The Core welcomes a new arrival to Newcastle Helix, as specialist software architects Boxmodel embrace their new hybrid-approach to home and office space working.
When a client visits your new workspace and the first thing they do is to take photos of the fit-out, you know you’ve hit the mark. And this is exactly what happened to Boxmodel recently when they officially opened the doors to their brand new workspace at The Core. The vision of Boxmodel Founder and Managing Director, Alan Easton, this top floor corner office of landmark workspace building, The Core, has been remodelled to create three unique ‘work zones’ that support Boxmodel’s three ‘ways of working’, and support the flexible transition from home to office.
Boxmodel are no strangers to the Newcastle office space market. Setting up with just two people in 2009 above a small restaurant in popular Chinatown, the founding partners quickly outgrew their humble beginnings and were drawn out of town to Cramlington Business Park, which offered space to grow and tempting grants for new arrivals. But as the business continued to scale, their workspace needs changed also. The pull for a more central business address and easier access to fresh talent, led them to Gateshead International Business Centre (GIBC) for a time and then on to the quirky Toffee Factory. Boxmodel expanded their team and moved into new workspaces three times whilst at the Toffee Factory, before finally moving back to GIBC with a view to move into the Northern Design Centre in 2020.
Then the pandemic struck. With more than a decade of growth and office space working, the team moved to an entirely remote operation overnight, supported greatly by their culture of agile working and cloud-based systems. And it’s been an unquestionable success! Despite the pandemic, Boxmodel managed to grow its business from eleven to 30 people in the last 18 months.
So what brought Boxmodel back into the office and why have they made the bold decision to base themselves at The Core, Newcastle Helix?
We caught up with Managing Director Alan Easton to find out. Alan said, “Whilst there are many benefits to working from home, when I asked the team what they wanted the future of their workplace to look like, it was clear that we would be adopting a hybrid model to home and office working. It might sound indulgent renting an office space that is only ever going to be 40 percent occupied, but I don’t see it that way. My job is to give the team what they need to do great work. That means making it easy for them to work flexibly from home, around their family and life commitments, and it also means giving them an office space to meet, socialise, collaborate, think, grow and learn from each other. The new way of working seems to be based on the flexible membership models employed by gyms and co-working spaces and I’d predict that we’ll be seeing much more of this approach as we move out of the pandemic and businesses look to the future of their workforce needs.”
When Alan started to explore whether Boxmodel needed to return to a physical office or continue with their successful remote offering, he quickly learned the value colleagues placed on the office environment. The feedback was that working from home was great, but people still needed time together in an actual workspace. Somewhere that is easy to get to whether you walk, bus, ride, drive or come by train. Somewhere that staff and clients want to be – because it looks and feels good and because it works on a practical level. The Core office space delivered this on all fronts, with the added bonus of a Newcastle Helix address offering additional connection, collaboration and partnership opportunities.
Alan added: “As a business we’ve tried out a lot of office spaces and we’ve looked at a whole lot more. The Core stands out for so many reasons. From our penthouse corner office I can look out of our floor- to-ceiling windows and I can see St James Park, The Hilton, The Lumen, the new Hadrian’s Tower, The Spark. I can see building and investment in Newcastle and the North East. It’s exciting – you know!? You feel like you are part of something bigger. You feel like you are going places. The added benefit of being on the Helix site is that their plans for growth here very much mirror my own and those of my team and so the opportunities are limitless. When the sun is shining, there really isn’t any place I’d rather be to get together with my team.”
The Core community is housed over six floors of Grade A office accommodation and the building benefits from a ground floor event, collaboration and meeting room space.
There are currently a limited number of fully serviced office suites and workspaces available from 200sq ft up to 2500sq ft. Contact The Core today to learn more about the available space, community and how it can support your business info@thecorenewcastle.co.uk.