LAS VEGAS-Greater digitalization, tighter cubicle spaces, more freedom for collaboration and the disappearance of the Baby Boom generation. All of these factors are changing the way corporate America works...and will ultimately impact how commercial office brokers and developers ply their trades.

So says Beth Campbell, principal and managing director in the local office of architecture and design giant Gensler. “People are signing 10, 15 even 20-year leases,” she says. “But how will the office technology look then? There is a challenge in this system.”

Campbell, who will be a featured speaker at the upcoming SIOR Spring World Conference here, says that she and her colleagues stress for clients that they build as much future-tech into their space as possible, including a technological backbone that allows maximum flexibility for future adaptation. They also recommend installation of the most forgiving open-plan architecture, walls that can be taken down and reconfigured quickly and with a minimum of cost.

The industry has talked for years about accommodating office workers on the move with such concepts as hoteling and telecommuting. Despite the mobility that today's gadgets afford workers of virtually all stripes, these two trends are now seen not as solutions in themselves but attributes of a newer, larger trend. Namely, Campbell says, workers are actually returning to the built environment, balancing the ability to work remotely with the greater need for collaboration and interaction. 

She notes that this need is both psychological and commercial. The more we stare at our devices, the more we need to see faces. And chance encounters in office spaces often lead to productive brainstorming.

Collaborative's Share Growing

The growth of those collaborative spaces answers a growing tenant demand for environments where people can both perform focused, individualized work as well as conduct impromptu meetings, what she refers to as “serendipitous moments. Telecommuting alone doesn't embrace the collaborative office culture that many of our clients want.”

Even more introverted workers find the need for a gathering space and gravitate “to common areas where they can be around dialog and interaction.”

But one solution won't fit all, and a growing challenge for brokers, she says, is to realize that not every department within a company wants or needs an intensively collaborative environment. Campbell urges brokers to get more granular in defining the needs of their clients, function by function. And of course, there will always be those service industries, such as law, where private space is the necessary norm.

For developers and owners, “60% to 70% of existing buildings have a center core,” says Campbell, “which is very efficient from a construction standpoint” but less conducive to the new trend in office design.

One solution for landlords and brokers alike would be to think outside the box, or at least outside the built space and consider other available spaces in the structure—or even the local neighborhood—where tenants with a more collaborative culture can migrate as the need arises.

But that might be unnecessary, given the incredible shrinking office footprint, with allotted cubicle space closing in on workers. In fact, Campbell notes that the standard in 2010 was 225 square feet per person. That dropped to 176 just two years later. “We're projecting that it's headed for 100,” she notes. And while the office itself is shrinking, the amount of that collaborative space, not surprisingly, is growing.

The changing office dynamic is being facilitated by a simultaneous change in demographics. As the older generation slips away, due to retirement or layoffs, the reality is that a newer generation is slipping in. This hip crowd, born with cellphones pressed to their ears, are more willing to embrace technology and have no frame of reference for the traditional status of the private office.

“Twenty-five-year-olds don't mind three-foot-high workstations,” Campbell has found out. “But they want more lounge seating or high-top tables. Compare this to someone who's 50 and is surprised that they won't have an office anymore.”

The critical issues facing a shifting marketplace will take center stage when SIOR convenes for its Spring World Conference in Las Vegas, April 22-25. Click here for details.