Flex Role Models: This culture-first tech company made the leap from million-dollar NYC lease to remote workplace — and they're not looking back

Ceros was spending millions on their NYC HQ. After the pandemic, they embraced #flexiblework and started using Upflex to manage their remote work strategy. Here's the amazing true story of how they cut their office expenses "by an order of magnitude" and invested more in their people.

After the pandemic, companies around the world were forced to embrace a new approach to the office: workplace flexibility. As of late 2022, three out of four U.S. companies are already working at least partly remotely or planning to transition to a hybrid work model. They see it as a must when it comes to staying agile, cutting costs, and competing for top talent.

Tech company Ceros was among them. Ceros makes tech tools for interactive content creation, used by companies like NBC, Red Bull, BuzzFeed and McKinsey. Prior to the pandemic, they centered their operations out of an award-winning, 20,000-square-foot New York City headquarters, designed to reflect their creativity and culture. But, beginning in 2020, Ceros embraced flexible work as the new norm.

Now, they allow employees to live where they choose. And to ideate, implement and manage their remote-first workplace strategy, they partnered with my team at Upflex for our remote and #hybrid #workspace solutions.

“Our objective was to re-allocate resources that were once only used to support employees in the tri-state region — including well over a million dollars in rent at our N.Y.C. office — to support employees all over the globe,” Ceros CFO Rob Bender told me recently. (For a deep dive on that conversation and Ceros's remote-first strategy, head over to Commercial Observer.) “We chose Upflex because nearly every Ceros employee has reasonable access to an Upflex location. We've reduced our office expenses by an order of magnitude.”

“We chose Upflex because nearly every Ceros employee has reasonable access to an Upflex location. We've reduced our office expenses by an order of magnitude.”

Now, the company spends less on real estate, while offering employees competitive perks like a remote work set-up stipend, as well as use of our secure booking platform and our global flex space network, with access to more than 10,000 workspaces from approximately 1,200 brands (including exclusive access to WeWork) in more than a thousand markets, ensuring every team member has access to safe, connected, amenity-rich office space.

“There are certain processes that don't translate well to video conferencing. Brainstorming, group problem solving and creative idea generation are far better in-person. We are excited to see our employees utilizing Upflex bookings for those activities,” Bender told me.

As of the start of 2023, the Upflex space network spans 135 countries, giving Ceros employees access to safe, secure, amenity rich spaces, from hundreds of WeWork locations, to — thanks to our latest partnership — more than a thousand airport and rail lounges around the world. Our solutions are highly customizable and scalable, so our clients have the same flexibility they are enabling for their talent. And we make sure to connect company leaders with the data they need to truly understand what's working when it comes to workspace, and to budget and plan ahead.

For example, the Ceros team is now able to track utilization data, manage spend and plan ahead in Upflex’s platform — things they couldn't do with their New York HQ. According to the data companies can access in the Upflex management dashboard, three out of four Ceros employees who’ve tried Upflex in the pilot have booked multiple times. As of the start of 2023, the Ceros team has booked at nearly 200 different workspace locations in more than 65 cities, including high-design spaces like the Malin in Manhattan and Mindspace in Shoreditch, London.

Bender tells me Ceros was shopping workspace management solutions with three key requirements:

1. the reservation process had to be seamless and intuitive;
2. the physical spaces had to be safe and appealing; and
3. there needed to be office spaces available all over the world.

Upflex was able to satisfy these needs and more.

It's gratifying to hear stories like the Ceros team's, and we're hard at work here continuing to provide solutions that inspire new workplace dynamics and that help forward-thinking, dynamic and innovative employers manage change and embrace flexibility in a way that works for them and for their employees.

Read more about Ceros's remote-first strategy, how their leveraging Upflex, and how they're handling the transition from a million-dollar N.Y.C. lease to a fully flexible workplace in Commercial Observer.

Read the press release about Upflex and Ceros here.