Enticing employees back to the office is about allowing people to make their own choices. How do we optimize the space to accommodate these evolving expectations? Corporate real estate expert Denis McGowan helps us inch closer to defining and creating that commute-worthy office.
Commuting to the office is no longer taken for granted. If employees are to leave their effective home-working set-up a few days a week, the workplace should offer a superior experience worth the commute.
From technology integration to flexibility, office design is changing, and many components contribute to creating an appealing workplace environment. While my own background is in corporate real estate (CRE) in the banking industry (SCB and AMEX) as well as a 15 year stint in tech (Nortel Networks) what I’ve learned is the importance of experimentation. No matter what industry you’re in, you must understand that there’s no textbook for the future of work—you must be willing to test things out over time.
From my perspective, space optimization and employee experience are all about choice. So, what does that look like in today’s hybrid work landscape? Let’s look at how we make the space a worthwhile time and money investment for the employee.
Defining a commute-worthy office in the hybrid work landscape
Space needs to be equitable if people are going to spend money crossing the threshold of their homes every day to go to work. There’s an imbalance around the affordability of the commute; the more senior people who can afford to commute may have the same travel distance and challenges to get to work every day, but it’s more affordable for them.
I advocate for the 22-year-old who might live in the same village as me, 55 minutes outside of London. They make the same journey I do every day, but the cost of that commute impacts them much more.
Equitable means that spaces are fair and worth the expense of a commute, and that includes making sure that their mentors, leaders, and co-workers are there too. So, it has to be equitable, open, flexible, and agile.
The concept of “twice the experience, with half the space”
We’re all used to hotels, and their focus is hospitality. So when I talk about “twice the experience, with half the space,” twice the experience is the outcome, and half the space is the enabler. You can invest in experience by halving, reducing, or optimizing the space. One is a neighbor to the other, but the desired outcome is a better experience for the human who uses space.
So when I say “twice the experience, with half the space”, the outcome of half the space is how you’ve funded it. Creating a new experience without funding is challenging, so leveraging space is how you make it an affordable proposition.
Balancing space optimization and employee experience
I don’t think this is about balance anymore. It’s a chicken-and-egg situation; the outcome has to be the experience, and optimization is an enabler that will get you more dollars to invest in that experience.
By having that investment, you create a variety of places, and that doesn’t always have to be the office. It can be a co-working space or a cafeteria. The balance should come in giving people a choice about where they work; the positive experience they get is the flexibility to work from home, the office, the coffee shop, or a restaurant. Balance should be about choice; the optimization piece is just a vehicle to make it happen.
So, whether you’re using those dollar savings to create new programs or policies that allow you to work from anywhere or whether they’re investment dollars for the space that you want, optimization is the enabler.
Examples of strategies or design principles that achieve balance
The best examples are hotels. You can find hotels with ratings from two to five stars, but lately, everybody’s been focusing on hospitality and experience. New boutique brands like Bob W and Mollie’s (Soho House) offer high quality and experience.
The technology investment is high, but the number of resources may be lower because they removed a lot of the backend pieces. So, they’ve been able to use technology to improve the experience.
Technology has become an enabler for improving hospitality. Many workplace and real estate teams, particularly in the financial industry, have started hospitality programs that are embedded in workplace strategy. This suggests that a worthwhile office should aim for that five-star experience.
Technologies enable a better experience with seamlessness, transparency, and efficiency. You don’t necessarily need many people, but human access/connection is still very important.
The barrier-free, commute-worthy office
The days of cookie cutting have gone. The number one component for incentivizing people to come to the office is equitability and recognizing that everybody is different, whether it’s age, diversity, beliefs, remuneration, or position in society.
So, how do you ensure you’ve got a facility that solves that? You’re designing for different people, so building flexibility and freedom into your model is key to successfully accessing these places. You have to treat each individual as an individual rather than as a group within the same function. Providing the right space for those individuals is where you need choice.
Coming to the office has to appeal to people; it should be barrier-free, simple, and seamless.
Barrier-free is having the choice to be flexible. It covers disability, your ability to move around in the office, and whether you want to use a fixed desk or go into a fixed room. Access to your office and all its spaces should be simple and seamless; either you can use a space immediately, or it’s easy to book.
