Since finding and retaining good staff is a challenge even under ideal circumstances, we have allocated a considerable amount of money to provide staff housing on-site.
This will appeal especially to non-Icelandic workers who don’t have housing in the area or (very) Rekjavik. Housing is expensive in Reykjavik and it would be very convenient to avoid a daily 55 min. commute. With a nearly 100% occupancy rate of such facilities we can also make it very affordable.
For workers going on (weekend) leave, we plan to acquire a house or piece of land close to Reykjavik where they can also rent an affordable room and relax outside the work environment.
To avoid eating into our max. 5.000 m2 bulding limit (RevPAM of our cabins will be 10x higher than that of our staff cabins 😊) we plan to use mobile units like these.
Not only will it save on foundations, we can also easily move them to other (project) locations when needed. We could even make a ‘sales office’ or ‘coffee café’ version to support our local marketing efforts.
Ideally we will be able to acquire some land nearby in the future to accommodate more of these cabins if needed.
The current projection provides for approximately 10 units that can accommodate one person or a couple. To save expenses we plan to acquire them directly from a manufacturer, possibly in Eastern Europe.
We would also like to budget some extra money to buy in building plot near Rekjavik. For instance in the Mosfellsbær area. and later build a staff ‘AirBnB’ for those who are on a (weekend) break and want an affordable place to stay. Or we could include say 8 days a month for non-Icelandic employees. Most likely a newly build pre-fab house with say 10 small private rooms with shared showers and a nicely equiped common area. It would easily pay for itself.