As a lease nears its end, the managing director or CEO usually starts to dream of moving to smart new premises which reflects their organisation’s branding, culture, ambitions, self-perception and ability to attract and retain talent.
However, for most finance directors or CFOs, a lease end usually means a move – which translates into lost revenue, increased costs and business development disruption.
While a lease break window may be less disruptive, they often slip away because more pressing operational matters take priority.
Lease breaks or lease ends are, in fact, golden opportunities for hard-pressed finance leaders to squeeze more value from their existing workspace, reduce costs and review how their office could be a catalyst to achieve a desired culture change.
Lease break opportunities
Lease breaks are an opportunity for tenants to negotiate, with no contingent risk, because significant potential benefits include:
- Reducing the space occupied: a major consideration for many in these uncertain economic times
- Using the ‘break’ to negotiate more space in the same building – especially attractive to acquisitive companies where ‘cultural harmonisation’ between the acquiring and acquired teams is a desired/necessary outcome
- Renegotiating lease terms
- Negotiating a service charge holiday
- A significant bonus to your bottom line, if you secure it.
In particular, the opportunity to review the service charge should never be missed as it could either fix the rate for the next five years, or new lease length, or be part of the negotiation to secure a rent-free period.
New work practice opportunities
Who would have thought that technology advancements and even GDPR could create opportunities to make significant lease-related cost savings from an office move or redesign?
Technology-inspired savings include:
- Mobile technology advancements enable employees to work remotely. Desk sharing is now the norm and not every employee requires a dedicated desk. In 2019, 100 employees do not equal 100 desks. Spare desk space can be redeployed into informal meeting areas.
- Smaller, slimmer screens mean smaller desks, which means either increasing the number of desks in the same space or, opting for a smaller workspace.
Recent GDPR legislation has led to many firms adopting a ‘clear-desk-at-night’ policy. This has brought the much-heralded paperless office predictions closer to reality, as documents are now routinely scanned and held electronically. This, in turn, has led to a shrinking need for filing cabinets and reduced workspace requirements.
Culture change
In addition, the evolution of office provision has changed how we use our workspace.
Today, there are fewer of the expensive, individual offices so beloved of yesteryear’s senior leaders, with their need to have walls built and services reconfigured.
The replacement of private offices, first by open-plan desks and subsequently by shared hot desks has had a profound impact on space utilisation and the resulting (space) cost reductions.
Obvious savings come from reduced desk footprints, as well as lower lighting and air conditioning costs as these can be reconfigured to increase their overall efficiency.
Communal areas have also changed. Gone are kitchens with just a kettle, a cupboard and a sink. Today, the millennial-led workforce expects kitchens with microwaves, oversized fridges and Zip Taps, as well as facilities like showers and cycle storage. Quite often, there is still an overall space-saving and a subsequent cost reduction.
New office lease opportunities
Perhaps one of the smartest things every organisation should consider before it starts to look for new premises is investing in a ‘space audit’. This allows the management team to make informed decisions about desk numbers, desk sizes and desk locations and also helps create a plan for greater social and informal breakout spaces – which usually translates into smaller spaces being leased.
Audits replace guesswork about how much space is needed and how it will be deployed. A space utilisation analysis also provides an accurate understanding of how to introduce efficiencies into everyday work practices – challenging established protocols often accepted as gospel.
In addition, the rapid rise of the serviced office sector has changed how people think about their workspace-related financial commitments.
One perception about serviced offices is that they are often used by startups and microcompanies but today, even large national and multinational corporations choose this option when project teams demand an immediate workspace, for a short-term or indefinite period.
Although more expensive than a long-term solution, the serviced office option offers greater flexibility whilst minimising expensive liabilities.
Everything is negotiable
Let me close with a little bit of free counsel. From experience, I know that tenants either do not serve their break clause notice or are slow to start negotiating their lease-end terms.
If tenants start the process 12 months or more before those notable periods, the negotiation pendulum will sit squarely in their favour. Leaving it until six months or less means the negotiating whip hand will lie with the landlord.
Remember, the best lease terms amounts to more than just the rent you negotiate. Service charge rates can also be negotiated. If, for example, your new office is on the ground floor, why should you pay for the maintenance and repair of the lift?
Never accept the landlord’s opening terms and conditions. Make a well-reasoned counter bid, based on empirical comparables and suddenly rent-free, service charge cap and dilapidations concessions can become a reality.
To quote famed business guru Gavin Kennedy, “everything is negotiable”.