The MCR Journey: Workplace Strategy Essentials

This year, CoreNet Global Australia has offered our first-ever scholarship to the industry-renowned Master of Corporate Real Estate (MCR) program. Over the next 18 months, we’ll be following Ujwal Lakra’s journey, what he’s learning and the benefits he’s getting from the course. Follow along for updates.

We sat down with Ujwal after his first unit of study, Workplace Strategy Essentials, held over three half-day sessions in early February to get some insights into each unit and how it’s helping him to grow professionally.

Over to Ujwal:

“As a member of CoreNet Global Australia for five years, I knew that the organisation delivered exceptional content that would help to really deepen my understanding of the corporate real estate sector and provide tools for approaching client problems from a wider lens. Having undertaken my first unit of the MCR – Workplace Strategy Essentials – that has only been confirmed.

Workplace Strategy Essentials is all about structuring a workplace strategy for any business. The approach is completely sector and business agnostic, guiding you through the fundamental steps and models to build a strategy and business case.

The unit really took a strong look at what is the future of work, as well as ways to increase collaboration and productivity, and optimising total cost of ownership. It covers things like fitouts, technology solutions, determining space requirements, all through a lens of how to tie workplace choices back to business objectives.

Something that really struck me was the way the content is incredibly forward-thinking about the future of work. This unit is actually pre-pandemic content and it shows how on the pulse the MCR faculty is to have predicted the changes to the workplace that have so rapidly accelerated over the past 20 months.

As the corporate real estate function continues to evolve to focus more on the workplace experience, it was great to explore new models and frameworks to help create a systematic approach to problem-solving. I’ve already started taking these models and using them in how I consult to clients, so it’s been incredibly practical content that I can immediately implement.

In addition to the frameworks, I was also impressed with the case study we were given. In small groups, we had to work through a scenario for a business with 2 million sq ft of space, including a manufacturing plant. Our objective was to build a workplace strategy that balanced the needs of a manufacturing workforce that had to be on-site, alongside office-based employees. In the case study, since COVID-19, the business had 70% of office-employees preferring to work from home for 2-3 days a week. This case study effectively highlighted the challenge that many businesses are currently facing as they try to balance the needs of workers with different roles and responsibilities.

Of course, the course isn’t just about the content, it’s also about the opportunity to widen my network. I’m studying as part of the East Coast and West Coast cohort in the United States, and for Workplace Strategy Essentials, most of the students were from the US and Canada. There’s a few of us from Australia and New Zealand though! We spent the first hour doing intros and it was great to see the diversity of where students are from and where they are at in their careers. Most of the students have in-house roles, like workplace managers, facility and property managers, and corporate real estate executives, as well as other workplace strategy consultants. I’m looking forward to getting to know my fellow students more over the coming units.”

Thanks Ujwal for sharing your experience. Ujwal’s next subject will be Enterprise Alignment in May. We look forward to catching up with him after that.