DWF cuts Glasgow space as staff opt to go hybrid
Global legal practice DWF is downsizing its Glasgow office after staff opted for a blended working pattern.
A workplace survey amongst all employees in the first quarter of 2021 found an overwhelming majority who wished to split their working week by spending to or three days a week from the office, and the rest working from home. DWF has taken the feedback on board in its new global office strategy.
As part of this strategy, this month the DWF team in Glasgow will move from 110 Queen Street to the eighth floor of The Sentinel, a fully refurbished premise. Whilst the new office is fitted out, the team will be temporarily based out of 9 George Square.
Paul Pignatelli, Glasgow office managing partner at DWF, commented: "The pandemic has unsurprisingly led to more people working from home than ever before. During this time the DWF executive and Glasgow partners discussed how our office requirements and working habits have changed and the ways in which this affects our clients' and our own future working needs.
"With our colleagues also indicating that they wanted to split their working week by spending between two and three days a week from an office, we decided to move to a hybrid-working model and relocate our office to The Sentinel.
"As a result we have been able to reduce our square foot space by half and begin designing our new office environment that caters for a new way of working. It is a genuinely exciting opportunity to move into a newer, fitter-for purpose environment embracing some of the newer habits that have been formed over the last 12 months."
Matthew Doughty, chief operating officer of DWF Group plc, added: "Like any sensible business, in late 2020 we began actively reviewing our real estate portfolio around the world to make sure that we had the right office space for our business needs. With the majority of our people currently working from home, and given our expectations of an increase in agile working in the future, we took the opportunity to begin redesigning some of our offices, renegotiating leases and marketing some of our surplus property in certain markets, to ensure that our office space fits our future requirements."