De-Densification and the New Metrics of the Office

Coffee shop as office. History rhymes…

In evolutionary biology there is a theory called ‘punctuated equilibrium’. This holds that instead of slowly evolving over time, when evolutionary changes occur, they happen rapidly and suddenly. Species split into two distinct species, rather than one species gradually transforming into another.

In a less dramatic but, I believe, equally transformational way, this is where we are in the world of work, and the office. The way things were in February must now be considered history. Everything has changed. However long it takes to get through the current pandemic, we are not going to return to the world as it was.

And, hard though it may be to believe right now, that is a good thing. We have an opportunity to do things we thought were not possible.

Two zeitgeist changing things have occurred. First, we have been forced to realise that being inside, in confined spaces, with many other people, potentially exposes each and every one of us to illness, or worse. Our buildings can harm us.

Secondly, across the globe, we have been part of the largest behavioural experiment in history. In a matter of days the knowledge economy went from being 95% office based, to being 95% home based. And the results of this experiment? With caveats, working from home, works. 

I believe these two factors will be the drivers behind fundamental change within the office industry. 

Now that we are in sight of a widespread return to the office, due to the increasingly rapid rollout of vaccines, we are reaching crunch time as companies. What are we going to be doing about our real estate? I doubt there is a company in existence that is not asking itself this fundamental question. I also doubt there are many with a fully formed answer. Because it is difficult to know. 

First off, we are all aware that we need to ensure we invite our people back to spaces that cater to their health & wellbeing. How do we do that? And secondly, we know that, to a lesser or greater extent, our companies have largely functioned without us being in the office. According to data from Leesman (probably the best and most comprehensive on working from home) roughly 70% of people have found not being in the office neutral or positive to their productivity. For the 30% this is very much not the case. It varies between companies and individuals but we are now pretty aware of what works where. So we need to rethink the purpose of the office. What is it for? What is its role? Where does a physical office fit into the culture and workflows of a company in the 2020s? What is the value proposition of an office?

Now both of these things we knew before. We have known about the impact of environmental conditions for a very long time. But largely, we have ignored the issue. Today, we no longer can. And we have also known (if we bothered to look) that historically offices have performed terribly. Ask people whether their office enables them to be productive and about half will say no (see Leesman again for data on this). And ask Gensler (who survey this globally each year) what the average occupancy rate in an office is and they will tell you circa 40-50%. So our customers are not that keen on the offices they occupy and don’t actually use them that much. On average. 

It is genuinely a wonder that customers have not rebelled harder against the real estate they are sold or let earlier. What is bad (or a major plus depending on who you are) for our industry is that now they know they don’t actually need an office. They have operated ok without them. As an industry we desperately need to work out how we can make out customers want an office.

And this is why I think we are at crunch point. A point of ‘punctured equilibrium’. The market is going to bifurcate like never before. 

Let us take the comments of two large investors to demonstrate this.

This is Stephen Bird, CEO of UK investor Standard Life Aberdeen, with 4,500 employees: “You cannot change the world from home. It’s an absolute falsehood. It’s lazy thinking, it lacks courage and it’s delinquent on the next generation.”

And compare this to the approach of Global asset management firm Schroders, with 2,200 employees. They announced that it will keep work from home and flexible working conditions in place for its employees on a permanent basis.

Given their positions these two companies are going to take entirely different approaches to their real estate. Are they going to fail or succeed in lockstep? Absolutely not. Are they going to attract different talent? Absolutely yes. Where does the real estate industry sit with each? I’d say in one case as a supplier, and in the other as a partner.

This gives you some idea of just how much office life post pandemic will change vis a vis pre pandemic. In some cases not very much, if at all. But in others the rules of the game are being rewritten. And in these cases the metrics, the scorecard, needs to and will change as well. Let’s focus now on this new scorecard.

But first of all, I think we just need to zoom out a bit. 

Because I think the workplace actually has a problem beyond that made plain by the pandemic.  And it has a problem in three main areas. 

It has a problem in the area of having unaligned incentives, a problem in the area of having a lack of data, and it suffers from organisational silos. 

We’ll start with the problems of unaligned incentives. 

