From COVID Comes Office Innovation

In the coming weeks, I plan to provide you with real-life experiences with office models that are occurring at the business next door and not the solutions being spewed from theorists who have never had to manage employees or a business.

The past three years as brought an interesting change as to how business owners and managers view our firm.  For nearly all of the past 29-years since founding CARMEN Commercial Real Estate Services, we’ve specialized in providing tenant representation to businesses that lease office and industrial building space. But now the environment has changed and with that, the value companies seek from our firm as a broker has changed with it.

For many years, business owners and managers have valued the information and expertise our advisors and I have provided on market rental rates and lease terms, and other tasks pertinent to our serving clients as a commercial real estate service provider. Such task include our work as a project manager on relocations and/or construction, furniture and fixtures procurement  However, albeit those things remain very important and are still a great measure of the value we can bring to the table when our clients want to lease office space or renegotiate the terms of an existing lease, today’s business owners and managers are seeking counsel on topics more nebulous but related to operating a business in a pandemic business environment. They seek information on how companies are setting-up their hybrid work models; what percentage of companies are back in the office; which employees and/or positions can return, and which cannot. As a corporate real estate service provider, the breadth of support needed is expanding and we continue to be a go-to source.

Are we qualified to offer advice on what hybrid work model would best suit our client?  When do you declare it’s time to return to the office?  I have to say “No”. But let’s face it… is anyone qualified to provide such information? Probably not!  When it comes to operating in the 3-year-old pandemic business environment, it’s all new and few if any can claim to be experts.  Just when it seems safe to declare a return to the office, along comes the Delta variant…. then Omicron….and what’s next and how can it be predicted?!

What we can do for our clients that are hungry for information is to provide them with what we see our other clients doing with respect to redefining their office models, what seems to be working and what has not. By the very nature of working with many different companies, we have the advantage of seeing first-hand the experiments with new office models and office design that are evolving to help companies operate in this new environment.  From the exposure to these businesses, we can provide clients and any business seeking our guidance with something far more valuable than our opinion, but real solutions being hatched and modified every day to meet today’s office challenges.

In the coming weeks, I plan to provide you with real-life experiences with office models that are occurring at the business next door and not the solutions being spewed from theorists who have never had to manage employees or a business.   And please share the creative office models that you’re seeing in your communities or among your peers.  Ultimately, we can all learn from each other and more rapidly develop business solutions that may be lasting, even if it only gets us through one more variant!