The Link Between Workplace Design And Productivity with Janet Pogue McLaurin

Frank Cottle [00:00:00 ]:
Janet, welcome to the Future Work podcast. Really excited to have you here. I mean, wow, what a resume. 42 years with Gensler. We even know some of the same old architects from old.

Janet Pogue McLaurin [00:00:13 ]:
And counting. Yes, we do. You’ve been around as long as both of us. It’s a small industry.

Frank Cottle [00:00:19]:
Well, we’ve got a lot to talk about today, but I’d like to start. One of the things that you’re focused on is data. And I’d like to start with your global workplace survey, because it was a huge, huge survey across all variety of users. What did you find and what’s the focus that you find for this year’s survey?

Janet Pogue McLaurin [00:00:44]:
Well, you know, Frank, we’ve been doing this for 20 years, and it first started with linking design and business performance. And that’s what we went back to this year. And we thought it, it’s really time to stop talking about the return to office and metrics and really focus on workplace performance. And so we surveyed, as you said, a huge sample. It was over 16,000 office workers in 15 different countries across ten industries. And the key thing that we found is employees that are the most engaged, had the strongest team relationships, and worked for the companies with the strongest culture of innovation. They actually have better workplaces and better work experiences. And, you know, if you like, the Olympics just stopped, right? And the Paralympics is just getting going. And if you think about those top performers, they have better equipment, they have better training facilities. And so if we think about our own organizations, regardless of size, we have top performers. And those top performers in our own companies really do need to have better workplaces in order to perform at their personal best and collect the best.

Frank Cottle [00:02:01 ]:
Well, you know, it’s funny because having the right tool for the job is that probably has been around since the first carpenter that was working on the pyramids or something.

Janet Pogue McLaurin [00:02:14 ]:
That’s right.

Frank Cottle [00:02:16 ]:
That concept is not new, but it’s interesting how it isn’t as well practiced as one would think. Trending issues around giving people tools. They look at it, oh, we’ll give them a fast computer. Oh, we’ll give them this. They don’t think about their work environment as much as a tool.

Janet Pogue McLaurin [00:02:39 ]:
And it is.

Frank Cottle [00:02:40 ]:
It really is.

Janet Pogue McLaurin [00:02:40 ]:
You know, space is a tool, just like technology is a tool. And so what can we do? And that was really what we’ve tried to uncover the last 20 years, like how we really working and how is the space either actively, you know, contributing to it in a positive way, or that we’re having to work around, like, what really works, what is it that needs to be fixed? And what’s missing that we need to be thinking about as work continues to evolve?

Frank Cottle [00:03:11 ]:
Well, you know, workplace design has always been interesting, and it’s always been shifting around. I mean, you know, we think of the old sweatshops of the early industrial era and where we’ve come from there, or some people say we haven’t come anywhere. When you look at that, and I won’t ask you to name names, but think of your top five biggest clients at Gensler. And Gensler has the biggest clients. So, you know, these are all going to be massive international corporations and compare for our purpose here. Are all of their workplaces spectacular, or does one have a spectacular and one has pretty boring space, not design wise and cool factor, but efficiency wise for giving the employees that tool? Is there really a difference? Or have all of the biggest companies elevated to a 5% average in this regard to where, you know, Microsoft is cool, Google’s cool, Facebook is cool. They’re all about the same in cool factor and tool factor, and how do you get an advantage?

Janet Pogue McLaurin [00:04:30 ]:
But every organization is different. You know, I’ll give you a good example. The best sailboats that race, oftentimes it’s only a few people building those, but they build it to each person’s specification. And so they race differently depending on that team and the conditions that they’re building that boat for. And the same thing happens with workplace. Every culture is different. What they’re trying to, the behaviors they’re trying to nudge, what they’re building for, how they’re working, how their work is evolving, the physical work environment is kind of attuned to that, you know, so whether it’s a tech company that is building chips and leading the way in AI, or whether it’s consumer goods that is head of their industry, they’re all thinking about space a little bit differently. And most of these have huge portfolio, so it’s not a uniform experience across an entire company. They’re trying to get there, but no one has the bucks to, you know, change everything across every or every bit of their real estate portfolio. So they’re, they’re pushing here, they’re changing this, they’re evolving and trying to make sure that it’s as equitable as possible. But in every country, even cultural differences of how we work are evident. And so the best companies are starting to think about, well, what is it we need to do for that function in that country, given how they work? And so there’s more customization that’s occurring now whereas in the past, it used to be these corporate standards and cookie cutter approaches. Now that’s very different.

