How Workplace Transportation Can Inform Decision-Making in Corporate Real Estate

In today's dynamic business landscape, corporate real estate decisions are increasingly influenced by workplace transportation factors. Understanding how transportation accessibility, data, and infrastructure impact various aspects of business operations can lead to more informed and strategic real estate choices. This blog explores five key areas where workplace transportation plays a crucial role in corporate real estate decision-making.

Employee Recruitment and Retention

Transportation accessibility significantly impacts a company's ability to attract and retain top talent. Companies located in areas with diverse transportation options often experience lower turnover rates, as employees value convenient commutes. Additionally, accessibility to public transit and major highways can be a major draw for potential hires, expanding the talent pool. To offset potential location disadvantages, many organizations are implementing remote work policies and flexible schedules, allowing them to tap into talent regardless of geographic constraints.

Informing Office Location Decisions

Transportation data serves as a valuable tool in determining optimal office locations. By analyzing commute times and patterns, companies can identify areas that minimize overall employee travel time. Examining employee addresses, geo coordinates, zip codes, and transportation preferences helps guide site selection, ensuring the chosen location aligns with the workforce's needs. Furthermore, staying informed about transportation infrastructure plans can help predict future accessibility improvements, allowing companies to make forward-thinking location decisions.

Impact of Parking Requirements

Parking considerations play a significant role in real estate costs and decisions. Parking needs can substantially impact construction costs and land use requirements, potentially limiting location options or increasing expenses. However, companies can mitigate these costs by encouraging alternative transportation methods, thereby reducing parking demand. Additionally, exploring shared parking arrangements with nearby businesses can optimize space utilization and lower overall real estate expenses.

Achieving Corporate Sustainability Goals

Transportation plays a crucial role in meeting corporate sustainability objectives. Encouraging sustainable commuting options, such as public transit, carpooling, or cycling, can significantly reduce a company's carbon footprint. Many green building certifications include transportation-related criteria, making sustainable transportation options a key factor in achieving these designations. This includes broadcasting or promoting multimodal transit options in real-time to employees through digital signage, mobile apps, and employer websites. Lastly, installing electric vehicle charging stations can also attract environmentally conscious talent and demonstrate a commitment to sustainability.

Balancing Transportation Needs with Hybrid Work Models

As hybrid work models become more prevalent, companies must balance transportation needs with evolving work patterns. Flexible office designs that accommodate varying daily occupancy levels can help optimize space usage. Some organizations are adopting hub-and-spoke office models to better serve dispersed workforces, providing multiple smaller office locations closer to where employees live. Again, a well-informed location strategy plus investment in robust digital infrastructure is crucial to support the seamless integration of remote work with new, less frequent, daily commute patterns.

Real-World Success Story - Unilever and SJP Proerties

A prime example of leveraging these workplace transportation principles for more informed real estate decisions is Unilever's North American headquarters relocation to Hoboken, NJ. In 2018 the company moved to Englewood Cliffs to establish its “office of the future .” The Englewood Cliffs location was designed to be an “Instagramable ” office with all the trappings of wellness, fitness, and a loft-like city aesthetic. Other features included - common areas, lounges, a workout room, yoga mats, a grocery store, a tea bar, and a sweeping atrium with coworking space. Unilever also subsidized shuttles for 430 of their 1800 employees needing to commute to and from Manhattan or Hoboken to the office. Times have now changed as suburban offices suffer from stubborn work-from-home trends five years after the pandemic. According to James Hughes , dean emeritus of the Edward J. Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy at Rutgers University, suburban office campuses more broadly have switched to urban corporate centers in places like Manhattan, Jersey City, and Hoboken, a reversal of the trend seen in the 1980s. The result is that “Unilever made a strategic decision to relocate their North American Headquarters to the New Jersey waterfront from Englewood Cliffs to gain a competitive edge in accessing the vast labor pool in New York City and the surrounding metro area while retaining existing talent with easy access to Bergen County,” says SJP Properties SVP of Leasing and Development, Alexander Erdos . Erdos further noted, “Hoboken offers a walkable, safe, transit-oriented experience that tenants desire across all markets.” Soon the world’s sixth largest consumer goods company will join other leading consumer goods brands such as Lipton, Walmart, and Newell Brands at SJP Properties’ Waterfront Corporate Center I taking a 111,000-square-foot long-term lease for three full floors at 111 River Street.

Navigating Challenges with Actionfigure.ai

Actionfigure.ai 's location intelligence solutions, powered by the largest aggregated real-time and schedule-based transportation information, offer valuable tools for navigating the challenges in corporate real estate decision-making. Their products, such as screens, mobile apps, Foresight, and Insight, provide comprehensive data and analytics that can inform various aspects of the decision-making process while also promoting the transit-oriented nature of corporate office locations with its aggregated real-time transit information for public transit, scooters, bikeshare, carshare, ridehailing and corporate shuttles.

For instance, Actionfigure.ai 's Foresight tool can help companies analyze potential office locations based on transportation accessibility, commute times, and sustainability factors. The Insight product can assist in understanding employee transportation preferences and patterns, enabling more targeted decision-making. By leveraging these tools, companies can make data-driven real estate decisions that optimize for transportation accessibility, cost-effectiveness, and sustainability, ultimately leading to improved employee satisfaction and operational efficiency.

In conclusion, by considering workplace transportation factors and utilizing advanced tools like those offered by Actionfigure.ai , companies can make more informed and strategic corporate real estate decisions that benefit their workforce, their sustainability goals, and their bottom line.