Regus brand owner International Workplace Group (IWG) has said the shift towards hybrid and more localised working is “propelling its business forward” with the fastest growth the company has ever seen.
The UK-based organisation reported its H1 2025 results in August, saying it had added a record 496 centres globally and achieved its highest-ever six-monthly revenue figure.
Despite high-profile stories of major corporations ordering staff back into the office full time, IWG said flexible working had become the “default model for a significant proportion of white-collar workers”. It noted that companies were “empowering” their employees to work across multiple locations, splitting their time between local workspaces, a central office and home.
IWG quoted the research of Professor Nicholas Bloom – a senior fellow at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research and acknowledged as a leading authority on the hybrid model – saying studies have shown about 40% of white-collar employees now work in this model and will continue to do so in the future.
“This is not simply a change in how people work, rather a rebalancing of where economic value is created,” IWG stated in its interim report, noting that small towns had seen a “dramatic increase” in new locations.
Other research commissioned earlier this year by IWG claimed that more flexible and localised ways of working could boost productivity in the UK by 12% and contribute £24 billion to the economy by 2045 – the equivalent of adding a city such as Leeds.
Speaking to the BBC, IWG CEO Mark Dixon said provincial growth was not restricted to counties such as Cornwall, Dorset and Somerset, but was instead a countrywide phenomenon.
