Warehouses and many factories occupy large areas but have relatively few people compared to offices. The number of employees often isn't enough to justify a decent bus service, unless it happens to be on the way to somewhere that generates more passengers. They tend to be sited on the edge of town where land is cheap and where goods can easily be brought in and out by road - which also makes them easier to get to by car.
And warehouses tend to operate 24/7 or at least until late at night, making useful buys services even less likely
People may not want to work from home due to lack of space, distractions, or having better well-being with more separation between home and "office". This avoids a long commute for those people. However I question whether some employees would want to pay for them, as they don't generate the interaction between employees that is one of the benefits of working (at least some of the time) in an office.
My day has certainly been a lot longer, and more of it was spent on work rather than the largely quite pleasant commute. Hub offices are all very well, but I want and need to interact with my team, not with Nigel from accounts who lives three streets away and happens to work for the same megacorp.
I tend to agree here. Companies who have employees primarily WFH will need to accept that some time will be taken up by travel when teams need to meet up a one of these hub sites but that staff will only be going on as needed basis rather than multiple times a week.
And to be fair, at least in remote first companies operating in my industry before COVID, there absolutely was that understanding.
Oh and there will be a cost to all this travel, via expense claims, but the downsizing of office space should easily offset this.
Presumably paid for by the employee as they are choosing not to use their home as their place of work. Would people really want to spend some of their wages/income on hiring pay as you go type office space?
I fear that we'll end up in a cycle of the Treasury demanding cuts because railways aren't making enough money, thus making already very low passenger numbers fall because of service cuts.
But the journeys in electric cars won't (in most cases) around London and the Southeast be the same journeys that people would have made on trains.
But were the rates low enough not to take a big bite out of most people's salaries?
There is one near me that costs £30 a day with free coffee. If that price is typical, I can see many paying to do that it say once a week but not every day.
That's a great deal, does it apply nationwide? I am so used to having dual 27" monitors that I am not sure I could do a full day's work using just my laptop's 14" display. Also does background noise in a pub become an issue when trying to have a phone conversation with colleague(s)? In addition to this I would need to be careful who can see my screen as I sometimes view/update confidential documents but a privacy screen would get round this issue.
I assume it's a semi-lockdown only offer though
I don't think daytime drinkers would opt for a pricey Brewdog bar when Spoons is right there
It was faster for me to travel from north London to St Albans and Hatfield, than one industrial estate at Enfield.
Brewdog were doing offers like this before Covid. They have some quite large spaces which are basically empty during the day, so it makes a lot of sense. It's really aimed at people who want to get out of the house every so often, can use a laptop screen to do their job (I've never really understood what multiple monitors give you that alt-tab doesn't), and don't need huge privacy solutions or loud calls.