How Do You Create a Game-Changing Perk for Employees?

Hybrid work. Great for employees but maddening to many top executives — and the landlords that are desperate to get higher occupancy and keep ongoing office leases.

For the last year or so, many in CRE and in different industries have looked for the magic amenities that would entice people back to the office. For some time, there’s been a school of thought that there aren’t magic feature checklists that would work. As it turns out, there may be benefits that could help bring workers back to the office. But they vary and learning what will work takes significant effort.

“I spend my week mining, trying to find that information, as do a lot of the building owners and landlords sitting on all those properties,” says Brian Parker, principal in the office workplace studio at design firm Cooper Carry. They want to know what to invest in to make buildings more attractive “and what the CEOs and C suites are looking for. What will make a building commute-worthy? It has to be something that impacts your life.”

In the past, the answers of what to add to an office might have been a conference room with full AV and videoconferencing, or maybe an espresso bar. But that not only isn’t enough, it’s running in the wrong direction. “I can’t do my laundry or take my kids to school or walk the dog in the middle of the day,” Parker says. “You have to give me something in return for giving up some of those freedoms I got during the pandemic.” Something to give time back from the commuting and all the preparation and costs to be in the office.

You’d think that with all the interest there would be a list of which elements a company and its landlord need to address — maybe on-premises daycare (which doesn’t help when children are old enough for school) or working in a hub and spoke model where employees can work closer to home in satellite offices and cut their commuting time. But there isn’t. “One size does not fit all. It won’t apply to everybody anyway, Parker adds.

One reason is that the questions go to the wrong people. “You’re looking to get beyond HR and executives,” Parker says. Since it’s ultimately the workers that need persuasion, speaking with them would seem the most logical step. But most companies haven’t surveyed their own workers. Instead, those nearer they top provide the answers.

Cooper Carry eventually polled a cross section of its designers — different ages, backgrounds, and more — to brainstorm what “would be different and interesting and might attract you to come in,” he says. “When people ask me the question on the client or building owner side, I bring them this list.” Some of the ideas were food service, coffee bars, beer or wine bars, pharmacy delivery, maker spaces, childcare, doggie daycare, gyms, climbing walls, surfing simulator, massage, fishing lake, firepit areas for family gatherings, and more. “Some of them are laughable and others are maybe we need to rethink,” says Parker.

Firepits for family gatherings or surfing simulators in a metropolitan high rise office building might seem outside the realm of practicality, as an example. Automotive maintenance on site, maybe not so off the beaten path. But a number of the ideas, whether they sound outlandish or banal, do address the question of being something that could impact a person’s life. And raising these questions, wondering about what might work, has helped expand how companies can start to think about amenities that are meaningful to employees — reducing the stress of balancing their lives — and the workers themselves.

The basic questions become ones like what kind of company is this, what technology and layouts do they need, how do employees work in the space and get done what they need to. “Thank god we’re actually having this conversation,” says Parker. “We didn’t really care so much about the employee experience. We didn’t care. This is where our office is, this is the space you work in, that’s the way it is. Come work for us. Those conversations didn’t happen but now they are.” And the discussions are “way more in depth.”

“Some companies are closer to getting it right because they’re running an investigative process to understand three things,” Lauren Hasson, senior vice president of workplace strategy at JLL, tells GlobeSt.com. The questioning and considering, when done right, start with employee performance drivers that matter and what helps them today. What they need to be productive, because from the point of the employer, that is the goal, to get people to work more productively. What worked in the past probably doesn’t work today.

Also, when employees are at work, what is the highest and best use of their time and how does it differ from what they do at home. The answer to that question can begin to help frame how a specific implementation of hybrid work might support a company and employees. Place becomes a tool.

“Productivity is central to the conversation of if hybrid is working or not,” says Hasson. “You can find research in favor of both. I’m not convinced if we’re in a place that we can say whether [hybrid] is better for productivity. Too few companies are studying productivity.” The businesses have not looked deeply into their companies, and there is little empirical research in most cases. “It’s this feeling they have.”

JLL does have some data included in its “Is hybrid really working?” 2023 global report. A fifth of companies worldwide insisted on employees being in the office five days a week in the first half of 2021. That climbed to 35% in the first half of 2023. Between three and four days went from 31% to 45%. Fully remote shifted from 14% to 2%; one to two days in the office had been 35% and is now 18%. In the U.S., the current practice is about 2.0 days in the office.

The top five employee barriers to working in the office were commute time (59%), commute cost (43%), office timing conflicts (31%), noise levels (28%), and no flexibility in scheduling (24%).

JLL notes that office utilization on a typical day splits into sections: less than 20% (14% do), 20% to 39% (25%), 40% to 59% (31%), 60% to 79% (12%), 80% or more (11%), and difficult to assess (7%).

The research also shows the split between aspects of human experience that employers shouldn’t neglect, and the tools and policies used to get people to work in the office. First, the top five of human experience by aspect and percentage considering it important:

1. Workspace type (90%)
2. Cleanliness (89%)
3. Chair in the office (89%)
4. Flexibility and work-life balance (89%)
5. Secure remote access at work (89%)

And then, the top five tools and policies employers use:

1. Enhanced office technology (55% in place, 22% being considered)
2. Special events (45%, 24%)
3. Enhanced in office amenities/spaces (46%, 21%)
4. Compulsory attendance to the office (33%, 27%)
5. Training/reskilling (27%, 20%)

Employees want good ergonomic seating, flexibility when they need it, quality lighting, air quality, a good desk, and so on. “When they come to the office, they’re there to work,” Hasson says.

There are also amenities that have become expected and that need partnership between the company and landlord to achieve. But past those, companies differ, and specific information is necessary. Landlords might consider helping to underwrite the type of internal research that needs to be done. The landlord can then collect information across companies and buildings and build a better idea of what companies might typically need. Not only does it become a tremendous resource to help satisfy tenants, but also to develop a competitive edge that will pay off for prospective tenants.