Friday, June 10, 2022

Apocalypse Soon: Work-From-Home To Cut Office Values By $500B, Report Finds

NeoCon Opens Monday at its regularly scheduled time and place

Ghent, VividBoard, and Waddell to merge into one brand

News

After four decades of producing industry-leading visual communications and space solutions, parent company GMi announced the merging of Waddell display solutions and VividBoard patient care boards under its flagship brand Ghent.

“The way people work has changed. With that comes changes to how our partners want to interact and work with us,” commented Susan Claus, Director of Marketing at GMi Companies. “With NeoCon’s theme being Design Makes a Statement, it was the perfect place to make our announcement. We are making a big statement by scaling the work we have done with our brands over the last 45 years and leveraging the recognition of the Ghent brand.”

The transition to one brand has already begun with full implementation expected to be completed early in 2023. Partners can expect to see easier quoting, ordering, communication, and general ease of doing business with Ghent. In the coming months, Vividboard will evolve into Ghent Healthcare. All of Waddell’s product collections will maintain the same names, becoming available directly through Ghent under the Waddell Display Collection.
At least one real estate industry watcher is concerned a recent slowdown in tech hiring could affect the office sector. BMO Capital Markets analyst John Kim recently said he’s downgraded 3 office REITs with high exposure to the tech industry, saying a hiring slowdown could weigh heavily on the REITs’ revenue and earnings.

Several big tech companies recently announced hiring slowdowns, including Microsoft, which says it’ll decrease hiring for its Windows, Office, and Teams software groups. Meta plans to pause hiring and, in late May, Redfin said it made a “difficult decision to freeze hiring and rescind a small number of job offers” because the housing market is cooling down. Other tech firms aren’t just slowing down but also shedding jobs, such as social audio app Clubhouse and tech giants Netflix and PayPal.
The recent surge in the number of people working from home in the US means that more than half of remote working employees have never met their colleagues, according to a new report from Green Building Elements. The figure was highest in Nebraska, where 89 percent hadn’t met their workmates face to face. For those in Kentucky and Montana, only 17 percent haven’t met their colleagues properly. The survey also claims that just 41 percent of employees said their company regularly organizes online social events which can also help bonding.

The Workplace

Hybrid work adoption is growing and becoming a permanent element of the future of work, according to the new Workforce Preferences Barometer report [registration] from real estate firm JLL. However, the report’s authors also conclude that, as employee expectations and reality reach an equilibrium, the continuing use of offices remains pivotal to work routines.
With its 10-city average Back to Work Barometer hovering at 43% of occupancy for more than two months, Kastle Systems said this week that offices barely half full may be the new normal for businesses nationwide.

“The consistency suggests these occupancy rates may be the new normal for businesses nationwide,” Kastle said, in an email alert this week of its May 30 barometer tally, which reported a 10-city average of 42.9%.
Employers who update their perks to accommodate new working preferences stand to gain in more ways than one.
 
A survey of more than 1,000 professionals by Paychex found that employees who update their benefits packages to new working preferences benefit from greater productivity, higher job satisfaction and better company culture as a result.
Ergonomic design isn’t just a solution for improving employees’ comfort and health and streamlining productivity — it could also be a remedy for the Great Resignation.

In a recent study, Poly, a maker of audio and video products, underscored the lack of support employees are feeling from their employers to address challenges tied to hybrid work. A majority (72%) of those polled said employers could be doing more to alleviate stress and create a sense of parity between distributed employees. And even though technology plays a key role in employee satisfaction, tech-related factors are increasingly causing employees frustration. Workers are now citing things like lack of technology support (21%), out-of-date video conferencing technology (17%), and faulty headsets/poor audio (16%) as new workplace “stress triggers.”
The office hub and spoke model is nothing new. Before the pandemic, corporate occupiers experimented with having a central office in a downtown urban area with scattered satellite offices in nearby suburbs. The idea of a distributed workforce was already gaining steam long before anyone ever heard about the novel coronavirus. By the time the pandemic hit, remote and hybrid work had already risen.

NeoCon & Surroundings

Massive Change Network (MCN) announced that on June 14th, design visionary Bruce Mau will be delivering a Keynote for NeoCon 2022. Presented by the American Society of Interior Designers, Mau’s address will cover his approach across his thirty years of design innovation and collaboration with global brands and companies, leading organizations, heads of state, renowned artists, and legendary architects and designers. Mau hopes to inspire attendees with his belief that life-centered design offers a clear path toward identifying the full context of our problems and developing innovative, sustainable, and holistic solutions.
The Formaspace Contract showroom at the Chicago Merchandise Mart (Suite 11-124) will feature the new MKR office collection in partnership with Q Design.
The pop-up will showcase Humanscale’s leadership across sustainability and design excellence to customers, media, and guests.
The brand will be showcasing its beautifully designed and highly customizable glass boards and partitions, including its Mobl™️ writing panels, Haven™ partitions, and Reveal™ writing boards, in an array of bold colors and configurations.

