Welcome to 2025! This is the year we finally get a direction, figure out together where corporate real estate is going, and make a plan to get there! Or not. I’m not sure anymore to be honest what is going on. As I write this, it is nearing the end of January. Not even a…
Tag: planning
A surprisingly difficult question to answer in the current world: what is the role of the workplace in how employees work?
Most everyone reading one of my posts works in or around Corporate Real Estate. This self-selected group has probably spent an inordinate amount of time in their career thinking about what a workplace is, how they are designed, how employees use them, and the attributes successful workplaces have. But one big fact has been brewing…
CRE leaders need to stop thinking in terms of weekly occupancy and shift to a monthly framework.
Most conversations I have with people about workplace occupancy include the phrase “days per week in the office.” Over the past two years, this way of thinking about occupancy has become increasingly problematic when considering how people actually work. It can be hard to overcome the hybrid propaganda about 2 to 3 days per week…
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…
Two years after becoming the word everyone uses to describe post-pandemic working, does hybrid have a real definition yet?
Hybrid may have been the corporate-speak word of the year for 2022. Hybrid working and hybrid workplaces were all the rage as the world settled on that word to describe the flexibility they were “granting” employees to not be in the office. There was no solid definition of the word other than everyone agreed it…
Have you worked on your Corporate Real Estate narrative recently?
I say often that Corporate Real Estate is a hard business. We are responsible for implementing and maintaining offices for businesses we are often not intimately familiar with that are expected to be effective for years into the future. We must balance costs today against costs in the future while building an in-office environment that…
Embracing contradicting ideas is an easy way to engage a team to innovate
The world of Corporate Real Estate is filled with contradictions these days. Businesses want people back in offices but they want to reduce space dramatically. Workplaces need to be more collaboratively focused but all colleagues in the office still want a traditional desk space for most of the day. Flexible working solutions are the hot…
Activity-based workplaces have a fundamental flaw you must address upfront or be in danger of a bad workplace experience.
Everyone is about hybrid working. Which naturally changes the way people use the office. This leads us to ask what they are doing in the office. And all this eventually leads to the question: What if I design my workplace around these activities my employees perform? Surely, designing around activities is an efficient methodology. The…
Workplace technology is evolving so quickly, investing too much in upgrades today can limit you tomorrow if you do not plan for the long term.
The grand return to office phenomenon has resulted in one central area of weakness being identified the world over with wifi, AV, and workplace technology from before the pandemic not fit for purpose after. Every AV company quickly moved to upgrade their camera and audio tech while also trying not to make costs go through…
Yes, technology in the workplace is rapidly evolving. But if you do not get the basics right first, the new stuff will never work.
Let’s talk workplace tech (no, I’m not going to talk #PropTech because that is just marketing jargon). It is a fun and vibrant topic that never fails to draw interest. If you want to cause a debate between companies, discuss the pros and cons of Teams versus Zoom versus WebEx versus Google Meet for calls…