The rise of flex offices
Basically, flex-office culture consists in replacing the single, individual traditional office, with more open, collective spaces. One look at numbers will immediately tell you that this culture is spreading in France: in the last 5 years, France has seen its number of co-working areas multiplied by 10.
How are French Employees viewing this change?
Overall, French employees seem to be doubtful when it comes to this change. Indeed, quite a few stereotypes surround this practice. For example, it’s not uncommon for employees to think that this is just a way of employees to reduce their rent by having smaller offices, or that this strictly comes from start-up culture, and thus has no chance of spreading to big corporations.
However, not even half of companies using this practice actually save space by resorting to this practice, and there are several examples of big companies indulging in these new practices.
What does this mean for the future?
Overall, companies still appear willing to continue trying out these new practices. One look at how fast the market is expanding will tell you this much. Furthermore, this has little chance of negatively affecting the productivity of employees; so far, studies have shown that employees working in flex-offices are happier than those in individual offices.
And given the situation, French employees don’t have too much to worry about: today, only 3% of French employees specifically work in a flex-office environment, while 28% already have flexible timetables and often work away from their offices.
In conclusion, even though it is still relatively small, the expansion of the flex-office culture is just another example of French employees becoming more and more flexible when it comes to work. Quite the good sign for employers, isn’t it?
