UK’s flagship carrier airline, British Airways (BA), has said it was considering selling its headquarters building because the adoption of working remotely from home during the Covid-19 pandemic means it may not have a need for so much office space.
The potential sale of the office complex, completed in 1998 at a cost of 200 million pounds ($279 million) and first reported by the Financial Times, is expected to boost the airline’s finances which have been heavily impacted by Covid-19.
According to a report from Reuters, the shift to homeworking over the last year has already made some of Britain’s biggest companies reconsider their need for office spaces with banking giant Lloyds saying it would cut office space by 20% within 3 years and HSBC going for a 40% reduction.
READ: British airways set to suspend 32,000 employees
The BA complex, Waterside, is near Heathrow Airport, west of London, and is also the headquarters of British Airways’ parent company, IAG.
British Airways said in a statement that many employees enjoyed working from home and its future policy would likely be a flexible mix of home and office working.
A spokesman for the airline in a statement said, “We’ve restructured our business to emerge from the crisis and are considering whether we still have the need for such a large headquarters building.’’
READ: British Airways to compensate passengers over diverted flights
What you should know
It can be recalled that UK airlines, including British Airways, in March 2020 called for an immediate multibillion-pound emergency bailout from the British government due to the negative impact of the coronavirus pandemic on their businesses.
In order to survive the impact of the pandemic, British Airways spent last year cutting costs, including shedding over 10,000 employees, leaving it with about 30,000, most of whom don’t work in the office but are pilots, cabin crew, engineers or airport staff.
The airline has also sought to raise cash by selling famous works of art that formerly hung in its executive lounges
READ: FG commences mop-up verification exercise for ex-workers of Nigeria Airways Limited
The BA sale will be tbe first of several by businesses. Perhaps smaller office buildings. Others will simply cancel their leases. Accounting and management consulting firms have been doing it for more than 15 years;my former employer got most of its 150,000 consulting staff to work from home in 2005. It gave each employee a stipend to cover internet and telephone and It now has no offices in many cities.
Will this work in Nigeria. Most Nigerian employers cited culture and infrastructure for not adopting remote work. Now covid19 gave them no other choice. But i see future resistance — from the people who own office buildings
Meanwhile some Lagos employers tell me their staff work harder. Some are sending emails as late as 2 am. That may be a plus or not. Employers have to look out for the staff who wish to impress