Why London's offices should be alcohol free beyond Dry January

The mode we socialise successful the bureau has fundamentally changed. The increasing fig of non-alcoholic events successful London amusement that galore radical intelligibly crave a antithetic mode of spending clip with their colleagues.

That’s wherefore LABS took the determination to go the archetypal coworking bureau to clasp an alcohol-free Christmas Party, Festive AF, and it wholly sold out.

This whitethorn astonishment regular Standard readers and those who spot coworking arsenic celebrated for brew pong and legume bags. Of course, palmy coworking offices person ever been overmuch much mindful and blase than fruity brew and pleasant furniture, but we’ve stepped extracurricular of our industry’s comfortableness portion by focusing connected sober events. So acold it has been a roaring occurrence with our Christmas and Dry January events each being incredibly well-attended.

Around 15 cardinal Brits  claimed to person taken portion successful this year’s Dry January, and 1 successful 9 radical accidental they privation to chopped down connected the booze successful 2025. I’m definite we won’t each support to our New Years’ resolutions, but we tin intelligibly spot a increasing fig of radical are little funny successful drinking regularly, truthful we indispensable guarantee that colleagues person clip to marque due friendships distant from their desks.

This matters erstwhile a 5th of young idiosyncratic  often oregon ever consciousness lonely astatine work, rising to 32 percent for elder managers. Studies person consistently shown that loneliness astatine enactment is some atrocious for our mental health and makes america much apt to permission our company.

If we person beardown bonds with our colleagues, we’re overmuch much apt to privation to commute to the office. The Microsoft Work Trend Index recovered that 74% of employees would enactment successful idiosyncratic if they knew their enactment friends were besides going to beryllium there. Regular, good attended, enactment socials are the cleanable mode for radical to signifier meaningful friendships.

We tin promote this by offering experiences that you would ne'er person thought of doing astatine enactment and tapping into our earthy quality curiosity to effort thing new.

We precocious had a packed-out country for an evening lawsuit connected gut wellness and slumber optimisation benefits of mushrooms with nootropics. Last twelvemonth we had a unrecorded drafting lawsuit wherever the cardinal muse was a wolf, yes, an existent wolf, organised by Wild Life Drawing whose ngo is to assistance carnal payment and conservation and beforehand mindfulness.

We are not going wholly teetotal - we inactive enactment connected immoderate events involving alcohol. It’s conscionable our alcohol-free events are proving much popular. While the summation successful the percent of radical that are teetotal has been higher among the Gen-Z cohort, our sober events are arsenic well-attended by older office workers too. This is due to the fact that whether you similar to portion oregon not, good curated sober events tin entreaty to everyone.

So whilst a fewer drinks astatine the section volition ever beryllium a staple of galore institution cultures, alcohol-based activities nary longer person a virtual monopoly connected people’s interests. In 2025, enactment events indispensable bespeak that. 

Matt Watts is managing manager of LABS