Back to the Office, 2022: It's all about the curated experience

Tenants and their landlords should look to innovative steps taken in the entertainment and leisure sectors for a post-COVID road map to make the office appealing again

Back in the old, pre-COVID days, I’d tour clients’ offices and see people playing ping pong, having lunch in the company-sponsored restaurant, working out in the in-office gym or just catching a break at the snack station. At the time, providing these amenities, and sometimes more, was simply table stakes for many employers. For employers, faced with the on-going challenge of attracting and retaining employees, those stakes just got higher.

Now, it’s not just a question of providing a work-day diversion, employers need to capture the hearts as well as the minds of their valued employees.

I surely don’t need to point out that the “quits rate” – the number of employees changing or leaving jobs is at an all-time high . Employee retention, spurred by the talent wars, was tough enough pre-pandemic but it just got much more serious. Just look at Apple’s high roller move to discourage defections of key talent to competitors.?

It’s no longer just a talent war out there, it’s a prolonged campaign to woo employees who do stay with the enterprise back to the office on a regular basis.

Estimates of the number that will eventually return to the office as ‘workplace’ vary quite widely and I’m not even going to hazard a guess. What I do know is that “the workplace” has broadened well beyond the office. We now have fully remote “work from home” and “work from anywhere” as well as hybrid work options where employees can split time between WFH/WFA and the office. And, to accommodate WFA, employees can utilize co-working or other shared space or develop home offices to pursue WFH options.

Bottom line: Employers are going to need to spice up their workplaces if they are going to compete with the array of opportunities that employees have embraced and enjoyed in the last two years.

"Bottom line: Employers are going to need to spice up their workplaces if they are going to compete..."

Preferences within the office may be low-hanging fruit for employers to address. One of the more popular desires was a well-organized, clutter free office space. So, look around: does your office need more storage? With flexible work schedules expanding to a broader range of employees, storage – which had been on the decline with increasing digital transformation in the workplace – may be needed again. Another positive: a great view. Modern workplaces have begun to maximize view corridors for more employees but perhaps more is needed?

What if your business model really needs more than 70 percent of the workforce under the company roof? And what benefits do full-time remote or hybrid models really have for employees? Beyond the obvious boost to productivity created by no longer needing to commute, the benefits of working outside the office may be fewer than working in it, at least according to a report by ADP . But, how to overcome employee reticence about returning to a perceived 9-5 experience?

Creating a "Total Guest Experience"

Employers may want to take pages out of the hospitality and entertainment sectors’ books for answers. After all, going to a concert or basketball game or staying in a hotel is a choice. Post-COVID, employers have probably come to realize that office attendance may be more of a choice too. Employees certainly have.

And, while hotels, theaters and sporting events aren’t quite fully back to normal yet, they wield a very strong magnet and look a lot closer to it than most workplaces. How are they doing it? One way is by delving into and delivering ways to personalize the guest experience. Many, like the Sacramento Kings of the NBA and the Los Angeles Rams of the NFL, are using technology to do just that. The Kings’ Golden 1 Center app doesn’t just provide fans in the arena a “remote control” to engage with other fans, order food and drinks and personalize their experience in the arena, it provides a 24/7 connection from home and on the road and delivers exclusive experiential rewards through a loyalty pass. According to Dot.LA , the Rams SoFi Stadium is built on a single, converged network—powered by Cisco and partner technology integrator AmpThink—that connects virtually the entire digital infrastructure in the stadium. Powerful Wi-Fi access enables fans to enter through the turnstiles using mobile tickets and purchase concessions and merchandise with digital wallets like Apple Pay.

The desire to experience is innately human. It pervades human society. Celebrated retail developer Rick Caruso recognizes this in his innovative development of experiential retail centers in Southern California. His desire to create ‘places’ rather than just construct buildings led him to build an emotional connection between the place and its users. Guests at Caruso’s Rosewood Miramar Beach hotel near Santa Barbara aren’t paying for a hotel or a spa, they are “treated to an entirely personalized approach…designed to complement their every need.”

Places like Caruso’s The Grove – which in addition to providing dining, entertainment and retail amenities also host fashion shows, brand launches, even rooftop drive-in movies -- are one reason his centers attract more visitors each year than other shopping centers. He even outperforms Disneyland and the Great Wall of China in terms of annual visitors.

So, if you want employees to come back to the office, I believe you need to create the same sort of emotional connection and focus on how employees feel while they are experiencing the office. You want employees to experience something special, connect and be productive. It’s going to take more than a ping-pong table.

