TONYA MOSLEY: This is WorkLab:
The Podcast from Microsoft.
I'm your host, Tonya Mosley.
On WorkLab, we hear from leading thinkers on the future
of work, economists, technologists, researchers.
They all share surprising data and explore
the trends transforming the way we work.
JULIE WHELAN: You have to create a purpose.
This idea of purpose is extremely
critical in getting people to come back to the office.
You have to answer why.
If it's just because we want to
get people back the way that it was,
then that's not enough.
TONYA MOSLEY: That's Julie Whelan,
a CBRE, the real
estate and facilities management company.
She leads a global team of researchers who watch
the major trends that impact
commercial real estate occupiers.
We're digging into some big topics
like how are workspaces changing,
both in how they're used and how they're designed,
what spaces or amenities
encourage more gathering in person.
Here's my conversation with Julie.
Julie Whelan, welcome.
JULIE WHELAN: Thank you, Tonya.
Thanks for having me.
TONYA MOSLEY: What a job you have?
You're constantly talking
to companies globally about the changes
to workplace needs and behaviors
and really how those changes
impact what we call the office.
What are you hearing from leaders today?
What are they most concerned about?
JULIE WHELAN: If you had talked to me
even a year ago,
I would have said that companies were really
just focused on starting the return to office.
Today that has officially started and is in full swing.
The challenges were in a bit of a stuck period where
the return to office has not gone as
speedy as many executives would've anticipated.
What I would say, most executives in
organizations that are not
happy with that state of play right now,
we're trying to do is figure out
how do they move to get unstuck.
TONYA MOSLEY: Is there a distinction in what
you're seeing geographically or is this global?
JULIE WHELAN: Globally certainly,
there are different distinctions across the world,
and even here in the US there are different distinctions.
What we're finding is that some of
the Sun Belt markets that
have different commute patterns,
different qualities of life,
different weather patterns tend to
have people in the office more regularly than some
of the larger downtown metros where commutes can be
long and employees aren't as
ready to change that into engage with those every day.
In Europe, I would say that generally in the UK,
they are experiencing much of what
we're experiencing here in the US.
In Continental Europe,
the story can be quite varied because what's
interesting in Continental Europe is that their cities
tend to be smaller and they tend
to be more micro market
where people don't have to always commute as much.
It's those cities that are
actually seeing a greater return to office.
Then in Egypt Pacific, it's very interesting.
In Australia, New Zealand,
I would say they're experiencing much of what
the UK and the US is experiencing.
But in the Asian countries, it's different.
There is much greater return to office in
some ways that was really never a stuck-to-office.
Sometimes they scratch their heads and can't
even equate to what we're talking about here.
But what's really interesting
in the Asian countries is that
domestic Asian firms are
really operating business as usual.
It's the multinational firms that are in
the Asian countries that are really following
Western principles and are still
trying to jumpstart their return to office also.
TONYA MOSLEY: I have also
heard you say in
real estate change really happens slowly.
In theory, your job in particular until
recently had been forecasting with a long tail,
so to speak, and then the world changed,
of course, over the last few years.
What surprises you most about
the things that are significantly changing?
JULIE WHELAN: Before the pandemic,
there was a lot of discussion
about changing office space to
meet the new world of work that
we all knew was an undercurrent and that was happening.
However, very little was actually
done to meet that new world because it's expensive.
It takes a lot of change management.
It's hard to change
your design principles while
your people are living in the space.
That notion has jumpstarted
where we know that there needs to be
a change to design principles to support
these new work patterns and to make
office a more palpable place to be.
I think many organizations are moving more
quickly to try to figure out how to do that.
TONYA MOSLEY: Well, what metrics or
habits should
companies be studying in this moment
when they think about their future?
JULIE WHELAN: There are three metrics
that a company should study.
Number 1 is space utilization.
When you think about space utilization,
don't think about tracking office attendance.
This is really about tracking
movement within your office and understanding
how well the areas of
your physical office location are being utilized over
time so that you can actually change it
real-time to suit the way your employees use the space.
I was just in Atlanta the other day and I was in one of
our new Workplace360 offices and they were
showing me some of
their space utilization sensor tracking technology.
There were certain space types that they had put into
this office that they actually weren't
sure were going to get utilized a lot,
and they can tell by
their space utilization sensor tracking that
actually they were being utilized alive.
It was worthwhile to not only keep that space in
that particular build but in the
other builds that they do down the line,
think about putting those in because they're so popular.
Another important metric to study is commute patterns.
It is generally proven and
we are seeing data that comes in
all the time that show that
the shorter the employee commute is,
the more likely they are to
attend an office on a more frequent basis.
