More people are searching for available office space now than before the pandemic, in what analysts at CommercialCafe are calling “a much more encouraging outlook” for the sector. More office space = more office furniture.

After declining substantially in 2020, searches for office space for rent followed a positive pathway in 2021, while nearly a quarter of respondents surveyed by the firm said they were looking to downsize their overall office footprint. Around 23% said they’d like to be the sole tenants in a building, while another 23% said they were looking for a better deal in terms of price per square foot. And 16% said they were looking for larger office spaces.

Fully remote working is no longer viewed as the ‘holy grail’ by tech employers, with hybrid working now viewed as the perfect model for aiding retention and recruitment of talent. That is the main conclusion of Robert Half’s Demand for Tech Talent report, which surveyed 750 tech hiring managers across the UK. The results of the survey suggest that remote working – which the report claims was widely touted as the ‘future of work’ both before and during the pandemic – is now being shunned by companies in favour of a flexible approach.

During the pandemic, more than half (52 percent) of employers moved to a policy of fully remote working. Perhaps inevitably, this has now dropped back to a third (34 percent). However, of those that had a fully remote workforce prior to the pandemic, 28 per cent have now abandoned that policy in favour of a hybrid model, suggesting a decline that goes beyond a return to normal.

According to Mark Rose, CEO of commercial real estate services firm Avison Young, remote working isn’t losing steam despite the efforts of executives like Elon Musk. In fact, Rose says that the earliest workers will return to the office is in five years.

The row about where and when we get our jobs done will rage for years. But a change could be on the way. There's some evidence that employers may already be offering fewer work from home jobs for developers, even in a strong market. Some bosses have even been issuing ultimatums to staff about getting back to the office or getting out. And while workers think they are personally great at working from home, they're not convinced about how hard their own colleagues are working.

The capability of companies to simply hire from wherever they want is currently available. Companies still hire employees closer to their offices at a substantially higher rate than potential employees that live further away.

In these fast-changing times, Albert De Plazaola of Unispace shares eight steps to defining the work change your teams need to thrive.

Employees have never been more stressed, according to Gallup’s State of the Global Workplace 2022 Report, which was conducted in 2021 and released today.

Among workers surveyed, 60% report feeling “emotionally detached” while at work, and 19% consistently feel “miserable.” These numbers are higher than those reported in 2020, which had previously set records for the percentage of employees who reported feeling stressed on a daily basis.

The Gallup report notes that these findings are concerning given that, on average, people spend a staggering 81,396 hours of their lives working. The only activity we spend more time doing is sleeping.

Thanks to the proliferation of companies allowing remote working, digital nomads and this kind of lifestyle is no longer niche.

Return-to-office (RTO) plans are the talk of the town, but not everyone is saying the same thing. While most agree that hybrid work is the way of the future, protocols and policies vary. Safe to say, the concept of remote-first remains a work in progress.

For their part, a growing number of employers are increasingly pressing for a return to the way things were, circa 2019, complete with back-and-forth commutes, in-person meetings, whiteboard sessions and those chance water cooler encounters that changed the world.

Foot traffic data from major US cities supports the proposition that companies are adjusting to a more permanent view of hybrid work, according to a new analysis from Placer.ai.

The company’s data reveals that the office recovery hasn’t been consistent across metros: while visits to offices in San Francisco, New York City, and Chicago are still significantly below pre-pandemic levels, year-over-three-year office visits in San Francisco were down by -67.8%, compared to 40.6% and 45.7%, respectively, in New York and Chicago.

A new survey suggests that there’s something that employees increasingly value more than pay – work-life balance.

Employer plans have played out like a game of chicken. Now workers are rebelling outright, and executives are trying everything to make the office worth it.

Emily Webster of ESI Design shares an experience design masterplan for creating a culture-driven workplace.

This year’s World Workplace Europe saw 2022 hailed as the year of the worker. A worthwhile focus considering negative emotions are on the rise, with more depression, anxiety and loneliness plaguing society despite the claimed benefits of hybrid working. The pandemic robbed us of many things. It restricted our freedom for two years and forced us to live, love and work in a way that felt a little less human. But at least there was a sense of unity, working together for the common good, a mask-muffled cry of “all for one and one for all” as people considered how their actions would and could impact others.

Various sectors of real estate often draw from one another for inspiration. One example is how the tenets of today’s multifamily design are leading the progressive movement of what people desire—and increasingly demand—in the office.

There is “no question” that office occupiers have been the least impacted by inflation, according to one industry economist—but that doesn’t mean they’re immune from the challenges wrought by the current economic environment.

In a new analysis, Cushman & Wakefield’s Rebecca Rockey notes that since office occupiers are generally service providers, they’ve had it easier when it comes to inflation. But there’s a catch: “they are experiencing no shortage of challenges as they adapt to work-from-anywhere and intense competition for talent that now has fewer city-edge borders,” she writes. “Companies are also struggling to commit to new pay models for remote-first or mainly-remote workers who can potentially have a much lower cost-of-living than non-remote workers in similar roles.”

Steelcase has been recognized by The Civic 50 as one of the fifty most community-minded companies in the United States. Sponsored by Points of Light, the world’s largest organization dedicated to volunteer service, The Civic 50 ranks companies with annual revenues of at least $1B in four areas: investment of resources, integration across business functions, institutionalization through policies and systems and impact measurement. The Civic 50 provides a national standard for superior corporate citizenship and showcases how companies can use their time, skills and resources to impact their communities.

Company wins EcoVadis Gold, EPA WasteWise award, listed on the CDP Supplier Engagement Leaderboard and accepted as a U.S. Department of Energy’ Better Climate Challenge partner.

The Salone del Mobile and Milan Design Week took place this year from 7 to 12 June 2022. Our review.