Frank Cottle [00:06:23 ]:
Well, you know, you bring up sailboat racing, something very near and dear to my heart, and you probably did that on purpose.

Janet Pogue McLaurin [00:06:30 ]:
You probably planted it in my head when we talked the other day.

Frank Cottle [00:06:33 ]:
The very best racers in the world are match racers in a single class where all the boats are identical. Okay? That’s what gives you the best performing racer. If it’s just an equipment war, then it’s whoever has the biggest budget or has a breakthrough design. But the very best racers are the ones where everything is equal overall. And I wonder, as I look at business, where the equality is, because we have large companies that are big multinationals. Doesn’t matter whether they’re tech or retail or whatever, but about 85% of all business are smaller companies.

Janet Pogue McLaurin [00:07:22 ]:
That’s right.

Frank Cottle [00:07:23 ]:
So how does the smaller company compete innovatively without the same budget overall that these large companies have? And what’s interesting is, quite often, if you look at the venture capital world or you look at the private equity world, the little guys are outperforming the big guys.

Janet Pogue McLaurin [00:07:46]:
That’s right. I. That’s right. Scale doesn’t always mean best, right?

Frank Cottle [00:07:50 ]:
Always, somebody comes out of the woodworks and destabilizes the big guys.

Janet Pogue McLaurin [00:07:55 ]:
That’s right.

Frank Cottle [00:07:56 ]:
I wonder whether it’s the racer or the boat that’s important.

Janet Pogue McLaurin [00:08:02 ]:
I think it ultimately comes down to the racer and a boat that matches how they race, and that’s really what comes out on top, which is, fundamentally, workplaces are more similar than dissimilar. Right. They all have places that we come together and that we work alone, that we learn, we socialize. But the best workplaces actually have a few things that are a little different. They are better equipped to be able to have some of those confidential conversations, to be able to have places to relax and restore in between meetings and just, like, get your head back in the game from one task to another task, they’re able to think about being able to do deep concentration better. So we have found that there are certain activities that really need to be thought of more intentionally, and they have better experiences. And so they’re not only equipped to be effective and to be functional, but they also have better work experience. Think about it. It’s like two halves of a circle.

Frank Cottle [00:09:22 ]:
I do, but I want to broaden the circle a little bit or expand a little bit. I had a beautiful office one time in an IM PeI building that was just spectacular and wonderful setting. Overview of the ocean. All this sort of everything was perfect at the office, and yet my favorite relaxation spot was to take a walk through a park next door. So the point I’m making, or trying to make, is that the amenities which surround a workplace are equal to, or in many cases even greater than the office design itself.

Janet Pogue McLaurin [00:10:11 ]:
That’s right. Because that’s a part of the entire experience, the arrival, what you do throughout the day, that connection to nature. Right. And being able. So we think about workplaces, not just what’s in the tenant space, regardless of size, but what is the ecosystem of spaces that your employees have access to. So some of those, you know, a large company, a large campus, they may provide everything because they’re building a large corporate campus, but a small tenant, let’s say it has only 15 employees, you know, they need to rely on what is it they’re providing. But what else is in the building that the landlord is providing? What’s across the street, what’s down the street? Being able to use the park, the cafe, you know, all these other spaces, being able to take a walking meeting, you know, all, or go to the rooftop of the. Of the building that’s shared with all the tenants for, you know, to eat lunch. Those are all a part of the experience. And when we think about, like, mixed use developments, we’re now thinking in terms of how can we script the entire experience?

Frank Cottle [00:11:27 ]:
Well, you know, it’s funny you mentioned walking meetings. That was, that was at that time and still is one of my favorite meeting formats.

Janet Pogue McLaurin [00:11:36 ]:
Mine too.

Frank Cottle [00:11:37 ]:
At a one on one, nothing’s better than leaving the office, sitting in the park together for a while, and then taking a half hour, 45 minutes, just walk around the park together to generate in the. To get real, to be authentic in the meeting.

