Employers, are you investing enough in your workplace? If not, you may not get the right talent you need for your business. Businesses in the Middle East are focusing on workplace location, connectivity, flexibility and layout to win the battle to recruit the best talent, a report by property specialist Savills revealed.

Catering to different demographics and the use of different parts of office spaces are increasingly becoming a key focus point for business leaders when designing their new offices, the report said.

The Middle East update follows a Savills-commissioned 2019 YouGov survey of 11,000 workers across European office markets, which revealed that 40 percent of Europe’s workers are expected to leave their current job in the next five years, as employers are finding that talent retention is their single biggest challenge across Europe.

To avoid similar scenarios from happening in the region, Middle East businesses are exploring a number of options such as setting up collaborative zones (places for people to work with their teams or cross-departmentally), private/quiet offices, hot desks (allowing people to sit in different places for variety and for cross-pollination of ideas), café/pantry facilities, high-tech meeting rooms.

Some of the other options include: sleep pods, mothers’ rooms, bike/scooter parking provision, gym and workout facilities, breakout/downtime rooms.

“If you look at the demographic of those entering the workplace, their wants and expectations are different from the generation before. It is a tug of war that balances company traditions with prioritising conditions to provide new, younger generations with what they require,” Simon Denham, Head of Savills Building and Project Consultancy (BPC) for the Middle East region said.

“The shift is leaning towards providing a home away from home. This is not new ground; it has existed in the tech and marketing sectors for a number of years now. However, the young workforce is having a greater influence. Consequently, there is a greater pressure on all sectors to consider how they shape their office space to cater for changing needs and demands,” Denham said.

(Writing by Gerard Aoun; editing by Seban Scaria)

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