Pictured above: Charlie Toogood, Director in the Birmingham office

Desks are significantly smaller, open plan offices are now regarded as the norm for even the most senior fee-earners, hot-desking is commonplace, and non-stop improvements in technology are making it effortless to work from home. However, property heads at large corporates are not slashing the amount of office space required in their forecasts. The city centre office remains vital, but the way the internal fit-out is planned and configured is changing radically. 

There is much recent evidence to suggest that younger members of the workforce work better in teams, rather than in isolation. In contrast, more senior staff prefer to work alone. However, in order for skills and experience to be shared and passed on, task-based project teams that pull together different specialisms from across a firm are being favoured as the optimum way of working. Generation convergence in the workplace is the new terminology that is driving how colleagues work together. 

The latest trend in office fit-outs is for large areas of office space to be dedicated to project team working. As well as desks being considerably smaller than 15 years ago, occupiers are also demanding that they are much easier to manoeuvre and re-configure in alternative layouts. Furthermore, breakout areas for informal team meetings and brainstorming are becoming as prevalent in professional firms, as they are in creative practices.    

To make way for much more breakout space and dedicated areas for project teams, the amount of space allocated to each employee in professional firms has fallen dramatically. With large amounts of filing and storage space required, a high proportion of cellular offices, and a heavy dependence on suites of glamorous meeting rooms, solicitors have typically required more space per person than other professionals. However, the historic ratio of 150 sq ft per one employee at law firms is reducing to the general norm of 100 sq ft per employee. 

In other types of professional firms, the new ratio that is becoming much more widespread is 80 sq ft per employee. In fact, at GVA, we were at a ratio of 110 sq ft per employee in 1998 when we first moved into Three Brindleyplace, whereas today, even though we have not ventured into hot-desking arrangements - and have a permanent desk for all 360 members of the team - we are at an overall occupancy ratio of 90 sq ft per employee. 

Gone are the days in many firms in many sectors where the size of your desk grew as you climbed the career ladder with each promotion. However, it is smart practice to allocate different size desks to employees specialising in different disciplines. IT technicians are far less reliant on paper and large files than their colleagues in the HR department. 

Even with the desire for more breakout spaces, with flat screen computers, wire-free technology and the new generation of office furniture, it is not difficult to see how professional firms will carry on moving towards the building regulations occupancy limit of 60 sq ft per employee, which is the typical ratio call centres operate at. 

A sector of the market which is setting an example of how to 'sweat' your property assets is local authorities such as Birmingham City Council. A new policy is being adopted to allocate only eight desks per each team of 10 employees, and the target is to reduce the number to seven desks. This smarter working policy is based on evidence that with working from home and flexible working hours largely being encouraged by local authorities, for the majority of the time only half of the desks are used at any given time. 

PriceWaterhouseCoopers was a trailblazer in office wide hot-desking, with Cornwall Court in Birmingham's financial district being fitted out a good few years ago in an ultra-modern style with banks of un-allocated desks. Employees keep their immediate work and personal possessions in moveable pedestals and use a swipe system to be allocated a desk for the day. This is a highly efficient way of limiting the amount of space required for a growing workforce, and it does of course make good business sense for a company which will inevitably have a significant proportion of its fee-earners out working at client premises. In fact, PriceWaterhouseCoopers won a British Council of Offices fit-out award for their Cornwall Court interior. 

However, sterile working environments with office-wide hot-desking policies are not being adopted across the board by other professional firms. Despite the fact we're still crawling out of the recession, the issue of attracting and retaining talented employees is key. Having a dynamic work environment that naturally inspires interaction and collaboration is what is desired by employees, particularly those under 40. People crave social interaction and working from home is not something the majority of people want to do, other than as a rare event to write a report for instance. In recent times, there is anecdotal evidence to suggest that some professionals who have been predominantly home-based are seeking to revert back to an office-based role. 

While technology advances in the past decade have been immense, more people are working in city centres and this trend will continue to grow. People enjoy working in lively offices in vibrant cities. While property costs are generally only second to the salary bill in the list of overheads, professional firms are looking to continue to improve occupational densities, not transcend to an entirely mobile workforce of people based at home who only come into a central office for meetings.   

Good offices build and maintain a healthy organisational culture and enhance brand image. They are cool places to be and engender pride and loyalty in the employee. As long as people enjoy working with people, the role of the office agent will not be extinct!