Companies Face Five Challenges for Office

For corporations, forget questions of inflation, recessions, supply chains, and more. The great issue is what will become of the office. Everyone back there? Ongoing work from home?  

The reason this is so important is because it is intermixed with how a company operates, who works there, culture, issues of efficiency and innovation, and much more.

The JLL Future of Work Survey 2022, taking 1,000 responses from 13 key global markets, made an attempt at some answers. The company says there are five different key actions companies will have to take.

But first, some of the numbers, according to the survey results: 53% of companies will make working from home permanent within three years; 77% say quality workspace beats quantity; 45% think one primary purpose of office space is collaborative working; and 77% of CRE leaders expect the pressure for change to increase by 2025.

There’s more in the stats up front. The big message is that to be successful, companies, including CRE firms, have to address five major categories of actions within the next few years or risk being left behind.

First is that hybrid work isn’t going away. This is a permanent change. “The number of employers not offering some form of hybrid working option has dropped from 45% pre-pandemic to only 9% today, which means the vast majority of occupiers in our research recognize that providing hybrid working options is essential to attracting and retaining talent,” JLL writes.

Second, quality beats quantity when it comes to space. “Our survey participants tell us they want their future office to be a collaborative, creative space that fosters employee wellbeing and maximizes productivity,” the company says. In other words, you figure out what role office space really plays and then figure out how to make that work better. This could get tricky, though, and not for the better. About 73% of respondents said they’re planning to move to open office spaces with no dedicated desk space, but as recent history has shown, that comes with its own problems. Companies may need to think deeper.

ESG in office real estate is largely a matter of where you are and local regulations. But environmental and social will each continue to grow, and executives have to get past assuming that the former is the only aspect to consider. “Nearly 8 out of 10 companies say their employees expect their workplace to have a positive impact on society,” says the report. “Ramping up investment in social considerations has therefore become as important as funding environmental objectives.

Fourth, CRE needs to involve a lot more technology in its operations and data analytics in strategic and tactical planning. “Deeper investment in intelligent technology will be key to unlocking new opportunities to boost performance and productivity, and there is clear evidence that this is accelerating. In comparison terms, the widespread investment in and use of data currently lags behind,” says JLL.

Finally, CRE is getting to be a lot more sophisticated and complex than organizations are ready for. They can’t do it all on their own and so will increasingly need alliances and partnerships to pull off what has to be done.