Daniel crespo
The future is unwritten, but the pandemic has changed many habits and forced others to embrace without discussion.
This is the case of teleworking.
A year after the COVID turned everything upside down, there has been a brutal turning point: today we want to carry out our work remotely out of conviction for at least part of the week and this will mean a revolution in the markets;
in working methods;
in the offices;
in the way of life of citizens and in the way companies approach them.
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The pandemic drives teleworking in Spain: almost three million remote employees
McKinsey estimates that more than 20% of the workforce in developed countries will be able to continue working from home three to five days a week even when the virus is under control, almost four times the number before the pandemic.
In Spain the percentage is 18%, although the Bank of Spain speaks of 31%.
Because not everyone can carry out their work remotely;
Furthermore, they are a minority of workers (just over three million in Spain in hard confinement, the high point), mainly in services and technology.
The impulse that teleworking has received is of such magnitude that it has already generated new trends, all of them baptized in English: names such as
workation
(combination of remote work and vacations) or
room office
(working in hotels) are already swarming among us. Others are yet to come: when everyday life returns and hybrid work — half in the office, half anywhere else — has become strong, a day-to-day revolution will cascade over a thousand and one sectors.
Pablo Claver, partner of Boston Consulting Group, is clear that presence is past: “Our expectation is that remote work will double, from the 17% we saw before the virus in the 15 main European countries to 30% or 40% ”. When that happens - and, in many cases, already - countless activities will be affected. To begin with, restaurants, because people who do not go to the office eat mostly at home. This will mean an annual saving of between 1,000 and 1,500 euros per employee, he calculates. To continue, transport: fewer trips will benefit the environment and cut teleworker expenses from 500 to 1,500 euros. Finally, many people will move their place of residence outside the big cities, as is already happening in New York, San Francisco or London,where the exodus has taken a toll on rents, which have plummeted between 20% and 30%.
In short, the world will change, leaving behind - like any revolution - losers and winners.
The twilight of the offices
Real estate will be one of the big victims, although, as Anu Madgavkar, a partner at McKinsey Global Institute, adds, the scope of the impact is evolving and it is still difficult to predict all its effects.
In 2020, office vacancies increased significantly in the world's major cities: 91% in San Francisco, 32% in London and 27% in Berlin.
At the same time, it declined in some smaller cities, such as Glasgow or Charlotte, which, he says, implies that companies may be moving from large cities to smaller ones.
According to a survey carried out last August by the consultancy, two-thirds of companies had plans to reconfigure their offices, moving away from offices and focusing on more space for equipment and conference rooms, as well as reducing their surfaces by 30%.
KPMG carried out a similar survey then and has repeated it now, and Spanish managers who plan to reduce their work areas have gone from 69% to 17%.
However, some firms have already done so.
Nielsen has cut 33%: the three floors it occupied in Madrid have been left in two, and in Barcelona it has left its office to move to a
coworking
, a trend that is going strong.
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Liberty Seguros, this is the permanent teleworking company
Mikel Echavarren, CEO of Colliers International, acknowledges that teleworking will reduce the demand for offices by between 10% and 15%. There will be companies, especially technological ones, that will leave their work centers, but others such as consultants, law firms or finance companies will keep their headquarters to remain close to their clients. For now, however, owners are demanding more meters to be able to comply with interpersonal distance protocols, he says. Echavarren also admits knowing of organizations that are going to leave thousands of square meters of offices, up to 90,000, in one go. Above all, in the suburbs.
“The office space is going to be drastically reduced in the big cities. We are seeing it in London, where people leave the capital and move to dormitory cities and companies leave their headquarters to go to flexible spaces ”, warns Philippe Jiménez, general director of IWG in Spain. Last year, in Madrid the hiring was almost in half: from 654,000 meters in 2019 to 339,000, according to CBRE. And in the first quarter the fall continues, with 23% less. A trend that, according to Aberdeen Standard, will continue in the long term with a contraction of between 15% and 25%. Alfonso Galobart, vice president of CBRE, foresees that in 2021 400,000 meters will be absorbed to increase by 60,000 in 2022. The technology companies that embraced teleworking, he explains, are failing productivity and are beginning to return to the offices. Google,Amazon or Telefónica are an example. But there are only a few: Twitter or Salesforce remain faithful to remote work, also with a view to the future.
