Why the next generation of businesses may never rent an office

For generations, getting an office was almost a rite of passage for a growing business. Today, an increasing number of entrepreneurs are asking a different question: do we actually need one?

The shift towards remote and flexible working has changed what it means to have a place of business. A company can have employees spread across several cities, customers around the world and a founder who works wherever they happen to open their laptop.

What hasn’t disappeared is the need for an address.

Businesses still need somewhere to receive correspondence, somewhere to register a company and, in many cases, an address they are comfortable displaying publicly.

It has created an interesting gap between the way modern businesses work and the infrastructure they still require.

One company operating in that gap is PostHQ.co.uk, which provides businesses with a real London virtual address without requiring them to occupy the building itself.

It is a relatively simple concept, but one that reflects a much bigger change in attitudes towards office space.

For a start-up watching every pound, committing to commercial premises can be difficult to justify. Rent is only the beginning. There are deposits, business rates, utilities, furniture, insurance and the various costs that come with maintaining a workplace.

Money not tied up in property can instead be spent on developing a product, finding customers, hiring people or marketing the business.

Yet operating without an office creates its own practical problems. Using a home address can blur the boundary between personal and professional life, while a conventional PO box may not provide everything a company requires.

Services such as PostHQ.co.uk effectively separate the business address from the place where the work happens.

Customers can use the London address on websites and business correspondence, as well as using it as their registered office with Companies House.

There is still physical post, of course. That has not disappeared simply because the workforce has become more mobile.

A virtual mailbox allows correspondence to be received at the London address before being held for collection, scanned and emailed, or sent elsewhere through mail forwarding.

That last point becomes particularly relevant as the definition of remote working continues to expand.

For some people, flexible working means spending three days at home and two in an office. For others, it means moving between cities or running a British business while spending significant periods overseas. In either case, the physical location of the person no longer has to dictate the location of the business.

Perhaps that is the more interesting change.

The office is gradually being broken down into its individual functions. Teams can communicate online. Meetings can happen by video. Files live in the cloud. People can work from almost anywhere.

The address is one of the remaining pieces that still benefits from being fixed.

For businesses embracing that freedom, the attraction of a virtual office is not necessarily about pretending to have something they don't. It is about keeping the useful parts of an office while removing the expensive parts they no longer need.

In that sense, PostHQ.co.uk is less about replacing the office than recognising that, for a growing number of businesses, the office has already changed.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Bdaily Publishing .