Oil and Gas Giant BP as a Case Study on the Future of the Workplace

Oil giant BP has a message for hotels and flexible workplace providers: Inspire us. Why is that? The multinational says it needs help to “rewire” its business.

The company posted a loss of $20.3 billion in 2020, and is now selling its offices, and other assets, to invest in its low carbon energy transformation.

It sold its London headquarters for $345 million in November last year, but will lease it back from new owners Lifestyle International Holdings for two years. It’s also told its 25,000 office-based employees they’ll be working remotely at least two days a week.

Now hotels and workplaces will have a role to play as BP “rewires” its business — a process countless other companies will be going through as they map out their post-pandemic recovery.

“[The hotel] brand has a place, it’s got consistency, there’s a feel, and hotels are often in the right places. Big branded hotels have been running hospitality hotels for hundreds of years,” said Andrew Carne, BP’s global workplace procurement manager.

WorkBold podcast.

“But on the flip side, uniqueness brings something different. We have many people creating many new things. After our long history as a company, this is probably the most sizeable change you could wish for, in terms of rewiring and restructuring our company,” he added.

Carne, who was speaking during a WorkBold video podcast seen by Skift, ahead of going live on April 5, added that the company now has “lot of minds coming together” who want to work in a space that is different.

“When and if we go to an external space, we want that to be inspiring, and to drive people’s minds in the right way,” he said.

Avoiding the Mid-Week Mountain

Unique and inspiring spaces are one thing, but providers of these spaces now need to adapt their technology, to fit with a lot of the process that travel managers are typically used to. For example, employees will need to be able to self-book meetings and desk spaces, or their organizations will be slowed down.

“You may just want to have day passes, or meetings and day passes,” said Ciaran Delaney, CEO of Meetingsbooker who was also speaking in the podcast. “You build your policy into the solution, so you’ve got a level of control. You can’t just open up a new solution to thousands of employees.”

Delaney said half of the meetings booked on his platform take place within a week, and Carne noted how the “mid-week mountain,” where employees will head into workplaces in larger numbers, is a common fear.

WeWork’s 1 Waterhouse Sq building in London’s Holborn.

“How do we plan for that? I see the future of booking is going on your phone, or system, where I book my parking space, maybe a work station, maybe a meeting area, maybe a gym pass for the day,” he said. “That’s really exciting, and will hopefully lead to better demand management.”

Flexible workplaces used to be offered on longer terms, but now they are responding to these new, more agile, needs.

WeWork, which last week announced it would become a publicly traded company via a SPAC merger with BowX Acquisition Corp, raising $1.3 billion in the process, has been tweaking its model recently.

As well as membership-only plans, it has just launched a new All Access pass, so users can work at any of its sites, and is expanding its on-demand pass, which lets people book by the hour, to more cities after testing it in the U.S.

It’s also adding more open spaces, with more collaboration hubs. “We see offices as being designed less for heads down work at individual desks and more designed for people to safely work together, discuss ideas and collaborate,” a spokesperson told Skift.

The company is also working with customers on custom designs. Last year it signed Deloitte as a customer, which is swapping its Manchester office, housing 800 staff, for a WeWork space.

Meanwhile, for those companies that are redesigning their own offices, there’s potential for even more employees needing to work remotely. This includes banking app Revolut, which is transforming 70 percent of its offices into labs for “high-energy, face-to-face collaboration.”

“There’s a transition period, and you need tools and solution that will help through that,” Carne said.

Looking further ahead, Delaney predicts more hotels will follow in Leonardo Hotels’ footsteps — bringing in workplace experts to manage their spaces.

Sidenotes

While hotels can make meeting colleagues a better experience, one seasoned business traveler wants to take the idea a step further and help remote workers become more sociable after a year of restrictions.

Consultant Andy Cairns is launching RAVL in July, and is currently in talks with several travel management companies about how they can offer it to their customers.