The trouble is you have got landlords, occupiers, and property managers, each with incentives that go in a different direction. So the landlord just wants the highest rent possible with the lowest costs and requiring of the minimum of effort. 

Then we have the occupiers. They want the lowest rent, but they also want flexibility and they want the highest level of service. 

And lastly the property managers. Well, they are sort of stuck in the middle. What ‘they’ really want is to have some pricing power, to not be commoditised, which is very much the situation in property management at the moment. 

So you've got three stakeholders, with completely unaligned incentives. 

This ‘landlord-tenant dilemma’, with the property managers trying to be the neutral party in the middle, is a well known issue in the office market, and very much a consequence of the way we transact, via leases. It is so easy for there to be a financial disconnect between those responsible for paying the capital expenditure for operational upgrades, and those who benefit from them.

When we look at how the office market is routinely structured it is really no surprise that each party continually feels aggrieved at their lot. And that so many buildings are underinvested in. Maintaining an up to date stock, utilising the most advanced labour and cost saving technology, and setting stretching sustainability goals, is nigh on impossible with how the industry is structurally configured. The 3 or 5 year rent review process itself is like mutually agreeing to having a heated argument periodically. 

The misaligning of incentives is, using a tech term, a very serious bug.

If you then look at the subject of data, you’ll find that everyone collects some data. But few collect what is needed, few have actually put that much thought into what data they really need to collect. And mostly you will find that the data that is collected is all over the place. Some of it is over here, and some of it is over there.

The general situation within real estate in connection with data, is there is not enough of it. It is not well enough thought out, and it is not well enough stored and maintained. 

And then you've got organisational silos. In my mind to create a great workplace requires the skills of what are, today, six different industries. 

So, first off you obviously need people with real estate knowledge. Then you need people with IT knowledge, and Internet of Things, network knowledge, and you need data analysts, and you need HR people, and you need hospitality skills.  So there's actually six individual industries, each with their own incentives, that need to be combined, to create a really good workplace. 

And this is why historically offices have performed so badly. Creating a great workplace is extremely hard within the context of how the industry is configured. 

But it is coming to the stage where we cannot ignore it anymore. Because the fundamental point here, is that within the real estate industry, we think of ‘Offices’. But it is all a bit of a category error. Because we

are creating offices, we think what we have got to sell, and all our customer is after, is offices. But there's no business that actually wants an office. What they want is a productive workforce. It is exactly the same as manufacturers of household drills. Nobody wants a drill. What they want is a hole in the wall. 

Because we are selling offices, that’s what we think our customer actually wants. But they don’t. They don't want an office, they want a productive workforce. 

So what if you made improving the productivity of people,

the core value proposition within the Office real estate market? What if we stopped thinking about space, and started thinking about improving the productivity of people? What if that was our offer to customers? 

Years ago, the World Green Building Council made the point that on average 1% of the cost of running an office building goes on utilities, 9% goes on rental costs, and a full 90% goes on the people working in that space. So clearly, if you make a 10% impact on 1%, or a 10% impact on 90% you are making a massive difference in impact.

Within the real estate industry, we really do focus on the 1%, and the 9%. And historically, we really haven't paid much attention, at all, to the 90%. 

This needs to change.

Because the real estate industry is really no longer about real estate. Of course it is still about real estate but that is now necessary, but not sufficient.

Those six individual industries we discussed above need to be taken out of their silos and combined into one ‘real estate’ industry. And that one real estate industry will pull together skills, aggregate data, and start from improving the productivity of people being the core value proposition.

And for that it will need new metrics. What are the key variables we need, to be able to improve the productivity of people, within our office buildings?

This becomes complicated, and detailed. When our customers needed our product we did not have to bother too much with their UX, their user experience. But now, and post pandemic, we are in the job of creating desire, not matching demand. Companies need to be given reasons to occupy our offices; are they going to enable our people to be as productive as they can be, and are they safe and healthy places to be? If not, then why should we bother? Goodbye.

So whoever is able to create and curate great workplaces is going to be the winner in the future. And that capability is going to require data, and human skills, at a level rarely seen to date in the industry. There is a huge market opening up which currently has few ‘full stack’ suppliers. Below I highlight the base level of data that is going to be required to fulfil the brief.