That is especially true of those people
that have commutes under 30 minutes.
Really understanding your commute patterns
and those employees that might
have challenges around
their particular commute is important.
Then lastly, I would say
studying what employees want out of the office.
There are many people that are talking today about
the fact that maybe we're asking
employees too much what they want.
But I think that when it comes to what they
need from the office and what they
need for their function to be
successful and effective in the office,
we need to study that and we
owe it to employees to study that.
TONYA MOSLEY: Very interesting.
Space utilization,
commute patterns, and then what employees want.
Are you seeing any creative or innovative ways
that companies are taking on any of those three points?
JULIE WHELAN: Well, we are seeing
team-based or even event-based space
for those organizations that are actually
more flexible than your normal organizations.
We're seeing that a lot of organizations want
their people to come in three days a week,
which means that they're not going to be able to have
completely team-based space
because people are still going to
need space to focus and to have privacy.
But the less often you come in,
the notion is that the more deliberate need you're going
to have to actually meet together when you do come in.
Creating space is even more
collaborative and hospitable in terms of
services that are within that space that
meet those meeting needs are
really important in this
"team-based or event-based space."
Then lastly, I would say the innovative use of
office face that we're seeing is flexible office space.
When I say that,
I don't necessarily mean
flexible in terms of design that can be fungible,
although that's also something,
but I really mean flexible office space like co-working,
which we have seen in the past.
Co-working is what we can
use to describe the type of space that I'm talking about,
but the reality is there's
so many different uses than just co-working.
I think that what we're specifically seeing now
is a lot of flexible office space that's popping
up in suburban areas outside
of cities to suit the needs of people that
might not want to engage in
a long commute but that do want to get out of their home
to go to a distraction-free environment that
gives them that boundary between work and home.
TONYA MOSLEY: Some of the things that
you're saying here sounds
like it offers people choice and
we've also talked quite a bit
about office work on the show as
it relates to what people
want from the office when they're there.
We've learned from the Microsoft work trend index
that overwhelmingly
people come into the office to
see and interact with other people.
Over eight in 10 people would be interested in
actually coming back to socialize or rebuild team bonds.
I'm wondering, what does CBRE
research show about the office
as a place where people can build
and rebuild those relationships?
JULIE WHELAN: Our Workplace Strategy
Lead, Lenny Beaudoin,
often says that the greatest amenity that
the office can provide is other people.
I wholeheartedly agree with that.
We've all heard colleagues that say, Julie,
I went into the office and I just ended up
sitting on video conferencing all day.
That is not something that anybody needs to do with
their commute time to go in and not feel that they're
being effective or productive when they're in the office.
There needs to be
a better purpose of coming into the office,
and that purpose might be seeing teammates
or it might be for others getting access to quiet space.
It might be getting access to
the technology that makes you even
more effective or it might
be a combination of those things.
But really figuring out what
that purpose is is really important.
TONYA MOSLEY: How does workplace
design fit into
the desire for employees to go back into the workplace?
JULIE WHELAN: Workplace design matters.
What we are finding is that it is not
necessarily always about the design first.
The very first things are commute,
the quality of the location that
their office is in and then of course,
the purpose of why they have to go to the office.
Then yes, it is absolutely the office space itself.
Once people have a reason to go there,
they will make them happy when they're there.
They will make them engaged when they are
there and they will probably help
to build the desire
for them to want to be there again in the future.
But it is certainly not the thing that
is going to initially make people,
get up and out into the office.
TONYA MOSLEY: Noted. What's interesting
about what you're saying here
is that sometimes there's a lot of
emphasis on the particular office space.
Open offices, we talk about those types of concepts,
other types of designs, more window space.
But you're saying essentially,
employees will make the space a better
place if they have a reason to actually be there.
JULIE WHELAN: Correct. The purpose
cannot be underestimated.
TONYA MOSLEY: Let's talk
a little bit about
technological interventions.
Microsoft just introduced
a new hybrid work app called Microsoft
Places to help everyone understand
who will be in the office and when they'll be there,
where people are sitting and
what meeting rooms to attend in person.
You touched a little bit about maximizing space.
How else will technology help guide
people on when and why to come in?
JULIE WHELAN: Yes, that is
the magic equation and I do
believe that technology is going to advance very quickly.
I'm very impressed with
my daily interactions with
the Microsoft nudges that I get.
As AI gets more sophisticated,
it's going to open up opportunities for
employees to better plan
their time in these central locations.
