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…
Tag: Workplace
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
I am starting to think that the term “Hub and Spoke” cannot apply to office workplace strategies.
The hub and spoke concept is coming like a freight train to corporate real estate. It works as a rough picture of how workplace portfolios might evolve, but operationally I cannot imagine how it would actually work. For those not familiar with it, the hub and spoke concept has been one of the dominant approaches…