I say what needs saying about the Future of Work/Living. I also help teams coordinate remote & in-office Kadences (pun intended, it’s where I work and what we do!).
The benefits of remote work are VERY straightforward: 1/ Live where you want or need to. 2/ Maximize the time you can spend with the people you want or need to. 3/ Have the autonomy to organize your work around your life. The true impact of remote work has yet to be realized, but the cracks are all over the pavement… Many large companies have and will have rigid workplace policies, and there’s no sign of this changing at scale anytime soon. Much of tomorrow’s workforce is working at one of these companies, honing their skills and building relationships. At first, they’ll remain accountable to these employers to learn skills they don’t have, but once they do, they will either start their own business or find a fully flexible job. It’s just a fact. People have always craved autonomy, and the best talent IS getting it. Business leaders love the 80/20 rule: 80% of outcomes come from 20% of the work. The same applies to talent: 80% of results come from 20% of the talent. This has always been true, but the 20% of the talent market has never had a “religious awakening” all at the same time… Many companies will continue to think that structured hybrid is working because most employees will adhere to mandates (at least partially), but behind the curtain will be a growing number of highly skilled people who move on once they obtain the skills and relationships needed to do so. As this continues to unfold, the STARK mismatch of supply and demand within the office sector will start to rear its ugly head. It’s a macroeconomic problem that is challenging to quantify because employers haven’t yet realized that offering a static workplace strategy (i.e. a central office model) will increasingly become a more significant business risk year-over-year. Traditional working norms are essentially propping up the commercial real estate market, which is a somewhat crazy statement given how much upheaval it has experienced since March 2020. But it’s true. Many A/AAA Class office buildings in CBD’s have relatively low vacancy rates because large employers are still renewing or leasing this space at levels that don’t reflect the gravity of this societal shift. Eventually, even many of these buildings won't be fit for purpose - at least with a traditional single-tenant leasing model. While things may appear to be returning to “normal” on the surface, they are very much NOT. Each year that goes by will see more of the talent market become empowered with choice because of the trickledown effect of how the most skilled workers will behave. There is power in numbers, and the number of people with power is growing. This is a future worth arriving at, even for the commercial real estate sector. So how do we get there? #digitalhomad ______ *These posts and statements are my own and do not represent the positions, strategies or opinions of CBRE.
I can't help but wonder, though, what strategies or solutions will be in place for navigating this workplace evolution. I have seen that even some real state have been rented to shoot movies because they can't fill up the office space... In my old workplace, other companies started to work in the same building. Does not look pretty. Are there any trends or creative approaches you see emerging that could help businesses, especially in commercial real estate, not just survive but thrive in this new landscape? I'd love to hear your thoughts!
The strange thing is that there shouldn’t be such a disconnect. Business leaders say they want empowered employees to think and work autonomously to add value.
Companies need to look at who their top performers are today, and who they might be in the future. The more restrictive a company is, the less likely they are to keep their top people. They may be able to keep their numbers, but over time their number of A players is dropping to be replaced by C players. The best companies will attract the best people and the others are likely to fade away.
Thanks Dave Cairns. Some good food for thought as usual and beautifully laid out
The think to watch with fully remote is that you need some very particular skill set if your work is not to be moved somewhere cheaper. A fully remote commodity coder in the Bay Area might cost $200k (‘special’ coders are much more) - what does a ‘special’ coder in Bangalore cost? Fully remote might as well substitute great for good. So will remain something of a niche. Being present some of the time matters - if only as a protective factor. This of course is what Nick Bloom has been emphasising for some time: companies can save a ton of money by going remote.
Thinking about your business and where it happens; focused on relationships of all kind. Let's talk about Workplace Strategy, People Strategy, Business Strategy or whatever else is of interest! #reSTRUCTURing
10moHere's a completely crazy idea. What if we just stop calling it "remote work" and just start calling it "work"? What if we stop thinking about it as a forced choice, as in, "Either I'm going to decide where I work or somebody is going to decide for me" and just move toward, "I'm going to work"? So much of this, for me, comes down to how we continue to turn this into a debate. What if it wasn't? At some point, we will all just realize it's a good idea to work somewhere, and that each of us should be empowered to decide what that means based on our own individual situations. We need to rebuild the real estate economy on new metrics of success. Density numbers need to change. We have all of this space. We need to do something with it because knocking it down and putting it in a landfill somewhere isn't a great decision either. We know fewer people are going to use it, but many still will choose to. Let's recast the assumptions and start from there. What is holding us back is not the debate, but the unwillingness to change the assumptions because of a real estate economy that is unwilling to change.