How to pick the best Serviced Office in UK

In recent years, the number of businesses choosing a serviced office from which to run their business has grown at an accelerated rate—which is not really surprising, as serviced offices effectively give business owners and entrepreneurs the opportunity to maintain control in a rapidly changing world. Serviced offices are a sign of these changing times, in that they are designed to dispense with the traditional obligation of signing a two to five-year lease, instead offering tenants flexible plans to rent an office, including the freedom to change anything at any time.

In today’s fluctuating business world, the logic of a serviced office practically sells itself as an advantageous if not optimal solution. However the question remains: how do you choose the ideal serviced office for your business?

This is an important question not to be underestimated, as choosing the right serviced office will have a substantial impact on your business’ capacity for growth. It is therefore essential that you ponder the most significant factors before choosing your ideal serviced office.

Think about it: from your day-to-day business processes; to the interaction between your employees, as well as the resulting productivity and working culture; to the onboarding of clients; and more besides—your serviced office is going to be the hub of your essential business functioning, meaning that it must be fit and suitable enough to cultivate all of these functions in a cost-effective manner.

In order to make the best decision, consider the following factors when choosing a UK serviced office that’s ideal for your business.

Which Type of Serviced Office Best for your Business? 

The increasingly popular industry of serviced office space can be divided into two main solutions: co-working spaces and private serviced offices. 

Co-Working Spaces

Typically the most popular choice for entrepreneurs and freelance workers, co-working spaces essentially mean that you will be sharing a space with like-minded workers from other businesses. Using a co-working space also means that you will pay for only what you need, as various services are included and the leases are highly flexible (the monthly costs for renting space can be incredibly low).

Although co-working offices are highly appealing to freelancer workers and startup businesses, established and larger businesses also find them suitable in some cases. This is why, in most cases, a serviced office provider will also offer membership schemes that allow the use of their other workspaces on an ad hoc basis. 

Private Serviced Offices

By far the most convenient modern workspace solution for a business of any size is a private serviced office, which provides you with either a room or an entire floor in a building to use as your office space, i.e. in accordance with the number of people it needs to accommodate for your business operations. 

A private serviced office not only provides you with the space your business needs, but it is also fully-furnished, and includes the management (i.e. on your behalf) of office maintenance, security, utilities, and a variety of other services, thus allowing you to focus solely on your productive business activities.

Which Location is the Best One for your Serviced Office?

Having decided that a serviced office is the ideal workspace solution for your business, the choice of its location is the next question you’ll need to address.

Put simply, choosing the right location for your serviced office will substantially assist your efforts towards business growth. A more than important detail, your office location will determine not only how customers perceive your business, but also its attractiveness in terms of its ability to recruit talent and deal with vendors and suppliers.

Although it’s not a fixed rule, centrality is generally the aspect of location that proves to be most effective, i.e. having your serviced office situated right in the heart of a big city. In the UK, this means a London location is the ultimate choice for most businesses—in terms of business prestige, transportation options, and cultural attractiveness.

In making the right decision for the location of your UK serviced office, consider the following key factors: 

·         Will your employees be able to travel to work without inconvenience?

·         Will your clients be able to find and reach the office easily?

·         Does the area include ancillary services – such as train and bus stations, cafeterias, and gyms – that are accessible?

·         Is there good security in the surrounding area of your office?

All things considered, the most important factor in office location is the transportation links, as your office location really should be close enough to your employees whilst also being an easy enough commute for your clients to make.

Furthermore, the better a UK central location is in terms of these factors, the greater prestige will be associated with that location; and therefore, with your business too.

How Extensive are the Business Support Services of your Provider?

The essential aim of choosing a serviced office instead of a traditional office is to enable your business to focus purely on its business activities, i.e. whilst your office space provider reliably takes care of everything else for you.

However, in order to astutely evaluate a provider’s ability to facilitate your business effectively is by assessing its range of business support services: for if you choose a provider that’s endowed with an excellent set of services, you’ll ensure that your business will have all the support it needs to work through any circumstance.

Some examples of highly useful support services include an in-house tech-support that ensures you’ll experience zero downtime; support in recruitment (i.e. Human Resources support); legal support, for simplifying matters of compliance that may be complex (including taxation support); and a concierge that serves your every need regarding tasks more mundane but necessary.

Put simply, the more support services your provider offers, the more your business will be able to fully devote its attention to the productive matters of its business, whilst maintaining this focus indefinitely.

For more information about serviced offices, see our buyers guide to serviced offices.