Legal firm DWF moving to new Glasgow site to accommodate hybrid working

Legal firm DWF is moving to new premises in Glasgow city centre on the back of staff saying they are keen to pursue hybrid working.

The business, which describes itself as a global provider of integrated legal and business services, said the move is part of its global office strategy.

The latter has been influenced by a survey of all staff in the first quarter of this year, revealing that the “overwhelming majority” would like to spend part of the week in the office.

Consequently, the DWF team in Glasgow will this month move from 110 Queen Street to the eighth floor of The Sentinel, a fully refurbished site on Waterloo Street. While the new office is fitted out, the team will be temporarily based out of 9 George Square.

Paul Pignatelli, Glasgow office managing partner at DWF, hails the firm moving into a 'newer, fitter-for purpose environment'. Picture: contributed.

Paul Pignatelli, Glasgow office managing partner at the company, said: "The pandemic has unsurprisingly led to more people working from home than ever before. During this time the DWF executive and Glasgow partners discussed how our office requirements and working habits have changed and the ways in which this affects our clients' and our own future working needs.

"With our colleagues also indicating that they wanted to split their working week by spending between two to three days a week from an office, we decided to move to a hybrid-working model and relocate our office to The Sentinel.

"As a result we have been able to reduce our square foot space by half and begin designing our new office environment that caters for a new way of working. It is a genuinely exciting opportunity to move into a newer, fitter-for-purpose environment embracing some of the newer habits that have been formed over the last 12 months."

DWF chief operating officer Matthew Doughty said: "Like any sensible business, in late 2020 we began actively reviewing our real estate portfolio around the world to make sure that we had the right office space for our business needs.

"With the majority of our people currently working from home, and given our expectations of an increase in agile working in the future, we took the opportunity to begin redesigning some of our offices, renegotiating leases and marketing some of our surplus property in certain markets, to ensure that our office space fits our future requirements.”

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