to, because of the freehold side of our business, we own the building. Any changes we want to make, we make them. So it's going to be one of our kind of key strengths. And it's definitely a kind of watch this space type approach
00:20:22
Speaker
But we want to do it, we want to do it well in the right way. But we're just trying to work out what the right way is. Yeah, it seems as there probably isn't one answer to that, that there's even on the certification system, there's the sort of the green building path, and then there's the healthy building path. And they're often, they go together and they interconnect. But ultimately, it's two entirely different certification processes. And you think, gosh, well, surely there'll be one one day, right? But most
00:20:50
Speaker
Yeah, well, we can't even agree whether carbon neutral net zero or the same term, you end up in this a bit of a mess where it will become clearer in the fullness of time. I think the strongest schemes or accreditations will really win out. You mentioned that you're increasingly being asked, I take it that means there's either direct or indirect pressure as a business to align with
00:21:17
Speaker
ESG fundamentals. Now, are you seeing a sort of groundswell of interest? Are you getting the same type of requests from your customers? Or is this coming from above in terms of investor level? Or is it a bit of both perhaps now?
00:21:34
Speaker
Well, I guess to answer your question, I think actually you end up with the same people. So if you take, we have clients that have investors themselves that also go down to
00:21:52
Speaker
the various members of the public that are pushing more and more pressure on them and they are also wanting to get ahead of it. So they are then asking us from a client point of view. But we also then have investors and the people that put the money into the investors are also members of the public. So I think
00:22:10
Speaker
basically what you're having now is that the world has certainly woken up for this and it's piling pressure and voting in one way that they can which is with their money and with their pension funds and then trying to make a more informed decision and so therefore asking all of the
00:22:29
Speaker
various investments that they have their money in. Well, what are you doing about it? So it's no longer good enough to just have a generic answer. You've got to have real credentials to sit alongside your strategy to be able to kind of answer that from the investor side and their client side. We're causing the crossfires of both. So I'm getting from both sides to answer your question kind of in a simplistic way.
00:22:56
Speaker
I can completely see how, for example, someone like myself who is operating in this space, in a sense now that the community that one chooses to become a part of beyond those human interactions and I think so much of what brands like Uncommon offer is that opportunity to interact and connect
00:23:16
Speaker
and in some sense play a part in a very small but meaningful tribe of people who perhaps share some common interest, but at the same time that address and the brand that one associates oneself with
00:23:28
Speaker
if that carries meaning and in this case carries meaning around ESG and sustainability. Now that's as valuable as my signing up for Surfers Against Sewage monthly contribution
Future of Workspaces and ESG Challenges
00:23:39
Speaker
membership. For example, it's a value add from a client perspective for sure and I think what I see that you're doing is not just
00:23:48
Speaker
using biofilium plants as decoration but that's part of a far wider joined up and cohesive strategy and therefore the greenwashing thing just doesn't even come into play. I'm just wondering from your perspective now where you're seeing the industry
00:24:02
Speaker
how you see the next five years playing out. Do you see any major changes coming? Do you anticipate having to radically evolve the business or do you feel like you've found a recipe that works now and it's a case of replicating it out over a number of sites? Yeah.
00:24:23
Speaker
I think to your last point, the ESG topic is such a massive one that is just happening. So unless you're there with it, you will be left behind and your business won't exist from a operator's point of view. So that is mission number one to make sure we're really leading on that. I think there will be
00:24:45
Speaker
a the market will be favorable to people that just create better office spaces and that then becomes a question of well us as
00:25:01
Speaker
And there are loads of titles around that, but actually we just end up being an office operator and actually space just is that. It's only space. We start to have less divisions around what is a traditional lease provider and what is a traditional lease.
00:25:19
Speaker
the world just becomes a bit more hotelarised, to use that made up term, and people demand more from their space. So I think it's a one way.
00:25:34
Speaker
It's just all about quality. If you are providing quality service, you will evolve with the market. If you don't, you only need to look at the lease lengths terms that people are now signing up for. They've got more flexibility. That's what they want. I've never understood how someone can sign a lease of over 10 years because you look at how quickly any market evolves now, you probably
00:26:02
Speaker
you'll probably be incorrect in the size of space that you need throughout that 10-year period. So I think the market fundamentally will come to this type of operation, and I think it's a great space to be in, but we've got to be aware of the kind of bigger flows that are going on around the likes of ESG.
Conclusion and Contact Information
00:26:21
Speaker
That's kind of the risk area for me.
00:26:25
Speaker
One final question then and then I'll let you get on with your day but I did want to pick up on something I again noticed from your side. The idea of how you are creating different zones and spaces within the overall workspace. So for almost I think you had a strategy around certain types of work being done in certain places and
00:26:47
Speaker
I can really see that just struck a chord with me based on what I'm seeing happening in the world of work right now. The idea of almost turns for deep work and perhaps more collaborative work. Is that something that's been a response to the last 18 months with COVID or were you already on that track and in a sense is being proven right by what's going on?
00:27:08
Speaker
Yeah, I know the activity-based working approach was always there. It's little things, like you see certain tasks behind me where I'm sitting at the moment. There are booths, they're perfect for one person going into, I've just got to get through this X piece of work. But then it's not right.
00:27:29
Speaker
if they wanted to meet a colleague and have a chat and an informal chat which is where you go to one of our cafe lounges and you'd sit down there and you'd have an informal meeting in there or you might need the very formal meeting which at that point you're going into one of the meeting rooms. So it completely depends and we've got to create spaces that allow people to have that different
00:27:53
Speaker
kind of area for them to do the best work they can. It's a big thing and I think that's where...
00:28:00
Speaker
companies, they just go in and just put desks everywhere and they say, well, that's the office. That's where it doesn't work. You need to create those different places and you've got to create a reason for people to come into the offices. We can support them in that. And that's going to be the key way that you get people out of being at home because it's just a better experience. And that's got to be the win for an office in general.
00:28:27
Speaker
Well, I can honestly say you seem to be doing a lot of deep strategic thinking about your product and service, and it really shows. So congrats on all you've done so far. Best of luck for everything that comes next. How can people reach out, connect, I guess via the website? Yeah, website's best. LinkedIn, Instagram, we're kind of all over that. Yeah, just do that. Send me a message. Perfect. Very good. Well, we'll link in the show notes. Chris, thanks so much for your time.
00:28:56
Speaker
Thanks very much, cheers, bye.