‘The customer is always right’. A common phrase in modern retail that comes from the belief that good customer experiences lead to improved sales. It involves listening to what they want or need, providing a product or service to fit that desire, and then continuing to provide that same level of service or experience while they continue to use that product. It was a phrase first coined in the early 1900’s but is even more relevant today. 

Today, customers are faced with an unprecedented choice when it comes to choosing what products and services they want to buy. This shift in consumption is not only limited to retail, how we and where we work has also changed in recent history. In more recent history, due to the pandemic, traditional barriers to working culture have been eroded at a much faster than expected pace. The question of ‘Where will the employee chose to work?’, is at the core of what we in the property industry are examining closely. 

For the majority, the typical office worker has now experienced either flexible or remote working forced upon them over the past year. Now, especially with campaigns for employees to go back to the office gathering pace, begins the transitional phase where employers will have to balance between enticing their employees back into the office on a more regular basis, and accommodating a more remote, fluid workforce. For landlords and employers, the current unknown, is how to persuade their employees back into the office?

To understand where the employee will chose to work, you need to examine what the customer (employee here) wants. Back in 2020 CBRE’s European Occupier Flash survey found that 92% of occupiers surveyed expect to see an increase of home or remote working after COVID-19, with 88% of those surveyed intending to increase technology investment to support this. While some organisations assumed productivity would fluctuate with employees have been working from home, many have in fact seen productivity steadily increase.  Employees have now been saved from their daily commutes and have found ways of constructing a better balance, adopting their work schedules to suit their personal needs, not to suit a timetable based on traffic. Pre-Covid, the average commute in the UAE was 39 minutes driving and 42 minutes on public transport. Or to put it another way, on average we spent 6.67 hours a week, almost a whole additional working day commuting. This represents just one of the aspect of where productivity can be enhanced during the typical working day. Now, however, many employers and employees are recapturing that time, either to be used as useful extra ‘desk time’ for work, or for personal wellness reasons. And why would employees want to leave this environment behind, where they have access to a greater number of creature comforts than they’re likely to have at the office? It is that mentality of personalisation, adaptation and flexibility that landlords and employers will have to adopt if they are to stand a hope of getting people back into the office.

CBRE Insights demonstrates that 75% of occupiers surveyed are now interested in taking some form of flexible working space, which is becoming a staple tool in the progressive workplace strategy. At the moment, roughly a third of an employer’s costs are space related; at a time when many businesses are going to be facing squeezed budgets and unprecedented uncertainty, these considerations influence high-level decision-making. At a product level, it won’t just be down to space cost analysis, but as alluded to above, the amenities that are provided in that particular space for a suitable alternative. For some, the argument about how offices can be used for better face-to-face collaboration may not be as persuasive as if that collaboration space reflected more of the comforts of home. From the way they’re decorated to the provision of toastie makers, the scope to customise the office is now as endless as the paint selection from your local DIY store! The challenge now will be getting employees to invest into their daily commute, which can be done by activating collaboration space and other amenities such as gym and wellness spaces to drive engagement.

At the moment, there is no one size fits all approach to getting employees and occupiers back into the office, with health and wellbeing more important than presenteeism in our new fluid workforce. However, what we can be sure of is that landlords will need to partner with the right experts to make sure they are formulating both empiric and creatively agile strategies to ensure they are making the best use of the space they have to fill. 

If you would like to know more about what strategies you could use, and what customers actually want from their spaces, then please contact Alex Hill at alex.hill@cbre.com or Alex Barzycki on alex.barzycki@cbre.com. 

About the author: 

Alex Hill, is the specialist on added value services across CBRE’s Property Management Division. Alex is a thought-leader in agile & transformational solutions, and his experience focuses on enabling forward-thinking assets to accommodate the modern consumer and business; and smart technologies.