On 19 January 2021 ULI Greece & Cyprus hosted a webinar to launch the first global report investigating the impact of the pandemic on the Future of Work, conducted by EY & ULI on the theme, “Future of Work – A Global Real Estate Player’s Point of View”. The findings were presented by Vincent Raufast, Partner, EY.

Guest speakers Cal Lee, Director, Workthere, Ronen Journo, Senior Managing Director & Head of European Operations, Hines Europe, Vincent Raufast, Associate Partner, EY, shed light and insights on the results of the survey in an interesting panel discussion moderated by Stelios Bouras.

Vincent Raufast presented the methodology and key findings from the global survey that was conducted on the Future of Work and its impact on business models and corporate real estate.

According to the survey, the Future of Work will be:

• more remote
• more digital
• more on demand
• with more people self-employed.

In the future, all the task execution type of work is likely to be carried out remotely, whereas all the strategic management, creative thinking and business development will always require some form of physical interaction, and consequently require a workplace. The resulting ecosystem of workplaces will accelerate mixed-use space including residential, hospitality and office spaces, and advocate a shift in language from ‘office’ to ‘workspace’.

The opportunities and the challenges of the Future of Work were identified and further explained. Flexibility is the key word, both for employees and corporates, as well as for the activity of work, space and location. A high risk for the corporate culture and the management of talents were confirmed through the survey.

The speakers concluded that, “the more remote the work, the more real estate becomes critical to attract and retain talents and to create a strong corporate culture”.

The Future of Work will impact business models and corporate real estate. The increased flexibility is likely to lead to quality over quantity of office space and a move towards flexible and tailor-made leasing models. 53% of real estate professionals expect a decrease in office space demand in the next 3-5 years, greater than 20% in square meters, which balances with an increase in the quality of the workplace in terms of, specifically designed and flexible office footprint, technology, health and safety, security, creativity and location issues.

The Future of Work will likely impact environmental, social and corporate governance and generally, generate an enhanced focus on the quality of space.

Ronen Journo said, “Many of the trends that the survey results highlighted are not new. They began back in 2000. Many large occupiers could not align their real estate portfolios with the speed at which businesses were changing.”

“What’s interesting is that many of those trends about wellbeing and health and income, the human centricity and offices that were not efficiently used were there before covid-19.  Covid-19 has done something interesting. It has accelerated the awareness of this, it has accelerated the decision-making process in the large occupiers, and it has subjected all of us to this kind of virtual way we’re working, we had no choice. We have all been confined to working from home.”

“I think for me the flight to quality is going to start with humans. It’ s not about bricks and mortar. It’s not about real estate investment. It’ s about people.”

“…the more technology is adopted by the workforce, the more we have the hunger to physically spend time together as humans.”.

Cal Lee said,“…this idea of quantity and quality is absolutely true. And we’ re seeing a lot of companies downsize. They don’ t need 100 desks for 100 staff, they might take 60 desks for 100 staff. And either use the rest of the space for immunity or if they are going into a flex space.

That space has the amenities. …It’ s about quality and what else do you get… It’ s not just about desk, it’s not just about seats. It’ s about the amenity…It’s about what kind of wellbeing can we offer our staff what one of the reasons to get people to an office …”

“Every day, we’ re going to ask ourselves: Do I need to go to the office today?  and it has to be a clear reason from your company and from obviously the office itself. I want to go and collaborate.”