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Teleworkers begin to colonize the Canary Islands
American consultant Cheryl Geoffrion has made it her way of life. At 58 years old, five months ago he decided to leave the cold of Budapest behind for Gran Canaria. "Before, I had to travel a lot to see clients, but not anymore," he explains by phone from the kitchen of his apartment, his current workplace. He searched the internet for the best place to perform remotely, Google replied that Canarias and she followed him at face value, he says with a laugh. The experience has pleased him and he is already in the process of staying indefinitely. It is by no means the only one that has opted for the archipelago: if in 2019 these profiles were a minority, the Repeople firm speaks of a monthly increase of close to 10% in arrivals since September. Almost a third decide, like Geoffrion, to extend their stay.
The demand for coworking spaces has grown by 300% .TOLGA AKMEN / AFP via Getty Images
Outbreak of the
coworking
“We will return to maximum flexibility.
The workplace will adapt to the life of its employees and not the other way around: companies will keep their headquarters and hire satellite spaces to get closer to their workers ”, predicts Galobart, who has seen how the demand for flexible spaces (coworkings, business centers, hotels, etc.) soared 300% in the first quarter after falling 26% in 2020.
The rise of new office formats, shared buildings in which companies, freelancers and individual workers can be made only with the space they need and for as long as they consider, was long gone. In a decade they have doubled, according to the general director of IWG, that “every day a new center opens in the world; and in Spain there will be 10 this year ”. But its definitive explosion has come with teleworking. "It has brought flexible spaces closer to clients who did not see a solution in us," acknowledges Mireia Pérez, from Aticco, which has seven locations in Barcelona and Madrid. “If today there are 20 workers, tomorrow 80 and the day after 40, they just have to change their plan. Many companies are no longer interested in an entire office so that only half of the workforce will go ”.
Impact Hub, with five centers in Madrid, says it is receiving an avalanche of inquiries.
“Until now the most interested ones were freelancers or freelancers.
But that has changed: with telecommuting, more and more employees are looking for an alternative to their home as an office ”, points out their head of Development, María Calvo.
"There are also companies that want to leave their headquarters to get rid of a fixed cost."
The same happens in Lexington, with more than a dozen centers in Madrid and Barcelona, although its director, David Vega, specifies that the contracts do not grow as much as the requests.
The menu of the day freezes
It goes without saying that 2020 has been the worst year for hospitality as far as memory reaches, but far from the main tourist spots this sangria has left a daunting scar on cafes and restaurants. The daily food is (was), according to Edurne Uranga, from NPD Group, “the most important consumption occasion” for the sector and contributed more than a quarter of the turnover. A figure that rose sharply in office areas, by far the hardest hit by teleworking. According to his calculations, the daily work lunch has lost "more than 50%" of the business it generated in 2019, especially in Madrid and Barcelona. Menu restaurants have had no choice but to readjust. If historically 90% of its sales were produced on site, now takeaway and home food have doubled in importance,although with lower average consumption. Breakfasts have also fallen "substantially", but with a slightly higher average price.
At the end of the daily menu in large areas of large cities - in Madrid you just have to take a walk through Azca to see how much the panorama has changed - that of
afterwork
has been added
, a fashion that in the pre-pandemic years had taken root in the ritual of many managers and office workers: having a drink after work with colleagues. All that has disappeared, if perhaps compensated by a beer on the terrace below the house.
The lack of diners is even more bloody in company canteens. The restoration of communities has 17% of its business in these establishments, according to the Food Service association, and its president, Antonio Llorens, assures that they lost 70% of their sales in 2020 and continue in the same line. “We have restaurants closed and others at 20% or 40% activity. The loss has been brutal ”, admits Carina Cabezas, president of Sodexo Iberia, who knows that some of these spaces will not reopen: one in five could disappear. A “devastating” number, in Llorens's words, for a sector that moved 3,600 million euros in 2019.
The collapse is not the same between factory restaurants (which are still operating) and offices, many of them closed.
"There is a change in the social paradigm and we have to adapt," says Cabezas, who has created a new line of business: it produces daily menus in its central kitchens and sends them home to individuals and companies.
Business areas, such as this one in Azca in Madrid, have run out of diners. VICTOR SAINZ
Food at home skyrockets
The decline in the menu and the boom in prepared food are communicating vessels: if you can't eat out, you eat at home.
