CBRE’s Lenny Beaudoin’s work with companies is all about helping them rethink their employees’ relationship with in-person work, particularly as they look to return to the office.
Beaudoin, who leads the company’s workplace strategy, says it’s the best of both worlds when companies can give their employees the autonomy to make good decisions while treating them like consumers who decide for themselves whether or not they want to show up in person at the office.
“It’s like any great hospitality experience, whether it’s a hotel or a restaurant. People choose to be there because they want to be there,” he said.
Beaudoin, who is based in New York, was recently involved in developing the vision and implementation of CBRE’s new Dallas headquarters at 2121 N. Pearl St.
Given that CBRE is the largest commercial real estate company in the world, the locally based company was able to draw on a wide range of best customers and data when designing its business base.
Three core principles, or “truisms” as Beaudoin called them, emerged and permeated the office space overlooking Klyde Warren Park. The first of these was that the greatest asset employees have is other employees.
Photo tour: CBRE World Headquarters
“Nobody likes to go to an empty restaurant and nobody likes to go to an empty office,” Beaudoin said.
Other truisms included that you should create the impression that something was happening in the office and that you should connect employees with one another through continuous lines of sight.
The motivation behind these truisms is to create a workplace where employees enjoy going – without being forced to return to the office.
Beaudoin shared three additional insights that are of great importance to the company’s customers right now.
Some of these points may seem obvious or intuitive, but they are the key factor in getting employees back to the office, he said.
Here are the key things CBRE clients are noticing right now:
Commute: “Commuting is the most important thing because it’s a big deal. In most jobs and in life, time is a precious commodity, and commuting takes up a lot of time. We talk a lot about earning the commute.”
Environmental factors: “A distant second (behind community) are the environmental factors in the office. What I mean by that is that when people work outside of the office, they have a lot of control over the environmental factors around them, like acoustics. In most traditional offices, there isn’t a lot of privacy. That was a big problem. But what we see – and this goes back to our thesis that choice and freedom of choice are really important – is that people who work in the office want to control those environmental factors. I think that also has a big impact on people’s productivity, their ability to create flow and be focused.”
Synchronicity: “The other big issue with returning to the office has been synchronicity. Most employees work as part of a small group or a large department or function. They work with fewer people than they work with others. If there is no team synchronicity in when people come into the office and what they do there, it becomes problematic.
“Part of it is making sure the team is working in sequence, but secondly, the mindset of people when they come into the office – and this is a big thing – is to organize their day differently than when they’re working remotely. Time between meetings, free time in your calendar, the opportunity to have informal, spontaneous interactions is only possible when you’re close to the people you work with.”