Here are some thoughts on how to curate the experience for the workforce:

• Increase the “dwell time”. Rick Caruso built his business partly by ignoring what his competitors were doing and focusing on what he believed his customers wanted. Example: competing malls focused on getting shoppers in and out of the mall as quickly as possible to allow more shoppers in by focusing on parking. (If you can’t find parking, why waste time at the mall?)?Caruso turned this concept on its head to increase “dwell time” by boosting the experience so shoppers would spend more time at the mall (and spend more money).
• Engage them. We’ve come a long way since the era of elevator music. And, since most of your employees/guests already turn up at the office with headphones on, why not curate a sound experience for them while they are around? Commercial streaming services deliver a full spectrum of music. Companies like Sonos can provide both the hardware and the content to deliver a constantly changing but professional (and commercially-licensed) curated sound experience in the office .
• Woo them with tech. Tech is more advanced, reliable, faster and universal in the workplace than it is at home. How many of homes have generators or redundant power, for example? This reliability – giving the ability to work (and play) seamlessly whatever the conditions - can be a key attraction for workers when they could be working from home. Providing customized apps to enhance, streamline and personalize the experience in the workplace, as the Rams’ and other sports franchises have done in their stadia, is essential. If you don’t have an app for that yet, build one!
• Change your lexicon. In a high demand/low supply talent market it’s incumbent on employers to make adjustments. The biggest change you can make as an employer to create a positive experience in the workplace is to stop thinking of employees as commodity labor and start treating them as valued customers. Caruso doesn’t think of visitors to his retail properties as shoppers, he treats them like guests. That’s what sets the tone for the experience, increases the dwell time and spurs the spend. Start treating employees as customers and guests, and all of a sudden, the workplace becomes an experience. A place to be, not avoid.
• Make it easy. Be honest, pre-COVID most of us couldn’t wait to get out of the office – to lunch, or for coffee, an event or meeting. Post-COVID offices need a universal appeal, as places to gather, connect, grow, be creative and, feel special. This doesn’t mean offices should be playrooms but they do need to offer more. Create an environment where your employees aren’t just delivering productivity, make it productive for them and in doing so, treat them as valued guests. Need your car parked??Done. Want a cup of your favorite steaming hot coffee on your desk when you get in? Noted. Pick up laundry? On it. Need someone to pick up the kids from school? Need a dog walker? Lunch delivery? Sure, we can help take care of that too.
• Feed minds as well as bodies. The in-house restaurant is nice but sometimes employees want to get out of the office for a different vibe so make sure the dining perks extend beyond the walls of the office. Supporting neighboring businesses is a good PR move anyway. If you want to make the office feel more experiential for employees, ramp up the access to personal development. Bring in the classes, provide more expert speakers, arrange more working lunches, host more events. In short, create more reasons for employees to navigate the commute and get the benefits they wouldn’t get at home.
• Protect the community. Health and wellness will be an ongoing hallmark of the office experience moving forward. With so many recent studies showing the negative impact of a sedentary lifestyle on our health, workers are going to be even more reticent about returning to an office unless there is a clear emphasis on wellness in the workplace. This means more opportunities to exercise (in cool, modern gyms not tired workout spaces), greater access to fresh air and natural light, universally available flexible workstation options such as sit/stand desks and greater access to in-office health checks, even medical facilities. Office walking groups and COVID-19 protocols are unlikely to fully disappear even when the virus is under control. Hand sanitizing is no longer just for food service workers, it’s for all of us. And, it almost goes without saying that we’re seeing the rapid deployment of technology within the workspace to maintain safety. This will be a baseline going forward.
• Make work flexible. A survey of employees early in the pandemic suggested most felt more productive working from home on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays. If this is true of your employees, why not make Mondays and Fridays mandatory office days, assigning Mondays as an all-work day for planning and other meetings and Friday as a hybrid “wrap-up the week meet” at the office followed by a social/teambuilding event? Most importantly, deploy tech to capture the data on when and where your employees/ guests use the workspace and use it to curate the experience for them. ????
• Make work accessible.?Probably the biggest factor in people wanting to work from home is the commute. Pre-pandemic, commute times in high demand tech markets such as the Bay Area and Northern Virginia were already having an impact on hiring and retention. Hybrid work opportunities give employers a compelling argument against quality of life concerns expressed by employees with long commutes. Smaller, dispersed satellite offices, co-working and other shared space options are the boutique hotels of the office sector providing easy in-out options throughout the workforce.

Time to listen. Really listen.

In real estate, we learn it’s either a landlord’s market or a tenant’s market. Landlords benefit when demand for space is high and availability is low. Tenants benefit when the opposite is the case. Employers today are in an employee market, where the supply of talent significantly lags demand and recruiting talent is an expensive and time-consuming business. More than this, whether you are in an employer or employee market, your employee is always your most important asset.

All the more reason why employers who think they already listen, should listen even harder to their existing workforce with the goal of winning the hearts of employees daily. That means accommodation, being flexible, pushing the envelope on work policies, workplaces and adjusting expectations.

It also means working that much harder to make the office a more appealing experience, something that makes employees feel special, appreciated, happy, motivated, connected and engaged. Certainly, curating the workspace will take significant investment in time and resources, but with talent at a premium and employees looking for answers , the question you have to ask is: Can you really afford not to?

About the author:

Rich Branning as an Executive Managing Director with JLL orchestrates a team of specialists in brokerage, finance, workplace management, construction, global incentives, and labor analytics to help companies navigate global business ecosystems in today’s hybrid work environment. In his 30 year brokerage and investment career, he has advised and represented some of the Bay Area's top high growth global companies, offering creative negotiating strategies with an entrepreneurial point of view on more than 25 million square feet of corporate real estate transactions.

Rich's favorite quote: "As Iron Sharpens Iron, One Person Sharpens Another."

You can reach Rich directly by email at [email protected] or via phone at +1 (650) 480-2188.

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