How Workthere snatched up Flex
Agency of The Year

With a strong international presence and a dedicated global team, Workthere has firmly established itself as an industry frontrunner. This ranking was crystallised last month, when the agency clinched the title of ‘Flex Agency of the Year’ at the FATC Awards (certainly no small feat). Cal Lee, Founder and Global Head of Workthere, exclusively chats to Flex and The City about Workthere’s journey and the key factors that have propelled them to the top in a fiercely competitive field.

Could you share how your journey with Savills began?

I started at Savills as a graduate in September 2011, joining straight from the University of Reading where I did an undergraduate degree in Real Estate. I was part of 14 commercial graduates at the time (we now have 69 graduates on the London rotation), rotating around the business every four months within different teams as we built-up our experience to take the APC to become a qualified Chartered Surveyor.

I qualified in October 2013 and following that took a role within the Commercial Development team at Savills, where we predominantly advised landowners about how to realise the potential value of an asset. It’s a little mad that this is now over 13 years ago that I joined!

How have your previous experiences shaped your success with Workthere?

On my first day in the Office Agency rotation as a graduate, the head of the team at the time said: ‘Agency is easy if you remember agency is urgency’. I’ve always tried to maintain that in any work I do, without of course sacrificing quality. As I learnt about the flex market no three words ('agency is urgency') were more true. It moves at such a pace that if you’re not on it, you’re likely behind already.

What inspired you to set up Workthere?

In 2015, whilst working for a client on an office building solely for start-ups and scale-ups, I had a light bulb moment – it was evident Savills at the time weren’t set-up to advise in the flex market, it wasn’t an area we covered as most of our focus was on prime office leases. It was clear to me though that the creation of ready to let, premium office space, on an all-inclusive price was something that would appeal to start-ups and scale-ups – it was a much easier process than that of taking a lease and needing to do all of the fit-out.

It was also at a time when WeWork were beginning to expand outside of North America, and as such felt it was important that Savills were in a position to advise our clients on this growing sector. So Workthere as a concept emerged – I thought about how we could use technology to create a platform to market office space, but with advisors to help companies through the search process. 

Could you walk us through the process of pitching Workthere to Savills? What was their initial response?

I was 25 at the time but was encouraged to pitch the idea to Savills version of Dragon’s Den, where 10 people across the business sit on a panel and encourage anyone with an idea to come forward. My pitch ended up winning, and so from there I was given support to put a more formal business plan together to go and pitch to our UK and then global board at Savills. At the global board, whilst they supported the concept, I fully expected them to say thank you for your time and give it to someone more experienced to run. However, it was the complete opposite.

Our Global CEO at the time simply asked, “Do you want to run this? As only you can really own it and make it work”. That backing gave me the confidence that Savills were the right partner. They surrounded me with a team of people that brought experience and were able to support in the many areas that I had none – which to be honest was most. From originally launching in the UK in 2017, we have now grown Workthere across the globe with a presence in 11 countries.

What are some of Workthere’s key achievements in 2024 that contributed to winning Agency of the Year?

The obvious highlight is of course the acquisition of Situu and integrating them into our UK Workthere team. It was over 12 months in the making but we were delighted to make it work and bring together the two teams. When assessing any opportunities our approach was that 1+1 must equal 3, so by combining the two businesses we become even stronger.

Since the acquisition this has been proven, with the team going from strength to strength over the last seven months. Our occupier advisory team has had a record Q3 from a number of transacted desks perspective, and our leasing team transacted 15 managed deals on behalf of landlord clients, which is a third of last year’s total and testament to everyone’s hard work both before and following the acquisition.

In your view, what makes Workthere stand out from its competitors?

We operate in a very competitive market place, whether as an occupier advisory, landlord leasing advisory, or the management of space itself, so it can be hard to differentiate at times. I do however believe we have two clear points of differentiation. Firstly, we are proud of the fact we have a team of 20 in the UK that bring together over 112 years of experience in the flex sector, with an ability to advise across any aspect of the market. We have real in-depth knowledge of this market, but also have the wider leverage of a global real estate business behind us with a wealth of knowledge across the entire property spectrum that we can tap into.

The second, and arguably the single biggest differentiator is culture, we have worked hard to create and foster a culture where people enjoy work and the company they work with, and we hope this comes across as both clients and partners work with us. We spent far more time understanding the respective culture of both businesses in the lead-up to the acquisition than we did on anything else.

Tell us about what you learnt by building a business within a much larger business such as Savills?

Starting a business within a much bigger business is of course very different to starting one from scratch, and whilst there are a number of positives there are also different challenges. One of which is that big businesses tend to move slow, decisions and processes take time, so you have to find a way of creating agility in your part of the business, you need to be given room to make mistakes and quickly learn from them and try again like any start-up would. With Savills support, we have been able to re-create some of the agility needed in order to evolve quickly as a business, and this was critical to success.

The Covid Pandemic was a huge challenge for everyone, but it was also at this point I was grateful I decided to pitch it to Savills and not run myself. Savills had total belief in the long term fundamentals of the market, we therefore stayed our course, worked hard at gaining market share to emerge out of the pandemic as strong as possible. So whilst 2020 was tough, without Savills support, we would not be in the position we’re in now.

Looking ahead, what’s next for Workthere? What future plans do you have?

I think the single phrase is ‘sustainable growth’ – we remain ambitious and want to grow the business to reach its full potential in a market that continues to grow – be that continued geographical growth, service line growth and of course people. There is a lot of opportunity in the sector and we’re excited to continue the journey.