How do I choose a flexible office lease to fit my company’s needs?

This is a tricky one to work out, because office leases are not famous for being flexible. If you are trying to choose a flexible office lease, what you are really asking is: “Will this still work for my company if things change?”

That is a very sensible question.

Your company may grow. It may shrink. You may need a different location. You may decide the team only needs to be in the office three days a week. Or you may simply not know yet what the business will look like in two or three years’ time.

The difficulty is that a lease often wants certainty, while your business may need room to change. So the trick is not to pretend you can predict everything. It is to be honest about how much certainty you really have before you commit.

Why it is hard to choose a flexible office lease

With a conventional office lease, you usually agree to take the space for a fixed period of time. That might be three years, it might be five years or longer still.

Once you have agreed that term, you are generally stuck with it. That is the whole point of the lease. The landlord gets certainty that the space is let, and you get certainty over your rent and occupation.

That certainty can be useful. If you know exactly what you need, and you are confident your company will still need that space for the whole lease term, it can work very well.

But if your needs change halfway through, things can become more awkward. You may find the office is too small, too large, in the wrong place, or no longer right for the way your team works. And by that point, the lease does not politely step aside and say, “No problem, off you go.”

It tends to say, “You agreed to this.”

What happens if your office lease is not flexible enough?

If you are in a conventional lease and the space no longer suits your company, there may be a way out. Usually, that means putting the lease on the market and trying to find another company to take your place. If that works, you can move on and find space that better fits your current needs.

But this is not always simple. It is not impossible, but it can be hard work, take time and involve costs. And, most importantly, it can pull you away from the work that actually makes your income. It is usually something to avoid if you possibly can.

The best answer is not to assume you can easily escape later: think carefully before you sign.

How to choose a flexible office lease when your needs may change

The only sensible place to start is with a realistic plan. Not a perfect plan – nobody has one of those – just a realistic one.

Ask yourself:

• How many people do we have now?
• How many people are we likely to have in 12 months?
• How many days a week will people be in the office?
• Could we grow quickly?
• Could we need less space?
• Are we choosing this office because it fits the business, or because we are hoping the business will fit the office?

That last question is often the uncomfortable one.

If you can write down a plan that gives you a fairly clear answer, then a conventional lease may be fine. For example, if you feel confident that a three-year lease matches your expected needs, then that may give you useful certainty.

But if every answer starts with “it depends”, that is probably telling you something. It may be telling you that flexibility matters more than fixed-term security.

Is a serviced office better when you need flexibility?

If you cannot confidently predict what your company will need, serviced offices may be the more flexible route.

They are usually available on shorter-term agreements. You can take space for a shorter period, see how things go, and then renew again if it still works. That can be very useful if your company is growing, changing, testing a new location, or simply not ready to make a longer commitment.

They can also make growth easier to manage. If you need more space, you may be able to take more desks in the same building. If that is not possible, there may be another serviced option nearby. It will not always line up perfectly, but it does usually give you more room to manoeuvre.

There is a drawback, of course.

The rent may go up over time. With a conventional lease, the rent agreed for a three-year term will usually stay the same throughout that period. With serviced offices, you may have more movement in price when you renew.

So it is a trade-off. A conventional lease may give you more rent certainty. A serviced office may give you more business flexibility. Neither is automatically right or wrong. It depends on what risk worries you more.

Would you rather risk paying more later for flexibility? Or would you rather risk being stuck in the wrong office for too long?

The consolation is that there are many more serviced office options now than there used to be. Years ago, the choice was more limited. Today, there is a much wider range of buildings, styles, locations and price points.

That makes serviced offices much easier to work with, especially for companies that do not yet know exactly what they will need in the future.

Final thought

Choosing the right office is not just about where you want to be today. It is also about how confident you are about tomorrow.

If your company’s needs are fairly predictable, a conventional lease may give you the certainty you want. But if things are still changing, or you cannot yet see far enough ahead, a serviced office may save you a lot of future hassle.

The main thing is not to force certainty where it does not exist. If the plan is clear, a lease may work well. If the plan is still a bit of a moving target, flexibility may be worth paying for.

That is often the safest way to choose a flexible office lease – not by looking for a perfect answer, but by being honest about how much change your company might need to handle.