Starting with quantitative, objective data, absolutely the key, especially in a post pandemic world, is environmental conditions. The big four are temperature, noise, lighting, and air quality, which includes the tracking of particulate matter, carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide levels, total volatile organic compounds, and humidity. These are the most important environmental factors that need to be measured in real time and at a very granular level. 

Then we need to, at the FM services level, check things like: Helpdesk requests - how many are received and in what categories? What is the Meeting Room availability, broken down at the individual room level? What is the vacancy ratio by room? What is the the speed of visitor processing? How quickly do we get people into our buildings? How welcoming is the reception they get when someone comes into a building?

Across the workplace, also at a very granular level, we need to know: What space is being used, at what time, by what teams and in what location? What is the space to desk ratio?

And we need to measure some factors to give us an understanding of health and well being. Like the number of sick days taken? How many health complaints do we get within the building? How many workplace accidents do we get? What is the staff turnover? 

This is where you have to start working WITH HR, because only they have this data, but it rarely gets incorporated into quantitative data studies. So a lot of the time you don't really understand how well a space is performing, because you just do not have access to this level of data. 

Then you have to acquire qualitative data, the subjective data. This is derived by actually asking people how they feel. So in the spaces they work in, is the temperature, right? Is the noise level okay? How is the air quality for them? Do they have good lighting? And we need to know this for everybody? Because we need to home in on really understanding the needs of individuals. 

There are also many qualitative data points in terms of FM services. People like to feel that they have control over their personal environment. Do they have that? They are obviously interested and keen on understanding the quality of the catering and refreshments. How easy is it to book meeting rooms? What about the cleanliness of toilets? How tidy is the workplace? Is it regularly cleaned? Does it look good? What is the quality of the decor? Fundamentally, is this workplace a nice place to be?

There is a lot of detailed data that is required around workplace settings. It is vital that people have the equipment they need to do their job, but also access to the right spaces in which to do it. So you need to ask people, do you have the right space? For the personal meetings you have? Do you have space for thinking? Do you have space for creative thinking? Do you have space for relaxing? And is it easy to find somewhere to take a break? 

Are there spaces where you can learn from others? 

Are there spaces where you can do individual focussed work which is desk-bound? And what is the quality of your desk? And what is the quality of the hardware and the software you've been given to work with? What is the quality of the meeting rooms, What is the quality of connectivity within your workplace? Can you work anywhere. Is there a good wifi signal everywhere?

Do you have storage for all your belongings? And what are the end of journey facilities like, so if you're cycling to your building, what is it like when you get there?

These are really, really important factors and drivers in the satisfaction, or not, of office space. 

But the point here is what we are trying to do. There is a great deal of research about the impact on cognitive function of environmental conditions. Many peer reviewed papers exist about this. It is not a subjective question about ‘can a workplace enable you to be more productive’. It can, because at the very least, what it can do is ‘do no harm’. And a workplace can be operated in such a way that it performs as well as it is capable of performing. 

Because we know if a space is too hot or too cold, or has carbon dioxide levels that are too high, or is too noisy, or has poor lighting, or is too humid, or not humid enough, that the effect will be that the occupiers of that space will have their cognitive functions impaired, and that will, has to, reduce their productivity.

Get these environmental factors right and we know we can help enable people to be as productive as they are capable of being.

Now we cannot make a bad company good by putting

a bad company in a great workplace. But we can make a great company better by putting them in a great workplace. 

Because the whole point here is really understanding the conditions, the best conditions that this space can offer. And measuring and monitoring and optimising on an ongoing basis to provide the best environmental conditions for the tasks that people have to do.

So to sum it all up, what we're really looking at is how do we understand how our building is performing, through really in depth, granular and often real time data? And to understand how our building is being used by its occupiers and visitors? And what is it that our customers are needing to do each day? What are there ‘jobs to be done’, and to what extent does their workplace and our building enable them to do each and every task in the most efficient and effective way?

What will this office look like? We don’t know, and that’s the point. It is the new metrics of the office that will determine size, density, form factor, amenities etc. To each their own. Data and human skill will enable a productive workplace. The future of the office is better, or non existent.

A shorter version of this was first published in Propmodo, April 2021.