Working from home isn’t generally a success for Mark Dixon. “I’m too easily distracted,” he says. “You have to be quite disciplined to be a successful home worker, whether that’s for one day or five days.”
The tycoon’s admission will not raise any eyebrows given his decades-long role running FTSE‑listed IWG (International Workplace Group) – one of the world’s largest office space providers, valued at £1.6bn.
The Essex-born entrepreneur has been chief executive of IWG, formerly known as Regus, ever since he struggled to find a “small, quality office” to rent for his own business in Brussels in 1989 and noticed people holding work meetings around tables in coffee shops.
Having left school at 16, Dixon had already made a small fortune from selling a business venture manufacturing bread buns for hotdog sellers, allowing him to fund his hunch that others might need flexible office space.
Although working from home isn’t for Dixon, he does believe in something that could be called “working close to home”. This vision sees workers cutting lengthy and costly commutes in favour of meeting colleagues in a local workspace, he says, sitting in an office within the Engine Room, IWG’s workspace at Battersea power station in south-west London.
While white-collar work was initially revolutionised by technological advances, a more recent shake-up of corporate culture came in the wake of the pandemic.
“We can see more and more companies converting to a simple notion,” Dixon says, “which is: ‘I don’t need a big head office in one place … I need hubs, and I just use space on a platform where people need it.’”
Dixon is talking his book: IWG provides these hubs. But property data, and numerous corporate surveys, appear to back him up.
Office occupiers of all sizes have in recent years cut floor space and, accordingly, their rental costs. Since Covid, hybrid working has become the standard pattern for more than a quarter (28%) of working adults in Britain, according to the latest figures from the Office for National Statistics, and Dixon believes the end is nigh for large city centre offices in the UK and beyond.
The scene at the Engine Room underlines the changes in office habits. On the day the Observer visited, shortly before Christmas, staff at a PR agency based at the workspace were wearing festive jumpers and decorating baubles or gathering in small groups on a sofa. But elsewhere, workers were still wearing headphones to conduct video calls or tapping away on laptops.
For those who are easily distracted when working from home such as Dixon – but do not have the luxury of an office in their Monaco apartment building, as he does – IWG can provide everything from a desk to a leased office, increasingly in suburban locations rather than urban centres. In a crowded and competitive market, IWG has expanded to 1,200 cities across 120 countries, operating brands including Regus, Spaces and HQ.
Since Covid, about 80% of the approximately 900 sites IWG opens globally each year are in suburbs or smaller towns, with just 20% in city centres, compared with a 50-50 split pre-pandemic.
The plush Battersea power station office space, decked out artfully with carefully placed plants and design books, counts as a suburban location, while IWG has recently opened sites in smaller towns including Chippenham, Leamington Spa, Margate and Wilmslow.
The outspoken businessman insists that regular, scheduled days in the office are more effective for staff, who have grown accustomed to working in different locations, than what he calls “silly stuff”, such as mandating office attendance for a certain number of days each week.
“It’s actually much better to say: ‘I want everyone there on the second Thursday of the month,’” he says, “where you do your business reviews, meet colleagues, whether that is one day a month, four days a month.” He adds: “It is curating it, rather than this idea that everything can be done by chance.”
Dixon has become something of a spokesperson for hybrid working since the pandemic, giving the impression that he feels other employers have finally caught up with the approach followed by IWG for years.
However, the group has not had a smooth ride since its creation, or its flotation on the London Stock Exchange in 2000, amid some significant highs and substantial lows.
The company benefited from the boom years and the growth of startups in the late 1990s, but hit the skids in the economic downturn of the early 00s, as an oversupply of office space led to rental values tumbling, leaving the business fighting for survival.
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Then, shortly before the pandemic, the future of the entire flexible workspace sector was called into question after the implosion of rival WeWork, once a darling of the tech world with a $47bn valuation.
IWG and its remaining rivals are some of the main beneficiaries of the post-pandemic boom in hybrid working, which Dixon says “accelerated the amount of revenue we get from hybrid workers”.
IWG has made Dixon a multimillionaire, placing him 177th on the most recent Sunday Times rich list, with an estimated £923m fortune.
He sold off nearly £69m in shares to repay a bank loan last May but retains a 25% stake in IWG.
In recent months, the business, which has its headquarters in Switzerland, has come under pressure from one of its leading shareholders to swap its London stock market listing for the US, where it makes more than half of its profits.
Dixon says a decision is not imminent, but he is “not ruling out” delisting from London.
After 35 years leading IWG, Dixon closed the working year with a visit to some of the company’s sites in Australia and New Zealand. Does he ever consider packing it in?
“I think more about packing wine in – it’s a much tougher business,” he says, referring to what he has called his “Saturday job” as one of the largest wine producers in Provence in the south of France. He also owns a string of wine estates in the south of England, including Kingscote in West Sussex. “You are against a lot – you’ve got the weather.”
Unusually for a FTSE chief, he’s been a backpacker. “I have done a lot of hitchhiking,” he says, and now picks up those who thumb a lift. Indeed, Dixon says he is wearing a Rolex given to him by a young French entrepreneur he once offered a lift to, who subsequently founded a successful tech business and still regularly visits for advice.
With wine-making and office openings still keeping retirement a distant thought, Dixon has little need to keep an eye on the time.
CV
Age 65
Family A long-term partner, and five children from previous relationships.
Education Rainsford comprehensive school in Essex.
Pay Base salary of £875,000, as well as a bonus of £1.1m in 2023, according to IWG’s most recent annual accounts.
Last holiday Sailing in the Mediterranean.
Phrase he overuses “‘It doesn’t make any sense.’ Business is about logic, and leadership, and sometimes going against the flow.”
How he relaxes Sailing, hiking, walking with friends: “we are walking from Manchester to Monaco, in stages”.
