The post-pandemic office market has fundamentally changed, and across the globe, landlords are facing the same uncomfortable reality: buildings that once hummed with activity are now significantly underoccupied, and the task of getting people back is proving far harder than anyone anticipated. The question is no longer whether the way we work has changed, because it clearly has, but rather what the right response looks like for those who own and manage commercial property, writes Jerzy Brodzikowski, General Manager of CIC Warsaw, in an opinion piece for Property Forum.
The answer lies not in waiting for a return to the old normal, but in embracing the new one by rethinking what a building can and should offer to the people who use it, and to the businesses that are deciding, often month by month, where to base themselves.
The cavity in our buildings
A useful way to understand the current situation is through the analogy of a tooth cavity, because the shift in working habits that has taken place over the past several years, accelerated sharply by COVID-19 but with roots going back to the structural changes that followed the financial crisis of 2008, has left a very real and visible gap in the commercial real estate market. Buildings are emptier than they were, traditional long leases are harder to fill, and the model that defined office life throughout the twentieth century and into the early 2000s, namely corporations occupying entire floors on predictable eight-hour, five-day schedules, is no longer the dominant reality it once was.
What has replaced it is a more fragmented but arguably more dynamic picture, in which startups, scale-ups, and increasingly agile mid-sized enterprises are driving demand for a different kind of space altogether. These businesses operate at pace, with less emphasis on process and more on output, and they need environments that can accommodate that way of working without locking them into commitments that their growth trajectories cannot always support. Flex spaces have been their natural home and, in serving that demand consistently over the past decade, they have become the filling in that cavity, returning activity and purpose to buildings that might otherwise sit underutilised.
What it takes to deliver genuine value
CIC Warsaw operates across three distinct pillars, namely commercial real estate, hospitality, and innovation and technology, and that combination is deliberate rather than incidental, because it reflects what it actually takes to run a flex space that delivers genuine value rather than simply providing desks on short contracts.
Traditional real estate is, by nature, a transactional and relatively siloed business, where a landlord leases space and tenants occupy it with limited ongoing interaction between the two parties, but flex spaces operate on an entirely different model. Members are engaged on a daily basis, operators invest time in understanding their businesses and helping them grow, and community is built deliberately and actively rather than emerging as a byproduct of physical proximity. This requires different skills, different people, and a fundamentally different organisational culture from the one that has historically defined commercial property management.
The simplest way to describe the distinction is that flex has a human face, and in a world where personalisation has become the baseline expectation across virtually every sector, from consumer technology to retail to financial services, that quality matters enormously to the businesses that are choosing where to work and whom to work alongside.
What this means for landlords
Too often, flex spaces are still regarded by building owners as a checkbox rather than a strategic asset, something to include because the market now expects it, rather than something to curate carefully because of the specific and significant opportunities it can create, and that represents a considerable missed opportunity for landlords who are already feeling the pressure of lower occupancy rates and longer vacancy periods.
At Varso Place in Warsaw, one of the city's most prestigious and architecturally ambitious office complexes, CIC Warsaw opened alongside the building itself in 2020, at a moment when office take-up across the market was under considerable strain, and in those early years the flex operation served as the heart and soul of the complex, providing the energy, footfall, and visible activity that gave the building life and credibility at precisely the time it needed it most. Today, CIC Warsaw remains the starting point for the majority of long-lease tours conducted by the building's landlord, and its member community represents the most consistently active tenant population in the complex.
This example illustrates a principle that applies more broadly: the right flex operator does not merely fill square metres but actively activates an asset, increasing footfall, generating a sense of momentum, and sending a clear signal to prospective long-term tenants that this is a building where things happen. It also creates a natural and commercially valuable pipeline for growth, since a startup or small enterprise that joins as a flex member today may, as it scales, become a long-term leaseholder in the same building tomorrow. Flex, understood correctly, is not a competitor to traditional leasing but a feeder into it.
Flexibility is the new norm, but not all flex is equal
Warsaw's flex market currently accounts for around 3% of total office space, but industry forecasts consistently suggest that figure will grow to somewhere between 10-20% in the coming decades, reflecting a structural shift in how businesses of all sizes think about their property commitments rather than a temporary response to unusual market conditions.
There is, however, an important caveat that landlords would do well to keep in mind when evaluating potential flex partners, which is that not every operator in this space is capable of delivering the kind of value described above. Running a high-quality flex operation is genuinely and consistently difficult, because it sits at the intersection of commercial real estate, hospitality, and community management, and requires a level of customer-facing operational intensity that is entirely unlike anything demanded by a conventional leasing model. It calls for people with different instincts, systems built around responsiveness rather than process, and a long-term commitment to building something that goes well beyond the provision of office space.
Landlords looking to partner with a flex operator should therefore be asking not only how many desks a provider can fill, but whether that operator has the knowhow, the culture, and the demonstrable track record to build genuine community and, in doing so, to meaningfully activate the building around them.
The opportunity ahead
The commercial real estate sector is at an inflection point, and the buildings that will thrive over the next decade are likely to be those that respond thoughtfully and proactively to how people actually want to work today, which means offering flexibility, fostering community, and creating environments with a genuine sense of vitality and purpose rather than simply providing space that is technically available for occupation.
Partnering with the right flex operator is not a concession to changing times but one of the most powerful tools available to a landlord who wants to increase the value, appeal, and long-term competitiveness of their asset. Done well, it is how a building stops being a collection of floors and starts being somewhere people actually want to be.
