How Fenton reduced office spend by 60% and increased workplace engagement metrics

Situation

Fenton is a full-service Communications agency and the first national agency founded to focus solely on social impact. Fenton employs 100 staff nationwide.

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The organization maintains office leases in its major hubs – including NYC, Washington DC, and Los Angeles. At the onset of the pandemic, the company began hiring remotely across the US.

Problem

As Fenton shifted towards a distributed working model, they gradually let their major office leases expire. This unlocked a huge savings opportunity for the company, but Fenton’s leadership team still valued in-person collaboration. The company knew 100% work-from-home wasn’t a viable long-term solution and they searched for away to facilitate employee gatherings.

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At first, the company provided employees with monthly memberships to a well-known coworking brand. As the adoption grew, they quickly realized the current state wasn’t going to scale with their needs.

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Danielle Bastow, VP of Operations at Fenton, explained this in more detail. “The majority of my employees utilized their memberships 1-2 times per month. Some would go multiple months without using it a single time. We witnessed our costs growing, but I didn’t have any easy way to monitor booking patterns or revoke memberships in an efficient manner.”

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As the number of memberships grew, Danielle also started receiving requests for alternative locations. “Working with one single coworking vendor didn’t give us the level of access we needed. Not all employees live in major hubs. I needed to create an equitable program that provided access to a variety of brands.”

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Fenton found FlexDesk, and less than 2 weeks thereafter company employees joined a webinar for their FlexDesk training call.

Solution

Fenton leveraged FlexDesk’s Coworking Management Platform to provide employees with nationwide access to coworking space. Employees booked across a large variety of brands – the most popular of which being WeWork, Regus, Spaces, Mindspace, and Premier Workspaces.

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For co-located employees, FlexDesk became the bridge to organize recurring market meetups and host team meetings. For remote employees, FlexDesk became a cornerstone of their benefits program.

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As Fenton hired remote employees in new markets, the company provisioned coworking access to those individuals with no additional administrative burden.

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Employees also appreciated the hands-on nature of FlexDesk’s support team whenever they had on-site questions or wanted help identifying options for more complex space needs.

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But for Fenton, FlexDesk didn’t just serve as a coworking booking engine. The company used FlexDesk as a management platform to track adoption, enforce policies, and streamline billing.

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“We trust our employees to spend the company’s money wisely, but we also wanted a non-invasive way to prevent excessive spend. FlexDesk made it easy to analyze booking behaviors, implement custom booking limits, and consolidate each month’s spend under one invoice.”

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Results

Fenton has seen consistently high employee adoption and attributes the program to increasing workplace engagement metrics. Over half of Fenton’s employee base has participated in the program, with 90% of them returning after their first use.

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In particular, Fenton’s leadership team loves the organic approach that employees take to organizing meetups. 80% of bookings are for in-person collaboration, with an estimated 3,000 hours together over a 12-month period.

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From a financial standpoint, Danielle highlighted the direct cost savings. “In our top markets, we spend 60% less than what we were spending on office leases. And due to the pay-per-use option through FlexDesk, we’re also seeing 25% savings on a per-person basis compared to our original coworking membership passes.”

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