Janet Pogue McLaurin [00:11:57 ]:
It’s a change of setting, you know, and having that choice and that variety at your fingertips makes all the difference. It keeps your energy up.

Frank Cottle [00:12:06 ]:
But how does, you know, we’re post pandemic now and everything? The whole purpose of business is to generate profit. We generate profits through efficiencies and improved efficiencies continually. How do you measure workforce performance today versus, let’s say, ten years ago, or even just pre pandemic?

Janet Pogue McLaurin [00:12:31 ]:
Well, I think different companies measure different things. Right. So at Gensler, we’re a design firm, and so we’re looking at the impact of the physical work environment on helping people actually work better. And so we’re actually measuring it back to outcomes, and we look at a number of outcomes that are individual, like your personal productivity.

Frank Cottle [00:12:57 ]:
How do you measure that in a scientifically data, scientific manner, that you can draw the trend pattern across multiple companies and multiple industries.

Janet Pogue McLaurin [00:13:12 ]:
So we have some indices that we’ve developed, some of which are like a culture of innovation, that are secondary research that have been in the field for quite a long time, that we’ve used over time. So it’s multiple questions, and we’re asking about an individual’s perception of the impact of the space on x, like individual productivity, their work life balance, their speed of decision making across their organization, their quality of work at an organization, but even team productivity or strength of relationships. And so we’re asking on some specific outcomes and the impact, their, their individual feeling of the impact of their work environment on being able to do that effectively.

Frank Cottle [00:14:00 ]:
Okay, you’ve used the word feeling about five times. You.

Janet Pogue McLaurin [00:14:05 ]:
It is a perception.

Frank Cottle [00:14:07 ]:
Perception. Your data is coming from the individual. That, and it’s. And then aggregate it up, and then you’re taking it up. I’m going to stick on this for a second. Is there a correlation, because, again, what’s the purpose of business? Is there a correlation that you can see where you have the highest metrics of satisfaction, we’ll call it for a moment, from the employees and the competitive stock value of the company that they work for. And how do you define that?

Janet Pogue McLaurin [00:15:02 ]:
So, in 2008, when we first started this research, we started to define that. And we ask certain questions of just managers and above, and we actually have company names in our data. And so, you know, it is very difficult to say. We remodeled this space and perception went up, that this is more effective and it provides better work experience. And the next year, the spice, the stock up, price went up. There’s too many variables, but we can see a strong correlation that the most profitable companies, the most successful or innovative companies, based on a culture of innovation and a proven track record, actually have better workspaces and better work experience. We’re able to quantify that. We see the correlations very strongly.

Frank Cottle [00:15:56 ]:
Okay, then I’m going to ask a chicken and egg question. What comes first? The innovative culture or the innovative workplace?

Janet Pogue McLaurin [00:16:06 ]:
Who knows? And actually, who cares, right? You know, do you say that it’s due to the technology, it’s due to the space? Both of those are tools. It really starts with people performance. You know, ultimately, business performance is about people performance.

Frank Cottle [00:16:23 ]:
Correct.

Janet Pogue McLaurin [00:16:23 ]:
And so what is it that we can do to help people actually work at their best? And we know intuitively that the space or design is going to be one of those tools. But can we say which came first?

Frank Cottle [00:16:42 ]:
Okay, then I’m going to go down a rabbit hole with you here.

Janet Pogue McLaurin [00:16:46 ]:
Oh, you’re a tough interviewer.

Frank Cottle [00:16:50 ]:
Oh, that sounds cool. Great corporate headquarters. Great this, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I want to work remotely because I hate commuting. I don’t care. Okay. Remote work, hybrid work, which is where we’re going to end up. That’s really where, where we were, remote work was.

Janet Pogue McLaurin [00:17:07 ]:
We were hybrid even before.

Frank Cottle [00:17:09 ]:
Yes. Remote work has been around forever. And our own company is a good example. We don’t have a c level executive. Well, we have two sea level executives at the same state in one place. Everybody else is scattered in different states and different countries. So we have used a remote work hybrid work model ourselves since inception. So, gosh, I go back on that 30 years. So. But in the norm. How do you see that same benefit applying when a person is only in the office two days a week or three days a week, or maybe not the office ever.