A good example is just this morning
I came into the Boston office,
which I don't always do and on my way in,
I texted a woman that works here and she then let me know
that somebody who's a colleague of mine
from Philadelphia was going to be here.
Now, there is a way that technology could have
connected that and that is going to come very soon.
TONYA MOSLEY: What grounding piece
of advice do you
have for office managers as they
navigate all of this and wanting to build
robust teams and having them work together in person?
JULIE WHELAN: You have to answer
the question, why?
If it's just because we want to get people
back the way that it was, then that's not enough.
You have to create a purpose.
This idea of purpose is extremely
critical in getting people to come back to the office.
Because the office of
the 20th century was built on purpose.
It was built on needing to go in because
you had people there that would dictate your work.
You would have the other people
there that you worked with because
you weren't having multinational companies
that we're working across boundaries.
You had desktop computers,
you had files, you had fax machines,
you had servers, you had all the tools that
were the necessity of being in that office.
The necessity of the 21st century
is not the physical office environment,
it's the digital infrastructure that backs up your work.
We have to create what
that new necessity is and what that new purpose is.
In this time where we're really starting to
discover and understand how
to verbalize what that purpose is,
there are ways that we can train
managers to change behaviors in the organization.
I think it's things as simple as what are
the consistent in-person team meeting times
that we are going to have that
we're expected to come together.
Let's build social activities like
lunches or team-building around those meetings.
Let's make sure as I said,
that everybody is updating
their status on messaging platforms.
Let's set expectations around new norms
and behaviors and let's lead by example.
At the end of the day, that's the grounding message.
What is your why and
how are you going to make sure that that
why infiltrates its way across the organization?
TONYA MOSLEY: What you're saying here
is that managers need
a new way of thinking of their role as managers.
JULIE WHELAN: Yes, and
that's the tricky part.
Because the world is from
this perspective or it's
turning more into knowledge workers.
The traditional way of managing through seeing
headcount and seeing people at
their desks is no longer valid.
Just because people are at their desks and you
can see them as a manager before
didn't necessarily mean that they're being
effective at what they were doing.
This idea of setting clear goals,
giving people the drive to want to
go accomplish those goals
in an autonomous manner but then
keeping that feedback loop open to give
constructive criticism on how those goals are being
delivered is ultimately the way forward.
TONYA MOSLEY: Help us
envision what the office
might look like a decade from now.
JULIE WHELAN: A decade from now,
I hope the office isn't even called an office anymore.
I want to work to come up with a new name.
I say that because if you think of
all the memorable places that
you have gathered in your life that you remember,
they usually have a name that's not generic.
If I think about my world,
I don't go to a baseball park,
I go to Fenway and it wasn't
the lawn in college that we gathered and it was the quad.
For my kids, it's not that they're going to school,
it's they are going to the xin.
My point is that we
should really start to think about branding
our workplaces so that people have
a greater sense of connection and loyalty to them.
Ultimately, I hope that whatever we call
those place or even if it's
individual names for every company,
that it becomes a place where people
come to gain a sense of belonging,
to gain the ability to
learn and to share their knowledge,
to bond and to get to know each
other on a really personal level.
I hope that the purpose is in for it to be task-driven.
But I hope there are actually driven by
the experiences and the opportunities that
they get when they visit them.
TONYA MOSLEY: Julie Whelan, thank you so
much for your time. This was great.
JULIE WHELAN: Thank you.
This has been wonderful.
TONYA MOSLEY: That was Julie Whelan,
Global Head of Occupy Your Thought Leadership at CBRE.
That's it for this episode of
the WorkLab podcast from Microsoft.
Check back soon for our final episode
of the season with my co-host,
Elise Hu we'll interview
the best-selling author Daniel Pink,
about what leaders can learn from their regrets.
Please rate review and follow us wherever you listen.
This helps us out a lot.
If you have a question you'd like
for us to pose to our leaders,
just drop us an email @worklab@Microsoft.com.
Be sure to check out the WorkLab digital publication
too where you can find,
among other things, a transcript of this episode.
You can find it all at Microsoft.com/worklab.
The WorkLab podcast is a place for experts to share
their insights and opinions
as students of the future of work.
Microsoft values inputs from a diverse set of voices.
That said, the opinions and findings
of our guests are their own and may
not necessarily reflect
Microsoft's own research or opinions.
WorkLab is produced by Microsoft with
Godfrey Dadich Partners and Reasonable Volume.
I'm your host Tonya Mosley.
Our correspondents are Mary Melton and Desmond Dickerson,
Sharon Kallander and
Matthew Duncan produced this podcast.
Jessica Voelker is the WorkLab editor.
Until next time.