When considering driving a workplace program within your organization, many of the latest, best-in-class concepts will seem different and even foreign to the conventional mindset. At CBRE, in order to get people on board with many of these new workplace concepts (with free addressing and digitization being the most challenging), a high level of employee engagement and hard research about our current work processes were critical. This was no small task—to date, we have engaged more than 3,200 employees across 26 locations domestically. An aggregation of this research showed a number of similarities with regards to space usage—for example, office utilization was 50% across the board (we find a similar pattern of underutilization with many of our clients, regardless of industry). We also found universal opportunities for improvement—no matter the industry or company, most can benefit from enhanced technology and can use the tools to provide a higher level of service to both employees and clients.

When it comes to decisions about the workplace, it's all about the people who will be working in the new environment. To create an office that truly met their needs, we had to really listen to their comments and concerns at every stage of the process and respond accordingly—not by giving them what they thought they wanted necessarily, but by addressing their feedback in a meaningful way. The opportunity to provide input goes a long way in transforming the cultural and individual mindset. Going through the extensive—and sometimes difficult—process of gathering research, as well as asking our employees to test our suggestions, proved to be crucial. We gave everyone the opportunity to take ownership in the process and ultimately, this had a positive effect on their willingness to buy-in.

Beth Moore is director of workplace strategy at CBRE. The views expressed in this column are the author's own.

How it works is more important than what looks like.

Steve Jobs once said, “Design is a funny word. Some people think design means how it looks. But of course, if you dig deeper, it's really…. how it works.”

Partnering with Gensler to design our new global headquarters office in alignment with our workplace strategy, we discovered that design (what the space looks like), can actually be the catalyst for organizational and procedural changes (how the space works.) Through the process of scrutinizing the design and use of our new space, we uncovered new opportunities to innovate when it came to our work processes. For example, an initiative to purge old files and reduce the amount of paper files in our Downtown Los Angeles office ended up transforming the way we process real estate transaction deal vouchers. And an investigation into new technologies resulted in the implementation of a presentation tool that could truly transform the way we approach marketing and research.

It's not (just) about the money.

In many companies, there is an ever-pressing need to reduce square footage and become more efficient with space in order to save money. As a result, financials are often reported as a way—often the primary way—to measure the success of a workplace initiative. Certainly financial metrics are important in preparing a business case and proving rationale for investment; what these metrics don't do, however, is demonstrate how the office environment is impacting the workforce and ultimately, productivity. To measure these less tangible performance indicators, qualitative monitoring and evaluation—including soliciting regular feedback from employees—is imperative. At CBRE, we are conducting formal evaluation sessions every 30 days. Some of the most interesting insights have come from the answers to questions such as “If you had the opportunity to go back to your old workplace, would you? Why?” Or, “How has the new work environment changed the way you work?” From this, you can immediately start to gauge employee morale and satisfaction.

Elements for meaningful change…

Challenging the status quo is never easy, but when a commitment is made it creates the opportunity for a vastly improved environment. To recap, the most important elements of making lasting and meaningful change are:

- Combine hard data and employee engagement to get people on board.

- Involve employees in the innovation process—they know what will help them do their jobs better, and often times, have the best ideas.

- Focus on both quantitative and qualitative performance indicators equally.

- Create a process for ongoing feedback and evaluation.

These elements lead to one important question: Have you created an environment that delivers a better work environment for your employees both today and in the future? Our answer is yes. We believe we have created an environment that truly unlocks the potential of our people and of our company as a whole.

And having gone through this process with our own company, we are now able to truly lead by example as we help our clients do the same in their organizations.

Beth Moore is a Director in the CBRE Global Workplace Strategy Group. She has extensive experience in advising corporate occupiers through portfolio and workplace strategies, change management, and developing and implementing global workplace programs. Most recently, Beth has led the development of CBRE's own Workplace360 program – an initiative that has transformed the way CBRE employees work and how the organization designs and allocates space.