This is how
delivery
has doubled its weight, according to NPD, reaching 8% of the total food and catering.
And
take away food
has climbed to 23%.
Thanks to the explosion of distributors of platforms such as Glovo, Deliveroo, Just Eat, Uber Eats and the birth of the so-called
dark kitchen
, from where dishes from several restaurants are cooked to take away,
delivery
It has become one more channel, appreciates Carlos Cotos, from Kantar.
Orders doubled in lockdown and at Christmas, and in the last year they have grown 47%.
A trend that, he says, will continue because the user has become used to it.
Supermarkets have been the captors of much of the spending lost by restaurants and bars.
Last year, Spaniards allocated 12.7% more of their budget to them -up to 105,000 million-, something that is expected to continue with the extension of telework, although with much less intensity, according to Patricia Daimiel, general director of Nielsen: the consumption borrowed from the hospitality industry will tend to return.
In part it is already doing so, since so far this year food sales have fallen by 7% annually, although they are up 8% over 2019.
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The pandemic fills the supermarket checkout
The feeling, however, is that not all passed-through spending will fly. It may remain close to 5% in the home because it will tend to save, indicates Cotos. For 2021 a decrease of 2.5% is expected over 2020, which in any case would mean an increase of 10% compared to 2019. Growth then. And what will change, according to Daimiel, is the type of supermarkets to go to: those close to business centers already lost 20% of their sales in 2020.
A handful of
gourmet
bakeries have also gotten away with it
, which have given a twist to the traditional model and are growing behind the change in habits.
"Partly because many people who are now working at home go down to buy bread every day, and others, those who do not have time to cook, substitute the menu for a traditional coca", argues Gonzalo Pertusa, from the Mòlt workshop in Valencia .
Stop in business trips
Travel is the biggest loser in the crisis, and business travel could not be an exception. Suddenly it has been discovered that technology facilitates many of these encounters and that, above all, it makes them cheaper. And that will promote a structural change in the business segment, fairs and conventions. McKinsey estimates that they will be reduced by 20%, with consequent repercussions on airlines, hotels and leisure.
“Vacation travel will be back when the pandemic passes; the business one, no ”, outlines Javier García, from the Iberian Business Travel Association. The collapse of the sector, which in Spain moved 22,000 million in 2019, will continue to exceed 50% even in the medium term, he says. “Companies are aware of the savings it entails. Especially the consulting firms, for which - after salaries - they were their second highest cost ”. For travel agencies, which have reduced their activity to 90%, it will be - according to Carlos Garrido, president of the Spanish Confederation of Travel Agencies (CEAV) - an earthquake. They are concerned that virtual meetings are also imposed for business trips, which accounted for half of their turnover: 12,500 million. Many city hotels live largely on business travel and are also on the ropes."The urban segment will suffer," says José Luis Zoreda, vice president of Exceltur.
For now, many hoteliers try to adapt plants to coworking and workation.
Something that Meliá has already done in Cuba and Orlando, although with limited impact, according to its director of operations, André Gerondeau.
"Teleworking will avoid part of the business trips, but a large part will continue to be necessary."
The executive expects their recovery and, in fact, says that they are already perceiving "a significant reactivation of demand in congresses, meetings, events and, above all, in incentive trips in small groups."
Despite this, he admits that the changes in business trips, which generate more than 20% of his sales, will be structural.
Endless technological heyday
Zoom, Teams, Meet or Webex, names that ordinary Europeans had hardly heard before the virus, have become a bargaining chip a year later.
Its use has exploded at a time when many bosses and employees have barely been able to see their faces without a screen and an internet connection in between.
And it has been felt, and in what way, in the price of its promoters (Zoom itself, Microsoft, Google, Cisco).
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The rage for mobile phones and videoconferencing remains a year after the arrival of the coronavirus
But
software
is by no means the only winner: Hardware sales, with laptops in the lead, have skyrocketed to unprecedented levels. According to the financial application Fintonic, spending on household technology has increased by 80% in the last year, partly as an emergency solution to leisure during confinements and also to be able to function from home. El Corte Inglés has increased its sales by 33% in this chapter, with peripherals at the fore: webcams, keyboards, monitors, mice ... Carrefour has also detected a substantial increase.
