Editorial & Advertiser disclosure

Global Banking & Finance Review® is an online platform offering news, analysis, and opinion on the latest trends, developments, and innovations in the banking and finance industry worldwide. The platform covers a diverse range of topics, including banking, insurance, investment, wealth management, fintech, and regulatory issues. The website publishes news, press releases, opinion and advertorials on various financial organizations, products and services which are commissioned from various Companies, Organizations, PR agencies, Bloggers etc. These commissioned articles are commercial in nature. This is not to be considered as financial advice and should be considered only for information purposes. It does not reflect the views or opinion of our website and is not to be considered an endorsement or a recommendation. We cannot guarantee the accuracy or applicability of any information provided with respect to your individual or personal circumstances. Please seek Professional advice from a qualified professional before making any financial decisions. We link to various third-party websites, affiliate sales networks, and to our advertising partners websites. When you view or click on certain links available on our articles, our partners may compensate us for displaying the content to you or make a purchase or fill a form. This will not incur any additional charges to you. To make things simpler for you to identity or distinguish advertised or sponsored articles or links, you may consider all articles or links hosted on our site as a commercial article placement. We will not be responsible for any loss you may suffer as a result of any omission or inaccuracy on the website.

Home > Business > Flexible Working and Working From Home: A positive, not a compromise

Flexible Working and Working From Home: A positive, not a compromise

Published by linker 5

Posted on November 12, 2020

4 min read

Last updated: January 21, 2026

Flexible working environment showcasing home office setup - Global Banking & Finance Review — An image depicting a modern home office setup, illustrating the shift towards flexible working and remote collaboration in the post-COVID world, as discussed in the article.

By Andrew Lynch, co-founder and COO of Huckletree

Businesses need advisors, not service providers – how the shared workspace industry needs to adapt to the Post-Covid world.

2020 has been a year of upheaval. Suddenly people stopped commuting into city centres, high growth businesses were at risk, cash (and the lack thereof) was on everyone’s mind. Almost as painfully as all of those points, team members were being furloughed, which impacted the speed companies could bounce back. As one of the key service providers to the innovation industry, we too had a serious identity shakeup. COVID-19 has forced us in the workspace sector to innovate our way out of a storm, to go bigger with our strategic thinking about how teams and spaces work together, and redefine what workplace of the ‘present’ looks like, not just hypothesise the workplace of the future. Our sector needed to do that almost overnight.

But seven months on, our social lives have found a new, slower rhythm, but many of us are still working long hours from cramped and ill-equipped spaces, and the long-term toll is damaging. Sure, you can solve a problem or come up with an idea from your kitchen table, but it’s hard to generate speed, buy-in, traction and to get the best out of teams that are not only distributed but are juggling things behind the scenes.

So what does this mean for the office? With unclear advice around restrictions and no fixed timelines around transitioning to work, landlords and company heads are turning to the co-working sector for counsel and guidance on how to create flexible working environments that suit pressures not seen or matched before. For these operators, like Huckletree, who have been sitting in the heart of the tech and flexible work model, they have cultivated years worth of data points on how to create environments that inspire positive and productive cultures of work. For Huckletree, there’s value in taking our knowledge of the sector or the patterns and trends we’ve seen play out for the past 6 years since we launched, to help firms rethink what they need and what is missing.

Andrew Lynch

Andrew Lynch

Corporate teams are right in the thick of this. Our enquiries have doubled month on month since March and we’re in live discussions with enterprise teams with headquarters in London and Dublin. Much of these discussions focus on how they can use shared workspaces more innovatively, to transition their distributed teams back into an office environment but without compromising on culture and without getting hit with termination outgoing costs attached to their traditional lease. This is not new for us, but it’s certainly new for them. What we’re seeing is more HR and operations teams re-evaluating their need for physical workspace, asking employees what they want and asking operators like Huckletree to not only manage their new, often complex, space requirements but to help them ask the right questions in the first place.

These larger firms are also starting to see the opportunities for growth, education and new business working in innovative and historically unconventional environments. Now more than ever, it can’t be just about clocking in or out, and presenteeism, but by being exposed to innovative ways of doing things, via founders and entrepreneurs. While this is a concept Huckletree has always been a big champion of, it’s amazing to see larger businesses discover this for the first time as they join our network.

Many shared workspaces offer programmes and schemes to help upskill and invest in their members. For instance, we launched The Hundreds club during lockdown earlier this year, a careers accelerator and mentoring programme for junior to mid-level team members and up-and-coming talent within organisations. Programmes such as these can help employees learn practical skills for how to advance in their field, but also to build vital connections across the ecosystem through networking events and communal spaces.

The pandemic has forced many businesses – from large corporates to small startups – to rethink their business models whilst also exposing the limitations of working from home. Shared workspaces are helping to bridge the disconnect between the traditional office environment with the flexibility and ease of working from home. This is a positive, not a compromise, as our new members are discovering, and one that is here to stay well into 2021.