Within the last month, Paramount, Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT), and Novo Nordisk (NYSE:NVO) have announced return-to-office mandates. The companies join other major employers like Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN), AT&T (NYSE:T), and Disney (NYSE:DIS) in requiring that employees work in-person for at least half the week.
While the employers say that the increase in face time will allow for more innovation, increase employee engagement, and boost productivity, many workers aren't sold on the idea. Partially, because traditional offices, replete with fluorescently lit cubicles and a lack of group meeting spaces, aren't exactly inviting.
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These factors, among others, have led CBRE Chief Strategy Officer of Building Operations & Experience Annie Dean to say that companies need to rethink the office experience.
"People and companies know that offices are changing and that offices need to start feeling maybe a little bit more like hotels, with great service, seamless technology, inspiring design, and workplaces that create a true sense of place,” she told Business Insider.
“When offices are positioned and built to draw people in, then community develops," she continued. "And that’s really important for business — among other things.”
Dean is serious about office redesign. In her role at CBRE, she will oversee a new project called the CBRE x Industrious Building Experience Lab.
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According to CBRE, the lab will "aim to transform offices, logistics centers, storefronts, and other commercial settings – the buildings that power the global economy – into more human-focused, empowering and delightful places to work."
"How we work has fundamentally changed," Dean said in a statement. "Businesses collaborate through technology, which has never been more true in the age of AI. When everything is virtual, the real world matters more than ever. And as a result, the world is ready for a different kind of workplace experience.
"We need to turn workplace functions from a cost-center, shared-services mentality into a strategic business unit that delivers ROI and shifts from space utilization into a user-centered mentality and processes that look like product development cycles," she continued. "Data is at the center of this opportunity."
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The lab will have plenty of data at its disposal. As the world's largest commercial real estate services firm, CBRE manages two billion square feet of office space, which is utilized by 40 million people.
With the lab, "We have an opportunity to build a world that’s better for people,” Dean told Business Insider. "Flexible work is clearly part of that, and it’s also clearly now the norm. But the next challenge incumbent on us is to take these physical spaces and to make them live up to the promise of what an office can and should be.”
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