Some days it feels quaint to look back at how we worked five short years ago. Video calls were not common. Hybrid working was a niche concept. Most of our days in the office were spent plugged into a desk. Most of our days were AT the office. One thing that recently struck me is…
Success of in-person working has no relationship with average office attendance levels.
Over the past two years, more non-real estate people have begun dabbling in real estate data. I have pulled together more occupancy and utilization charts in the past 6 months than in the past 6 years combined. I have gotten so good at describing the difference between peak, average, and seasonal occupancy patterns that I…
When you stop worrying about the small things, they have a way of becoming unexpected large concerns.
Over time, it is easy to become comfortable with what came before. We naturally want to move on to bigger and better things. If we dealt with million-dollar worries last year, we want to have ten-million-dollar worries this year. Moving up to bigger problems is a clear way of showing we are progressing. The problem…
Let’s talk a bit about conference room utilization and “efficiency.”
If you want to hear me go off on a brain dump of thoughts, one of the good ways is to ask me how to figure out how many conference rooms by size an office needs. I have sat through so many bad vendor demos of how to do this analysis that I am extremely…
The massive changes to CRE over the past and coming years mean stress and burnout to individuals.
I enjoy looking at the incredibly uncertain landscape that is Corporate and Commercial Real Estate. For me, it is a wide-open opportunity to figure out new solutions and implement them. I get excited by change because it presents a challenge I have not yet faced. It is a chance to prove myself against the world….
It is nearing the end of 2023; a year that has not been like any before it!
It is Thanksgiving week in the US. This is the perfect time for a little pause to look back on all the change that we have been dealing with. Self-reflection is an activity that has benefits beyond just a review of the year. It can help with stress by putting the day-to-day into perspective. It…
If you aim to create moments of spark and connection in the workplace, mandates are the last solution you should look toward.
In every article I see about mandates to work from the office, the rationale is always the ephemeral ideas of innovation, serendipity, spark, creativity, or connection. The goal seems to be to achieve some interpersonal benefits by simply having individuals occupying the same space. If simply forcing people together inspired magical productivity enhancements, the subway…
A reversal has occurred where 3rd party commercial real estate experts are only now learning how the workplace operates in a post-COVID world.
I have had the pleasure of sitting through A LOT of workplace technology demos that claim they are able to solve the problem of hybrid working and the office. Typically, within 10 minutes of the start of the demo they prove that they have not had to deal with the real-world issues that come from…
Considerations when evaluating offices with high vs. low occupancy variability.
We all know that occupancy has changed today from what it was pre-pandemic. The aspect that has changed the most when I look at workplace utilization patterns is occupancy variability. What I mean by Occupancy Variability is that before the pandemic, almost all offices globally had consistent month-to-month, week-to-week, and often day-to-day predictable occupancy. It…
The long-term downsizing of a real estate portfolio requires a lot more than just building smaller workplaces. It must be a partnership of all areas of the business led by a strong CRE team.
I have spoken over the last six months to many corporate real estate leaders dealing with the no-win scenario of being told by Finance to cut costs by reducing space while being told by the business that there must be enough space to maintain a 3-day-a-week in-office mandate. The two directions are incompatible in the…