Have you seen any ads for sublease office space on MySpace? Don’t be surprised if you do.  MySpace has around 420,000 square feet of office space in Playa Vista, California with a 12 year lease that is sitting empty. They are currently paying more than $1-million dollars a month for the Los Angeles area office space and have total lease obligation of about $350-million over the 12 year term. Rent is scheduled to go up to nearly $2-million next June. Needless to say, it is not a great time to have excess office space, especially true in California.

MySpace signed the 12-year lease in August 2008, when the number of people using MySpace was blossoming and the social network was running out of space in its Beverly Hills offices.  The lease began in June of this year. The problem is that since then is that Facebook has taken off at the expense of MySpace. The parent company, News Corp, announced recently that they will receive $100-million less than expected from Google after failing to hit traffic targets.

News Corp also announced that they will be taking a $180-million write off “as a result of excess facility space that we no longer need.”

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DALLAS, Nov. 11 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Further extending its holistic approach to meeting the needs of small businesses from coast to coast, AT&T announced today an alliance with The Regus Group (LSE: RGU), the world's largest provider of workplace solutions. Under the alliance, Regus will provide AT&T small business customers with affordable, convenient and flexible office space, featuring administrative, communications, printing and technology services.

The new alliance offers AT&T small business customers benefits and discounts at Regus business centers, including:

-- Six months complimentary membership in Regus' Businessworld Gold
program, which provides users with access to more than 1,000
Internet-equipped Regus business lounges in 450 cities worldwide
-- Two complimentary months on any Regus Virtual Office package, which
includes a business address, personalized telephone answering services,
and a local phone number

-- One-free month rental on any full-time office

"We're committed to helping small businesses succeed by helping them stay productive, wherever their business takes them," said Alicia Dietsch, Vice President of Marketing Communications, AT&T. "The freedom to conduct business anywhere is increasingly a requirement of our customers. Affordable, virtual office space extends this freedom to entrepreneurs on an as-needed basis, and is a great addition to the suite of values we offer to enable small business success."
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One of the big concerns of this flu season is keeping you office employee from spreading the flu, whether the regular seasonal flu or the H1N1 virus. One of the obvious keys to doing so is to know the symptoms and making sure your employees know the symptoms so that they will not come to work if they are experiencing them. If they don't stay home you will know when to send them home.

Symptoms of H1N1 and Flu...and How They Are Different from the Co

The best advice for you and your employees is to stay home until you feel better and have gone at least 24 hours without relying on medicine to break your fever.

In addition, wash your hands and cover your mouth and nose with a tissue when you cough or sneeze – and then throw the tissue away immediately. Finally, if you have to share a small space with other people, consider wearing a facemask to help make sure you don't spread the flu to the people around you.

From IMW Consultants

You cannot stop H1N1 from infecting your community, but you can limit the losses to your business caused by a flu outbreak.
 
30-50% of Population Could Stay Home with Flu
 
An H1N1 Contingency Plan gives you the resources you need to protect your employees, customers and business, including:

• A written plan for your business
• The latest tools from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
• Presentations and tips to help prevent the spread of flu in your business
• Worksheets to plan for and respond to employee and supplier absences
• Suggested informational campaigns for both employees and customers
• Checklists for janitorial and support services

Assure Your Customers and Employees that Your Business is Doing all it Can to Protect Them

IMW Consultants has developed a cost-effective plan that will provide you with these essential materials. Our plan can be downloaded and put into use immediately.
 
IMW Consultants has years of experience providing compliance and contingency plans for companies throughout the United States.

For additional information, the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services has a useful website at Flu.gov.

Regus is celebrating 20 years of business in the serviced office / executive suite business.  According to Wikipedia: In 1989 while on a business trip to Brussels, an English entrepreneur, Mark Dixon, noted the lack of office space available to travelling business people; they were often forced to work from hotels. He identified a need for office space that was maintained, staffed, and available for companies to use on a flexible basis and went on to found his first business center in Brussels in Belgium.

Today Regus rents office space with services in over 1,000 centers in 450 cities and 75 countries serving 200,000 clients daily. In the US they operate over 400 centers.

Mark Dixon was a true visionary. He saw a need for flexible office space filled it and expanded the concept. As we move farther into the  21st century, the concept of on-demand offices is likely to see even more acceptance. As the workforce becomes even more mobile in a technology driven workforce, demand will continue to increase.

Executive Suites are an excellent option for a mobile workforce, smaller companies or branches.  Many companies, large and small, choose to operate their business or satellite offices from an Executive Suite. Executive Suites are shared offices with services provided by a management firm. They are also known as an Office Business Center or serviced offices and are a great way for small companies to get off to a fast and low risk start and a great way for a fast growing company to have the flexibility for rapid growth. In an Executive Suite, you can focus on your business, while the Executive Suite operator handles the details of managing your office. Most Executive Suites also offer a Virtual Office Program, as well. More on Executive Suites.

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