Business, like fashion, is subject to trends and sometimes those trends connect. Consider business casual. "Americans began the 20th century in bustles and bowler hats and ended it in velour sweatsuits and flannel shirts - the most radical shift in dress standards in human history," according to Deirdre Clemente, writing in The Atlantic magazine. "At the center of this sartorial revolution was business casual, a genre of dress that broke the last bastion of formality - office attire - to redefine the American wardrobe."

Business casual dress for employees has become standard over the years, and office attire is only one example of how business has changed over time. Recent trends that can be seen among companies located at Hacienda include the rise of health-related employee benefits such as gym memberships; environmentally minded business practices such as reducing waste, encouraging public transit use, and developing more energy-efficient buildings; and the development of co-working spaces.

Suburban Boom?

Due in part to the recent responses to the Covid-19 pandemic, some observers have suggested that working from home will eventually become the new normal. But many others believe there are significant limits to widespread, voluntary working from home. A Stanford study of call center employees outside the United States, for example, randomly divided some of them into a control group that continued working at the office and the others into a group that worked at home. After the nine-month experiment, those who had been assigned to work at home were given the opportunity to choose between continuing or going back to the office. Fully half of the work at home employees chose to go back to the office. A number of them "had found the lack of social contact particularly costly," according to the researchers.

Others have suggested that suburban offices will become a new and important trend because of Covid-19's impact on companies and their employees. Eugene McGrane, an East Bay-based Executive Managing Director of Cushman & Wakefield, wrote an article in June for real estate website The Registry about "why every employer should be focused on the suburbs," based in part on Cushman & Wakefield research. "Principally, we've learned that people need a place to work," he wrote. "Smart employers are looking to downsize expensive headquarters space and decamp to the suburbs, offering flexible work options for their employees."

Real estate website REjournals also suggests that satellite offices will be a new trend. "There may be some relocations long term, but the more likely trend is that firms will open up satellite offices in greater numbers. Distributing a company's workforce over multiple locations offers options for employees craving a better live-work balance devoid of long commutes. It also spreads out the risk should there be future outbreaks."

Dan Garman is involved in two Pleasanton companies as Cofounder and Managing Partner of Tri-Valley Ventures and Founder and Chief Investment Officer of Mirador Capital Partners. The Pleasanton resident also believes that there will be new interest in the Tri-Valley as a result of the pandemic. An employer can easily, affordably, and safely locate 50 employees in a 20,000-square-foot space in the Tri-Valley, as he told Hacienda Pulse last month. He says that locating a satellite office in the region is the just-right solution between asking many employees to work at home and forcing many employees to commute to places like San Francisco, which can make social distancing difficult to nearly impossible.

Tri-Valley Ahead of the Trend

Suburbs have been popular long before the pandemic. In December 2019, a Bloomberg CityLab article noted that "Suburbs are increasingly not just where Americans live, but where they work. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics' Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages, 32 percent of U.S. employment is in the suburbs of large metropolitan areas - that is, in the medium- and lower-density counties within metropolitan areas that contain at least 1 million people."

The new Future of Workplace report from Cushman & Wakefield says that soon, work will take place in "a variety of locations: The workplace will no longer be a single location but an ecosystem of different locations and experiences to support convenience, functionality and well-being. The office isn't going anywhere: Balancing the impact of social distancing on density with less office-based headcount demand will likely not affect current footprint sizes and offices will continue to thrive but in new ways. The office has a new purpose: The purpose of the office will be to provide inspiring destinations that strengthen cultural connection, learning, bonding with customers and colleagues, and foster creativity and innovation."

The real estate company predicts that 50% of the workforce will likely be working across what it calls a "Total Workplace Ecosystem," which balances office, home, and third places. While this may sound new, companies at Hacienda and elsewhere have had a history of using a hub-and-spoke system. As website GlobeSt.com explains, in this system a "headquarters serves as the hub of the business, while the spokes are a geographically distributed network of offices, usually based on talent and client needs. The headquarters is generally in a core location accessible to public transportation, and it acts as the cultural center of the business."

At Hacienda and elsewhere in the Tri-Valley, the hub-and-spoke model has been used successfully for years. In this case as in so many others, the region has been ahead of the trend when it comes to offering employees a variety of places to work. The hub-and-spoke systems may not be new, but it is newly relevant to many employers.

"It's inevitable that COVID has forced companies to rethink their space and logistical needs, and this model is evolving," Bryan Murphy, CEO of Breather, told GlobeSt.com. "With more and more companies becoming comfortable with their employees working from home, and as a result, extending their work from home policies, comes a change for the future of work."

The future of work has already arrived in the Tri-Valley, however. While there are many companies who have headquartered at Hacienda, a number of firms have offices locally and headquarters elsewhere. Hacienda also has co-working facilities. Moreover, the City of Pleasanton supports a thriving business network of more than 4,000 companies, from Fortune 500 to home-grown technology firms. While the city has become known as a hub for life sciences and biotechnology companies, it welcomes all types of businesses. Software, manufacturing, professional services, and many other companies have also found a warm welcome in Pleasanton and at Hacienda.

As many owners, tenants, and investors have discovered, the Tri-Valley is a relevant location for business, however companies choose to structure their workplaces. Certain choices hold their value over the years, regardless of trends, while certain locations boast environments that are often ahead of the trends. In today's market, the Tri-Valley seems to be one of those environments positioned well for both established companies and entrepreneurs.

For more information about Tri-Valley Ventures, please visit www.trivalleyventures.com.

For more information about The Future of Workplace report, please visit www.cushmanwakefield.com/en/insights/covid-19/the-future-of-workplace.

For more information about Hacienda, please visit www.hacienda.org.