How CEUs Will Evolve in 2021 and Beyond

The COVID-19 vaccine rollout is underway and with it comes murmurs of plans to return to physical offices. Most experts agree that we won’t see widespread return-to-work policies in place until, at the earliest, late spring or early summer of 2021, but there is hope in the prospect of returning to some sense of normalcy. And that hope is prompting questions not only from those in the interiors industry, but also about the interiors industry. Throughout the pandemic, ThinkLab has been studying the intricacies of remote work to understand its evolution and, perhaps more importantly, to digest how remote work will change how work in the industry gets done in the future. Just as critical, ThinkLab’s research focuses on gauging the temperature of the industry’s interest in and ability to connect digitally.

While designers are eager for many things to return to normal, we’ve identified one outlier in our research: continuing education units (or CEUs) are the sole area that architects and designers (A&D) increasingly rate as “better virtually,” according to our ongoing quarterly studies. As of December 2020, as per ThinkLab’s efforts to measure appetite for sales connections in this digital world, 47 percent of designers surveyed say their consumption of CEUs is still increasing.

Even before the pandemic, the American Institute of Architects reported that CEUs ranked as the most impactful source of information on sustainability (67 percent of survey respondents agreed); CEUs were also the third-most used resource for sustainability inquiries, second only to manufacturer websites and internet research. Flash forward to the pandemic, and ThinkLab research suggests that 50 percent of CEU participants in the interiors industry (namely A&D) want CEUs to remain virtual moving forward, while only 18 percent want them to return to an in-person platform. (The remaining percentage either didn’t attend CEUs or were unsure of their preference.)

So, as we prepare to return to the office, what does that mean for both the participants (i.e., A&D) and the manufacturers and dealers who present to them? We sat down with ThinkLab’s very own resident CEU expert, Giselle Walsh, to discuss the advantages of a digital CEU for A&D and manufacturers and to develop a list of presentation tips that benefit both parties. As she puts it, “One thing we know from a recent study is that local manufacturers’ reps (63 percent of the time) and favorite manufacturers/corporate resources (48 percent of the time) are the most frequent sources designers turn to for CEUs. So, in this increasingly digitized era, where knowledge is the new currency, CEUs are one of the most critical connection points. They are of great value to designers and manufacturers.” Read the full article here.