You need to make it easy for people to interact with spaces once they’re in the door. At a good-quality hotel, you’re looked after because it’s designed around humans, and I think offices need to be designed around humans, too. From wayfinding to morphing spaces on the spot, the office should be a place where employees are able to do what they need to and enjoy being there as well.
The lifecycle of real estate portfolios and evolving employee expectations
It may sound like an oxymoron, but you have to plan for uncertainty. While no one can predict the future, we know from the past 5 years that spatial demands have fluctuated and most likely, that trend will continue in the future.
That’s why I like to treat the office like a theater set—a space that can morph depending on the occasion, event, or phase of a play. Today, you might need 15 more desks or a room for brainstorming with whiteboards. Tomorrow you might need to accommodate your totally remote Sales Team’s Sales Kick-Off. Like the theater set, modularity is key.
Flexible terms extends to the leases as well—don’t get locked into 15, 25, or 30-year leases. Think, how do I have a fixed term like a 10 or 15-year lease but maybe 75% of what I would have had five years ago?
And how do you create 20% flex space and maybe 5-10% membership space? Make sure your space can morph to those changes; if you have flexible space, you can adapt to changes more. So, focus more on furniture and less on structured rooms. In terms of the lease, have a combination of components: a fixed, a flexible, and a membership program that can contract or grow within the confines of the relationship you’ve got with your landlord.
How to use data analysis to optimize real estate assets
If you don’t measure it, you can’t move it. Data is valuable, but what’s more valuable is the insight it provides.
Again, it’s a chicken-and-egg scenario. You must have the data to get the insight because the insight allows you to move it. However, the data allows you to measure it to benchmark and change your policies as a result.
You need flexible policies. Consider cleaning patterns in a building. Why do organizations clean the same space every day, five days a week, 52 weeks a year, if people aren’t using some of those spaces?
If you have data that tells you where people are going and how often, the data will suggest that you need to invest more in cleaning one space rather than cleaning everything to a certain standard. So, the data allows you to invest where it’s important.
Redesigning or reimagining office spaces for hybrid work
Now more than ever, there are no experts. Everyone’s designing for an uncertain world. Many people have a view on how space could be, but the only way they’ll become experts is to test it, use it, and then reset it.
We haven’t had enough experience to understand the new economy and new world in terms of coming to work. So, we need to experiment and sometimes fail.
Don’t assume that the architects and designers will get it. They’ll only get it right by testing and involving the user, who will have a voice at the office in the same way they do at a hotel.
It’s the process of evolution; again, there’s no textbook anymore. People are just finding their feet. Organizations that thought it was good to mandate people back to the office are experiencing attrition. Conversely, organizations that haven’t mandated people to come back are also losing people given the diverse needs of individuals and organizations alike.
You have to think about flexibility; the policies and spaces that we adopt for working have to be different because, going forward, it is about choice.
Conclusion
The fundamental necessities of a commute-worthy office will be much more individualistic now: allow people to make their own choices and to influence what they do when they come to the office. Let them experiment with the environment.
Ultimately, we want to create engaging, efficient, and adaptable workplace environments that enhance employee well-being and productivity. We’ve talked about human-centric design for years, but we tend to divide people into various groups. Now, we need to make space equitable and morphable to cater to different people’s needs and different activities.
To learn more about Return-on-Workplace metrics, check out our recent blog from Workplace Strategist Kevin Sauer.
About the author
Denis McGowan joined Osborne and Company in 2023, focusing on Build to Suit (BTS) developments supporting multinational corporations (MNCs). With a 35-year international career as a senior property leader in prominent organizations such as Standard Chartered Bank, American Express, and Nortel Networks, Denis brings invaluable expertise to his role.
As the recent Global Head of Property at Standard Chartered Bank, based in Singapore, he was responsible for managing the Bank’s global property portfolio. Under his leadership, the efficiency of the portfolio improved significantly, reducing from 16 million to 11 million square feet across 60 markets. He also oversaw an annual P&L responsibility of approximately $800 million.
Denis’s extensive end-user operational experience ensures that Osborne and Company can deliver client-focused solutions, whether financial or operational, meeting the diverse needs of their clientele.
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