Colorado Real Estate Journal - November 19, 2014
New workplace strategies are revolutionizing how companies do business and how office space is utilized. Companies throughout the world are developing workplace strategies designed to drive improvements in employee satisfaction and business productivity. Businesses are achieving this vision by adopting a workplace strategy that allows employees a choice in workspace options and the ability to collaborate with ease. These strategies are driven by aligning core organizational goals with real estate solutions, IT infrastructure, office services and policy. Recently, a sector of the Denver CBRE office adopted new workplace strategies based on an open and collaborative environment. The positive results have been immediately apparent. Organizations are increasingly recognizing the importance of providing a great workplace for their employees in order to make work more productive and enjoyable. Companies seeking to outpace competitors are making an effort to anticipate employee needs in order to deliver the best possible service to clients. CBRE is no different; the 100 percent free-addressing environment the Denver office has created is allowing our team to respond faster than ever to our clients’ requests. We are able to immediately communicate with other team members in the collaborative work zone, allowing us to problem solve as a team rather than individually. It is allowing our team to leverage different areas of expertise with ease as the administrative drag of setting and rescheduling meetings is greatly reduced, as team members are more accessible. Further, allowing team members to choose a work station near the individuals he or she will be working with on given projects, has eliminated unnecessary logistics involved with helping those individuals collaborate. The team has also realized a faster, more seamless onboarding process with new team members who sense the team culture and brand quicker than if other team members were siloed behind hard wall offices. Overall the ability to choose our workspace needs on a daily basis has increased our team’s ability to respond to clients and has helped foster a more cohesive team experience. One major challenge the Denver office faced, similar to other companies trying to adopt new workplace strategies, was trying to find the right balance between individual focused space and collaborative spaces. In the past, organizations, CBRE included, disproportionately favored individual work spaces to the detriment of collaboration and overall productivity. In order to change this, CBRE collected key information on employee needs and the current workplace environment. Numerous polls were sent to employees throughout the organization to determine what the day-today needs of employees were, and additional polls were taken by local management to make sure local practices aligned with larger organizational findings. In addition, our local office had the advantage of witnessing the rollout of new workplace strategies at CBRE’s Los Angeles headquarters. These studies allowed our local office to pilot these new workplace strategies with a better idea of where the balance between individual and collaborative space needed to be. At this point in time, the Denver office moves closer each day to a balance that will optimize productivity and employee satisfaction. What convinced CBRE to adopt these new workplace strategies throughout its organization? CBRE has based its implementation of new strategies on data reinforcing workplace flexibility. One of the many studies CBRE conducted in its pursuit of new workplace strategies was a study of 20,000 workers around the world. Two major themes emerged from the study: First, workers spend less than 50 percent of their workday at their desk and, second, allowing employees to self-select their workspace improves employee satisfaction by 10 percent to 15 percent. Both pieces of the study have held true for our local Denver team. Half of our team is away from their workspace (traveling, meeting with clients, developing business, etc.) over 50 percent of the time, while the other half of the team utilizes the workspace (responding to clients, preparing business materials, etc.) more than 50 percent of the time, allowing the space to be utilized in the most efficient way possible. Additionally, our team has genuinely enjoyed the freedom of choosing the workspace that will best suit their needs in fulfilling daily, or even hourly, tasks. One of the major forces driving changes in workspace utilization is an increasingly mobile workforce. The ability to work mobile is especially important in the commercial real estate sector and new workplace strategies are forcing companies to make this possible for its employees. In order to make this a reality, companies must improve their technological infrastructure CBRE has reinvested heavily in recent years in its technological infrastructure to allow employees to connect and access company information at any time remotely. Our team is equipped with the technology that allows us to work from anywhere and at any time, which is allowing us to deliver solutions to clients faster than ever. At the same time, CBRE enhanced the technology experience when in the office, including large, dual monitors, Wi-Fi throughout the office, and a “media-scape” area for sharing two computer screens simultaneously, which creates even more of an incentive to work in the collaborative environment rather than at home. Businesses may be skeptical about the impact of new workplace strategies on the bottom line and employee satisfaction, but by not reevaluating workplace strategies, these organizations may miss a tremendous opportunity to cut costs and improve productivity. Additionally, in order to stay competitive and attract the best talent, firms must take a hard look at their current workplace strategies.