While some hotels measure success based on the number of friendships formed at the properties, he will rather target the new generation of distributed employees, so they can make better use of their time when working from home, as well as on the road.

“This is kind of like dating, but for business people,” Cairns told Skift.

RAVL will offer one-to-one networking, with users creating a profile and listing their interests in order to be matched with other people. It will also let members set up events, for example if a business traveler arrives in a destination and wants to hire an area in a bar or hotel.

Meanwhile, a directory of local coffee shops and restaurants is being built for various destinations, which will include special offers.

“One of the things that always annoyed and frustrated me was that I’d wasted so much time in hotels. When you get back to your room, the options to socialize are fairly limited,” he said.

One of his previous work projects involved living in a hotel for 18 months, while another saw him spend Monday to Thursday in a hotel, flying back home for weekends, for two years. “I found it strange that I had all these connections on LinkedIn, but there was no way of saying ‘hey, I’m in New York this week, are any of my connections around?’” he added.

Privacy will be a barrier though, and Cairns said he won’t look to integrate into LinkedIn, although similar apps like Shapr do. “We don’t want people to know where you work straight away,” Carins said.

RAVL is being tested, with users already generating ideas, including running clubs.

We could see a resurgence in hotels looking to play a greater role in our social lives. In 2018, Marriott brand Moxy teamed up with dating and networking app Bumble.

Before Covid hit, Cairns was specializing in human resource transformation projects. This could be his biggest project yet.

10-Second Corporate Travel Catch-Up

Who and what Skift has covered over the past week: Air France-KLM, Air New Zealand, Covid passports, Sabre, Sonesta.

In Brief

Why Bars Could Be the Next Desks for Ireland’s Remote Workers 

Ireland plans to turn vacant buildings — including pubs — in rural towns into remote working hubs, according to Reuters. The pubs could be used as workspaces during quiet afternoons, or when they are closed during the week. With more people leaving major cities, there could be demand for the proposed network of up to 400 remote working hubs. WeWork is known for providing free beer in its buildings, now Guinness could make a viable workplace perk too.

Deem Signs Another Agency Tech Partnership

Deem has added another partnership, this time with Corporate Travel Management (not the Australian company, this one is based in North Carolina in the U.S.). It follows a similar deal made with FCM Travel last month. Corporate Travel Management specializes in the entertainment and movie sectors, with a “high-touch” service for VIP clients, and it will use Deem’s new Etta mobile app.

Global Companies Fix Future Work Patterns

Following the first anniversary of lockdown for most countries, more companies are setting out how they see the future of work, and it’s not all fully remote. Banking firm Citi will give staff a break from video calls one day per week, according to the New York Times. “Zoom-Free Fridays” recognize how the pandemic workday has taken its toll on the wellbeing of its 210,000 staff, but the initiative won’t apply to external virtual client meetings. IBM, meanwhile, expects 80 percent of its employees to work in a hybrid model after the pandemic, notes Bloomberg. And the UK’s Nationwide bank has said its 13,000 office-based staff can work from anywhere after travel restrictions are lifted, the Guardian reported.

Study Launches Into Covid and Mobility

Travel platform Jyrney is working with the University of Exeter and the Travel and Meetings Society to undertake research into the effects Covid 19 and Mobility-as-a-Service are having on ground transport for corporate travel. It’s calling on buisness travelers and travel buyers to take part in their research. “In business travel we have three trends converging; the move towards a hybrid office, Mobility-as-a-Service and decarbonization, all accelerated by Covid 19,” said Jyrney CEO Daniel Price. “Our research will help us understand what travelers and travel managers need from their ground transport programs and provide business travel agencies with insight to support their travelers.”

Business Travelers Want Governments to Take Charge of Covid Passports

More than two thirds (69 percent) of business travelers think digital health passports should be handled by governments or non-governmental organizations, not by private organizations such as airlines, according to a survey by BCD Travel. By the end of 2021, 83 percent expect to be traveling again, according to the poll of 844 business travelers carried out in February.