How it works
The hub is usually the largest site. It hosts leadership, client-facing space, large meeting and event space, and the days when whole departments come together. Spokes are smaller and closer to home, in suburbs, regional cities or near transit, and they cover everyday work and local team meetings.
Spokes can be leased offices, shared floors, or on-demand coworking space booked as needed. Many organizations mix these: a few leased spokes where demand is steady, and flexible space where it is not.
The model only works with coordination. People need to know which location their team is using on which day, and the real estate team needs use data from every site to size each spoke and decide when one should grow, shrink or close.
How to measure it
- Attendance by site and team, to confirm each spoke is used by the people it was opened for.
- Commute time before and after a spoke opens, using anonymized home location data where policy allows.
- Total occupancy cost per occupied seat at the hub and at each spoke.
Examples
- A company keeps its city-center headquarters for anchor days and opens two small suburban offices for the rest of the week.
- A firm without regional offices lets employees book coworking space near home, which act as its spokes.
Common mistakes
- Opening spokes without data on where employees live, so they end up as hard to reach as the hub.
- Splitting teams across spokes so that colleagues who depend on each other are never in the same place.
- Keeping the hub at its old size after everyday demand has moved to the spokes.
How Kadence helps
Kadence shows employees who is going into which location on which day and lets teams set up recurring team days, whether the site is the headquarters, a satellite office or a flexible workspace. Kadence Flex adds on-demand coworking desks and rooms through the LiquidSpace network, and Workplace Insights reports attendance and occupancy for each site.
Flexible office space · Hybrid working coordination · Hybrid work strategy guide
Frequently asked questions
What is a hub-and-spoke model in hybrid work?
It is an office network in which a central headquarters handles collaboration, events and client work, while smaller local offices or coworking spaces near employees' homes handle everyday work. People choose the hub or a spoke depending on what they need to do and who they need to see that day.
What are the benefits of a hub-and-spoke office model?
Shorter commutes, access to talent outside one city, and a headquarters that can be smaller and focused on the work that benefits from being together. Spokes can also be added or closed more easily than a large headquarters can be resized.
What are the drawbacks of a hub-and-spoke model?
Teams can end up split across locations, more sites mean more cost and management, and small spokes can feel isolated. It needs clear rules on which work happens where and good visibility of who is in which location, or people lose the reason to come in.
Can coworking spaces work as spokes?
Yes. Many organizations use on-demand coworking desks and meeting rooms as spokes, especially where demand is too small or uncertain for a lease. Usage data then shows whether a location is busy enough to justify a dedicated satellite office.
Related terms
- Flexible workspace Workspace used on short or on-demand terms, such as coworking desks, bookable rooms and serviced offices, instead of a long lease.
- Real estate portfolio optimization Matching the buildings, floors and leases an organization holds to the space its people actually need.
- Hybrid work model The specific rules an organization uses to decide where and when people work, from flexible to office-first.
- Real estate footprint The total space an organization occupies, owned or leased, across all its offices, floors and sites.
Kadence editorial team · Last reviewed