Serviced Office vs Traditional Offices - A Space Comparison
Serviced Office vs Traditional Offices - A Space Comparison
Serviced offices have many benefits over traditional office leases, particularly the flexibility of lease terms low initial start up costs and speed of entry.
But when does it become cost effective to move onto a traditional lease? The size of your office requirement is probably the main consideration, providing your operation has some permanence (ie it is not short term, single project related).
Here are some guidelines as to the space you should be allocating:
- Large Meeting Room (6 - 8 People) 20 sq.m (215 sq.ft)
- Small meeting room (4 people) 13.5 sq.m (145 sq.ft)
- Director’s Office 16 sq.m (175 sq.ft)
- Manager’s Workstation 9.3 sq.m (100 sq.ft)
- Open plan workstations 7 sq.m (75 sq.ft)
A simple calculation will give the floor are you might require, just to accommodate staff in a traditional office environment.
On top of this you may need to add training and board rooms, kitchens, reception, storage and comms rooms.
For serviced offices, you hire the business centres’ meeting rooms as you need them. The licence fee is usually on a per workstation basis rather than area occupied. By comparing the cost of renting an office on a traditional lease (calculated by multiplying the area needed by a cost per area) against the serviced office cost (number of workstations multiplied by the cost per workstation) a break even point can be estimated and viability assessed.