As workers head back into offices, many are encountering the same frustrations they did pre-pandemic: endless stretches of fluorescently-lit cubicles, limited space for hybrid meetings, and generally depressing design.
Annie Dean, formerly Facebook’s first director of remote work and Atlassian’s VP of future of work and workplace, says workers — and businesses — deserve better.
“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,” Dean told Business Insider. “When offices are positioned and built to draw people in, then community develops. And that’s really important for business — among other things.”
Dean made a name for herself studying flexible work. Until recently, she oversaw Atlassian’s real estate and workplace experience teams, as well as a research lab investigating new ways of working.
Last week, however, Dean started a new, decidedly in-person role: chief strategy officer for the building operations and experience division at CBRE, the world’s biggest commercial real-estate services firm.
In this role, Dean will oversee a new project, called the CBRExIndustrious Building Experience Lab, which the company announced Tuesday.
Applying rigor to workplace design
The lab will partner with client companies to collect data about how workplaces are being used and then create research and products to advance “how workplaces operate for the people and teams that use them,” said Dean.
CBRE manages two billion square feet of office space, including 65 million square feet of offices that Brookfield Properties owns, and many of the Deutsche Bank offices around the world.
Forty million people come into an office every day run by CBRE, the real-estate services firm said. That means there’s a huge amount of potential data to collect through partnerships.
The goal is for successful companies to be able to take the same level of rigor that they use to run their businesses and apply that data-driven approach to how they run their workplaces, said Dean.
Creating connection
CBRE’s lab is launching at a time when more companies are requiring employees to return to the office, whether employees are on board — or not. In July, foot traffic data indicated more US employees were working from an office than at any point since the pandemic.
“How do you make that work? How do you make it effective? How do you make it so people don’t feel resentful of their employers?” Jamie Hodari, CEO of CBRE’s building operations and experience division and chief commercial officer, told Business Insider. “It’s very easy to position this as coercive and coming from employers, but we are also in a cultural moment, I think, where people are feeling disconnected.”
Employers are looking to ensure offices create opportunities for collaboration, said Hodari, who cofounded flexible coworking space Industrious, which was acquired by CBRE in January.
“There’s a mixture of things that make for an amazing team; that make for cohesive teams; that make for people who really feel fulfilled in their work. And some part of that mix is being in-person together,” he said.
The office of the future
Dean, who got her start as a real-estate lending attorney, said that her new job feels like a natural fit, even after her time researching distributed and flexible models of working.
“Real estate has been a really big part of my career and life,” said Dean, whose father was an architect. “I’m just really interested in what buildings mean for people.”
Hodari, who Dean reports to, says the plan is to identify a few partner companies and launch the lab’s first collaborations by the end of the year.
“We have an opportunity to build a world that’s better for people,” said Dean. “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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