Trends

A Think Tank Panel with RIOS finds that in order to innovate in the workplace realm, designers—and their clients—need to go bold.
 
Audacity. Risk. Going out on a limb. These were the ideas percolating through the the April 21 Think Tank Thursday, hosted by RIOS and moderated by Sam Lubell, executive editor of Metropolis. Also in attendance was A.J. Paron, executive vice president and design futurist at SANDOW Design Group. In addition to Lantz, the panelists included Simone Lapenta, architect and design director, RIOS; Daaf Serné, global head of workplace for Miro, an online collaborative whiteboard platform; and finally Shipra Kayan, product evangelist at Miro.

Remote Work

As months pass and parts of the world return to many pre-pandemic norms, recent concerns about the workplace have risen.

Is remote work over? Have employers regained more power in decisions about the workplace?

Real Estate

As occupiers adjust their office footprints in the San Francisco area—with many downsizing and a few expanding—subleasing activity increasingly is providing an outlet to facilitate these adjustments.

Data storage player Pure Storage recently announced it will expand into a new headquarters location by subleasing 333K SF office space in Santa Clara Square, a mixed-use tech, housing and retail complex in the northern California city of the same name.
A joint research team from NYU and Columbia University studying the impact of remote work on office properties says office buildings will lose 28% of their value by 2029 if remote/hybrid work patterns become the norm.

In an academic paper entitled Work from Home and the Office Real Estate Apocalypse, the team projected that the overall “value destruction” in the US office sector could total more than $500B by 2029 if hybrid work takes root and lease revenue shrinks along with office footprints.
A slowdown in tech hiring could have a big impact on the overall office market, according to one industry watcher.

BMO Capital Markets analyst John Kim told CNBC’s ‘Squawk on the Street’ that he recently downgraded three office REITs with high exposure to the tech sector, noting that a pullback in tech hiring could ultimately weigh on REITs’ revenue and earnings.
Owner/operator Viking Partners, a Cincinnati-based investment firm, has been busy renovating its office buildings to add amenities which are shared by all office tenants, including lounges, fitness centers, catering kitchens and flex meeting spaces.

According to Abigail Murray, Construction Manager for Viking, creating shared space for amenities in office buildings allows tenants adjusting to hybrid work strategies to maximize their leased office footprints without having to assign space to large conference rooms and other gathering spaces.
Occupied office space in Manhattan fell by more than 8 percent in May and availability tightened slightly, however YoY demand soared by 60 percent, according to a report this week by Colliers.

Availability in Manhattan’s Downtown area grew by 0.4 percentage points in May to a record-high 20.1 percent, marking the first time on record that any Manhattan market topped 20 percent.

Makers

Bramson will also oversee IES’s diversified, global portfolio of brands. These include: HAT Collective, which serves the contract office market with intuitive, ergonomic products such as height-adjustable tables, monitor arms, seating, power and accessories; HAT Collective Healthcare, a division of HAT Collective, which provides point of care products like mobile carts and wall mounts; Innovative Design Works (IDW), which serves as an original equipment manufacturer (OEM) and designer of monitor arms, tablet mounts and point of sale systems for customers ranging from hospitality to retail; and several e-commerce brands.
Drawing on a connection that began over 80 years ago, the two organizations will look to the past to inspire furniture collections for a new generation.
MillerKnoll, Inc. announced that Jonathan Olivares, has joined the company as Senior Vice President of Design, Knoll.
DIRTT Environmental Solutions Ltd. announced the departure of Jennifer Warawa as Chief Commercial Officer, and Jeffrey Calkins as Chief Operating Officer and Interim Co-CEO.
The new 12,000 useable-square-foot center will serve as an interactive showroom and a destination where customers, designers and commercial real estate partners can collaborate with the Fellowes Brands team in a creative, energetic space that helps them solve their workplace needs.

Products

Long known for offering creative and effective Decorative Sound-Absorbing Products, Unika Vaev is has announced the launch of five new Acoustic Products from UV Studios.
The Maker Project and its new seating additions demonstrate character and authenticity by embracing natural imperfections while displaying a strong balance of organic and fabricated elements like wood and steel.
Sustainable lighting innovator LightArt proudly introduces the latest evolution of their multi-award-winning Coil Collection: upcycled pendants made entirely from ocean-bound and near-shore plastic.

Projects

After 18 years near Place de la République, Steelcase Paris has moved to a lively district in the ninth arrondissement, a stone’s throw from the Olympia Concert Hall and Palais Garnier. In a world still feeling the impact of the pandemic, workspaces need to accommodate new employee expectations and reflect changes in how we work. The new Paris WorkLife was designed as a testing ground for hybrid work and a space where a sense of community fosters new ideas and individual wellbeing.
Pophouse employed a data-driven approach to design that incorporated the needs for Rock Ventures new Detroit headquarters.
LOHA used “material layering” to create a light-filled workspace for photographers, videographers and other creatives involved in brand imaging for Nike.
Find the best Contract Furniture Industry jobs and hire the best talent.
created in Publicate