Pandemic Has Building Owners Looking Hard at Flexibility in Office Space, Design

With the COVID-19 pandemic, building owners and companies renting space have been forced to view flexible office options with a new eye, two executives in CBRE’s flexible office subsidiary, Hana, said during a recent podcast.

Georgia Collins, executive vice president of client solutions for Hana, said during The Weekly Take podcast that while some organizations have embraced flexible arrangements for a decade or two, other parts of the industry have been reluctant to test it.

“So what’s really changed is the scale at which we can now work flexibly, because we’ve been forced into this experiment,” Collins said.

She said flexible work arrangements and space are a topic of conversation in corporate boardrooms and by real estate teams to determine the best way to support workers.

Andrew Kupiec, chief executive officer of Hana, said that flexible space provides a “new skin over top of an old chassis” but what’s different now is that it’s a requirement.

Flexible space goes way beyond technology, Kupiec said, adding that “it’s really the services that you add around the technology.”

In 2020′s pandemic times, when physical distancing is important, density in offices is an issue, and Kupiec said Hana is advising clients on the best way to reoccupy space as employees return to the office.

Collins notes that office density is not just determined by space, but is instead the number of people within that space. She said that when a workspace starts to exceed what’s an acceptable density, the next step is managing occupancy.

Wellness —what she calls being safe —is another concern in the time of the coronavirus pandemic. If the company is following protocols to make the workplace safe, she said other amenities such as access to natural light, variety of workspace, and the ability to more around, contribute to helping people feel comfortable from a sanity perspective.

Podcast moderator Spencer Levy, chairman of Americas Research for CBRE and senior economic advisor for CBRE, asked Kupiec if people have been more productive when working at home, as many have suggested.

Kupiec suggested that efficiency “at its extremes” can actually make workers less productive and less creative, and productivity should be driven by enabling teams to accomplish things.

“There will be a happier, more productive workforce if they get what they need,” he said.

Looking to the future in commercial real estate, Kupiec said one potential change is moving away from large-scale cafeterias in buildings and localizing the delivery of food and beverage.

But Collins cautions against over-correcting in response to the pandemic, such as by moving offices to the suburbs or by holding all meetings virtually, rather than “recognizing that some things really are done better face-to-face and optimizing for that.”