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Taking care of your people,
places, and public perception
Location
matters for
millennials
Successful tech cities have ‘urban noir’
B
Paul Tostevin
Associate Director,
Savills World Research
Paul is an Associate Director of
Savills World Research, based
in London. Working across all
property sectors, he delivers
market-leading research on
global real estate markets and
the forces that shape them
y 2025 millennials will comprise
75% of the global workforce.
This is a shift that goes hand
in hand with the development
of the tech sector, already the
world’s most valuable industry. Young,
skilled talent is this sector’s lifeblood, and
competition for it is fierce. Here we argue
that businesses located in high quality,
vibrant, urban environments are best
placed to attract and retain this talent.
T h e n e w l o c at i o n d r i v e r s
In the digital age, all the old location
drivers, such as proximity to raw
materials and proximity to market, are
of little importance in a world where
the internet is everywhere and anyone
with a laptop has the capability to
create businesses worth multimillions.
Start-ups, scale-ups and established
R e a d o n l i n e at: u k s pa . o r g . u k / b r e a k t h r o u g h
corporations in the tech space are
competing fiercely for globally mobile
talent, not buildings. In a labour
marketplace where millennials matter
and access to the coding creative classes
is essential, it is location that matters
more than office space.
With the margins between working
and living increasingly blurred, young,
educated employees want to live close
to the office, and it is vibrant urban
neighbourhoods that they favour.
C i t y a s att r a c t o r
Savills’ and British Council of Offices’
‘What Workers Want’ project surveyed
over 1,000 UK office workers on their
favoured working environment. It found
that nearly 70% of 25- to 34-year-olds
(a group that includes millennials)
want to be in a town or city centre.
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