The stock market transfer of this sudden increase in demand is clear.
Although some analysts warn of a certain saturation of the market, manufacturers of PCs, chips and components (Intel, Dell, Apple, to name three) are flying high on the floor, close to all-time highs.
Investors also discount that telecommuting is here to stay.
Traffic has decreased between 15% and 20% in large cities such as Barcelona.Albert Garcia / EL PAÍS
Less transport
Fuel consumption in large cities runs along a parallel lane.
"The average decrease in the first quarter is between 30% and 40%, but in office areas it is much higher," explains Ignacio Rabadán, general director of the Confederation of Service Station Entrepreneurs.
Part has to do with restrictions on mobility.
But, above all, with teleworking, which he defines as “a constant pounding” and the fraction “that will be the most difficult to recover”.
"A significant part of the fall has to do with remote employment," confirms the general secretary of the Aevecar employer, Víctor García, because "the customer who consumed the most was the one who moved the car daily to go to the office" .
According to Fintonic, the budget for transport - collective and individual - has dropped 60% in one year.
The visits to the workshop follow the same trend.
With data from the firm Solera, repairs have dropped by 22%: trips by city, which occupy (occupied) a large part of the comings and goings to the office, are also the ones that wear out the car the most, supports Jesús Carbajo, mechanic that he had never seen his Madrid workshop - opened in 1985 - so empty.
Half of the drop in your billing is directly linked to teleworking.
According to Deloitte, one in five consumers is putting off car maintenance and six out of ten buying a new one.
Public transportation in large cities is also passing those of Cain.
While road traffic fell between 15% and 20% in 2020, public transport did it by 50%.
Training and leisure, in
streaming
Less travel time, more time at home and reduced expenses due to fewer outings have meant that many have thrown themselves into the arms of technology for their learning and leisure. “Streaming is the pretty boy of the covid: in Spain it has gone from an average of just over one television platform per home to 2.8. A leap that has led Disney + to be present in 120 million homes in the world since its premiere in November 2019, or Netflix to exceed 200 million ”, analyzes José Luis Nueno, professor at IESE. And also to hit a great pitch on the stock market, where its shares have not stopped rising. After Christmas, according to Deloitte, pay TVs are the only discretionary spending categories that remain on the rise in the short-term purchase forecasts of the citizen along with travel.Although Nueno believes that, when people return to normal life, they will tend to cut the number of platforms or jump from one to another depending on the premieres and promotions.
The same will not happen with online training, which registered a 280% increase in enrollment as a result of COVID, according to a 2020 Udemy study, when online inquiries related to this type of education grew by more than 500 %, with data from Semrush.
It was quite a bombshell that Ángel París, director of the Master in Aeronautical Systems Management at UPM, attests in 2021: “This year we have had students in provinces like Ciudad Real or in countries like Colombia who would not have been able to attend in a normal year.
The volume of students has grown by 50% with the online format ”, he outlines.
As in so many other sectors, he is "rethinking" face-to-face formats.
Virtuality and remote work are much more than a passing fad.
The pandemic has led to the purchase of cats and dogs.Monica Gonzalez / EL PAIS
From pampering oneself to pampering pets and the house
Yes, among the new habits that have emerged from confinements and the extension of telework, it can be extracted that personal care has taken a back seat.
We wash our hair and perfume less.
Women hardly ever wear makeup and men have stopped trimming their beards.
Many Spanish women have changed hairdressing for homemade dye.
The lack of socialization has taken a toll on the beauty business.
According to the association of the sector, Stanpa, the turnover yielded 10% last year, reaching 7,761 million euros and breaking with the last five years of continuous growth.
Hairdressers and beauty salons are the ones that have suffered the most, with falls of 17% and 19.5%, respectively. And, although since this month beauty begins to notice a change in the trend of consumption, in the words of Estefanía Yagüez, director of Market Intelligence at L 'Oréal, in hairdressing salons teleworking continues to weigh down and 5% have closed. “There is a before and an after to all this. Those who went to the office and groomed themselves every day are now at home anyway, "says Carlos Castellano, who runs one in Madrid and attributes nearly 30% of the drop in sales to remote work.
