We need to be more precise when using the terms hybrid, remote, and return to office. These terms are holding back the conversations we are trying to have across corporate real estate by greying out the middle ground strategy options. Hybrid – It’s a word we all landed on during the pandemic to describe something…
Tag: mandate
It is time to retire all “Return to” concepts. If your Return has not yet happened, it probably is not going to. #CRE
The world is now mostly two years beyond the end of almost all COVID-era restrictions. A “New Normal” has been established through intentional action or unintentional patterns forming. Headlines that continue to talk about Return to Office or Return to Work (with Amazon causing the most recent ruckus) are missing the point about how people…
The CRE Everything App is finally losing traction.
A big trend over the last couple of years was every CRE Tech vendor building out their app to be the operating system for the workplace. They loaded in desk booking, conference room booking, wayfinding, social capabilities, amenities ordering, events announcements, security integration, and anything else they could think of. The goal was for employees…
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…
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…
There’s a giant purple elephant in the work-from-the-office mandate room that no one wants to talk about…
Let me start by saying this is not a post intended to shout down mandates or say they are wrong. What I want to address is the unintended consequences that have come up in most mandates throughout 2023 and the impact those consequences have on future real estate decisions. There is tension between real estate…
Does your workplace strategy promote positive cultural engagement among employees?
One of the topics I do not see coming up nearly often enough in the conversation around return to office is whether the workplace itself is appropriate for the current world. Bringing employees together in person is a worthwhile endeavor (even though I will consistently argue that mandates are not the right way to do…
2023 will be known as the year when businesses began to understand how workplaces are actually used
Since the dawn of corporate real estate, businesses have seen it as a necessary function but not one they wanted to think about the strategy of. In most companies, the closest most leaders came to thinking about their real estate strategy was when the office they sat in was up for a project and they…
If you mandate 3 days a week in the office, you are not offering hybrid work opportunities.
Mandates are the rage yet again. We went through this in the middle of 2022 when COVID-19 restrictions first began disappearing. Then again at the end of 2022. Now again in early 2023. It is a never-ending hot topic for business leaders who have no clue how their employees worked before the pandemic, how they…