NEW YORK CITY—It’s no surprise that the white-collar workplace is undergoing massive technological and sociological changes. In the midst of rapidly advancing technologies and a new and rising workplace demographic, employers are in a heated war to attract and retain talent. They aren’t alone: office building owners are simultaneously in a war to offer the amenities and services that will attract and retain tenancy.
Enter CBRE 360, a tech-based offering that will be embedded within major CBRE business lines, including Global Workplace Solutions, Asset Services and Advisory & Transactions, and designed to achieve both ends—by giving primary focus to the ultimate end-user—the employee. The global service provider has brought on board Andrew Kupiec, who previously led North American operations at Zipcar, to lead the team that will bring 360 to global life. He sat down recently with GlobeSt.com to discuss the strategy.
GlobeSt.com: Obviously, Andrew, the workplace is in a state of radical change. How would you characterize the new realities of the marketplace?
Andrew Kupiec: Yes, the workplace is undergoing a dramatic transformation, and it’s a really exciting time in commercial real estate. Some of that is driven by the relentless pace of technological change. In addition, there are major demographic shifts, so by 2020, more than 50% of the workforce will be made up of millennials, and they come with new expectations. There’s a rapidly evolving work/life integration question surrounding what employees want and need in order to be productive.
Those overarching pressures on the market are forcing organizations to think more deeply about how to compete for talent and how the workplace plays into that. In 2017, CBRE surveyed a large number of our occupier clients, and almost two-thirds responded that workplace amenities would be the most pressing and important real estate factor for the workforce not only in 2018, but beyond.
So it’s not surprising that organizations are focusing more than ever on how to deliver work environments that put people and the need for productivity, connectivity and hospitality at the center of design. They’re looking for solutions that are flexible and that give employees a competitive edge but are still cost-effective. The new realities of workplace change are here to stay, and they pose an interesting opportunity for CBRE.
GlobeSt.com: How does this tie into some of the changes your own workplaces have undergone in recent years?
Kupiec: This is a journey that we’ve been on for years as we evolved our own offices into ‘free-address’, open-format environments. We asked what experiences our employees wanted, and we tested and tried various solutions. We used our own workplaces as an incubator as well as for data analysis. We’re taking a lot of that internal learning, overlaying more technology and applying it to the market with the birth of CBRE 360.