Yagüez expects growth this year because people go back to putting on makeup and perfume for video conferences, more are coming out and there is a young audience that uses beauty as a mode of expression, but the total volume lost will take longer to recover. Although it will succeed, in the opinion of José Luis Nueno, holder of the Intent HQ chair on changes in consumer behavior at IESE, while fashion will not. After years of decline and a historical decline of 40% like the current one, the changes in this sector are also evident: formal wear has passed away and comfortable, sports or home fashion has burst into force, doubling their sales and adapting brands like Oysho or reinforcing others like Decathlon, he explains. And the high-heeled shoe has been replaced by the sporty one. Some trends that will remain over time:"We will continue to buy less clothing, although there will be a rush from now until fall to replenish what is used," he continues.
Gyms are also expecting a rush, at least those that survive this crisis that is billing them 50% of their income. People feel like it and, in addition, it is a question of health, appreciates Alberto García Chápuli, manager of the FNEID association. With the extension of teleworking, he believes that exercise will be installed again in normal life and only gyms in business areas and industrial estates will be among the 20% of centers that he foresees to close with the current crisis. Those of Metropolitan are holding up better than the average because they offer their clients coworking and socialization areas, according to their CEO, Sergio Pellón.
All the spending saved on personal care has gone to buying pets and equipping the home, two new consumer habits that Nueno believes are here to stay. The acquisition of dogs and cats has grown during the pandemic as an antidote to loneliness, also the amount allocated to their food and medicines. The IESE professor points to the size that companies such as Zooplus or Nestlé's animal feed area are acquiring to demonstrate this. The trend will continue, just like taking care of the house. “While at home we have made extensive use of the equipment and now there is going to be a boom in the replacement of furniture and appliances. But also as telecommuting spreads and people move to small towns and buy more homes, ”he adds. Pull that Leroy Merlin will take advantage of, as he does today:its sales rose 24% between January and March thanks to gardens, lighting and paintings, according to its financial director, Íñigo Pérez. In fact, this year it will hire 5,000 people.
Light, water and the telephone as thermometers
The tendency to work from home has been felt in electricity, causing a flattening of the demand curve in the afternoon, according to a REE spokeswoman. A pattern attributable, perhaps, to the fact that last-minute tasks are a little ahead of you when you are at home. Even more noticeable is the change in habits in the water, the other great daily thermometer in cities. In Barcelona, for example, in the first quarter of 2021, the supplier Agbar perceives a slightly upward trend in household demand (just over 2%) that is more than offset by a substantial drop (28%) in that of offices and other work centers. The tendency to work from home has been felt in electricity, causing a flattening of the demand curve in the afternoon, according to a REE spokeswoman.A pattern attributable, perhaps, to the fact that last-minute tasks are a little ahead of you when you are at home. Even more noticeable is the change in habits in the water, the other great daily thermometer in cities. In Barcelona, for example, in the first quarter of 2021, the supplier Agbar perceives a slightly upward trend in household demand (just over 2%) that is more than offset by a substantial drop (28%) in that of offices and other work centers.In the first quarter of 2021, the supplier Agbar perceives a slightly upward trend in household demand (just over 2%) that is more than offset by a substantial drop (28%) in that of offices and other work centers.In the first quarter of 2021, the supplier Agbar perceives a slightly upward trend in household demand (just over 2%) that is more than offset by a substantial drop (28%) in that of offices and other work centers.
In telephony, the impact has also been notable, giving rise to a new geographical distribution of consumption. The permanent displacement of people to smaller towns, a door that has opened remote employment, has caused a much greater increase in voice traffic and, above all, data traffic in municipalities with fewer than 10,000 inhabitants than in those of more than 70,000. "We saw it clearly with the confinement in the months of March to May 2020, and the change has been consolidated," they explain from the Communications department of Telefónica. This increase, however, has not been accompanied by an improvement in the financial performance of telecoms.
In telephony, the impact has also been notable, giving rise to a new geographical distribution of consumption. The permanent displacement of people to smaller towns, a door that has opened remote employment, has caused a much greater increase in voice traffic and, above all, data traffic in municipalities with fewer than 10,000 inhabitants than in those of more than 70,000. "We saw it clearly with the confinement in the months of March to May 2020, and the change has been consolidated," they explain from the Communications department of Telefónica. This increase, however, has not been accompanied by an improvement in the financial performance of telecoms.
