Outsourcing boom boosts Poland's office construction

Marek Grodzinski, vice-president of business process outsourcing at Capgemini in Poland bristles when you absent-mindedly refer to his company's towering offices in Krakow's business district as a "call-centre".

As well he might. With lawyers, software designers and creative directors clocking in for work each morning, it is a far cry from the rows of telephone cubicles that have come to symbolise the global outsourcing industry.

Poland's business services industry, which has exploded in recent years as global financial companies shifted back-office functions to the central European country, is rapidly expanding into new and more lucrative areas in order to maintain a breakneck growth trajectory that has been a boon for the country's property industry.

From 43,000 jobs in 2006, outsourcing is expected to employ almost 200,000 people in 2017, according to a forecast by McKinsey, a consultancy.

That growth rate means that in many cities, as much as 60 per cent of new office construction is being built in order to serve the sector.

Some estimates put the potential total closer to 500,000 employees in the coming decade, requiring a long and lucrative pipeline of property projects.

Outsourcing is of particular importance to developers, thanks to its spread across six second-tier cities in Poland outside Warsaw giving the country an edge over other central and eastern European markets where investment activity is highly dependent on the country's capital city.

According to JLL, a property services company, the country's outsourcing industry accounted for 65 per cent of all leased offices rented outside Warsaw in 2014 - equivalent to about 268,000 square metres of space.

"But I believe that there are still a lot of global companies that are only midway through the process [of outsourcing], and there are still a lot of processes that could be optimised and located . . . here in Poland," says Tomasz Trzoslo, Poland managing director at JLL.

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