Janet Pogue McLaurin [00:17:57 ]:
So I’ll answer it by looking back at history. Like we have always been in and out the office, right? And we have been measuring this for quite a while. Right before the pandemic, we saw that the average in the US, just looking at the us data alone, was about 81% of the time in the office. But the most innovative with that culture.

Frank Cottle [00:18:21 ]:
Of innovation into the office, our data would say that it was around 45% to 50% max time at the desk.

Janet Pogue McLaurin [00:18:28 ]:
Oh, absolutely. We saw, yeah, we saw about 40% at the desk, but about 81% in the office.

Frank Cottle [00:18:36 ]:
Yeah, we came up with 42%. So we’re aligned there.

Janet Pogue McLaurin [00:18:39 ]:
Yeah, we’re definitely aligned with that. But the most innovative defined by that culture of innovation in indices. You know, six different questions were actually only in the office 67% of the week, and they were at their desk even less, less than average. And so now when we fast forward, now we’re coming back, we’re seeing in our data that, and we only looked at office workers that were in the office at least a little bit of time. So this was nothing. Full time remote workers, we found that they’re in about half the time only at home. 20%, 30% is in all these other locations. And in fact, the most innovative were twice as much in those other locations. Like third places near their home. Business travel is back, people are working in other offices, they’re at their, across their company. I just got back from Shanghai in working in our own Shanghai office, but we’re also at client sites, job sites, customer sites. We are out and about the same amount that we were pre pandemic but home wasn’t normally one of those locations in the past as it is today. But that time together, we asked, why are people coming back together? And the last three years we’ve seen the same answer. It’s to focus on my work, which is both individual. It’s not to do focused work. It’s to focus on getting my work done. So that involves solo work, working alone, deep concentration, as well as working with others. And so that being together is really important, and that’s what builds trust.

Frank Cottle [00:20:34 ]:
Yeah, no, I go, I agree with the trust issue, although we haven’t ever worked together in person, and I have total trust in you to your issue around third workplaces and things of that nature. And I think I mentioned this before when we were discussing prior to the podcast, is we’ve been saying for years, decade now, I guess at least, that there is no such thing as an occupier anymore, that there are only travelers. And when we break that down ourselves, we look at the old digital nomad model. We say, hey, digital nomad, well, that’s sort of like Janet grabs a guitar and Frank grabs a laptop and a surfboard, and we go to Bali and live in a hostel, and we got a gig job of some sort. We’re cruising. That’s the original digital nomad. I can survive and travel, okay? A lot of journalism, a lot of specialized job. And then what? We break that down further. There’s a slow mad, okay? A slow mad is Janet decides she wants to work in Shanghai for six months. Frank decides he wants to work in Paris. But we both have jobs. We both work for a company. It just, our job allows us to work in multiple places. And maybe in Shanghai, you work in three places. Your home, a headquarters, a third workplace. Maybe I do the same in Paris. But we’re slow mads. We’re moving very slowly. And then we have what we call low Madsen, okay? And I am definitely a digital nomad these days. I’m a local nomad. I work from my home where I am now. I work from my local office, which is about 15 minutes away and has great meeting rooms and things of that nature for a single purpose. I have two favorite lunch restaurants and two favorite dinner restaurants where I meet people in town. I know them well. They know me well. I know the table I want. It’s a workplace overall. And then I’m naturally go to other people’s offices locally, regionally, in the greater Dallas Fort Worth area. So I think our, we have all three categories of those that type of worker today. Still, some of them are heavily impacted by design. Some of them are heavily impacted by commute. Some of them are heavily impacted by other social reasons, for other social things. As you look at design and where it’s gone, considering that and what you’ve said, Gentler and his design recently, not just recently, but overall, has taken a stronger leadership position and focusing on wellness as a part of design.

Janet Pogue McLaurin [00:23:31]:
Yes, we have.

Frank Cottle [00:23:32 ]:
How do you weave wellness into design? These other metrics that we’re talking about to have the beneficial outcome, my outcome is always, I want better stock value, I want more profitability, better stock value. Part of that, if you look at metrics, is revenue per employee. That’s a simple metric to look at for a lot of companies. How do they do against their own metrics? Because that doesn’t always judge well against other companies. But how does wellness come into the design factor and how should we be paying attention to that?

Janet Pogue McLaurin [00:24:13]:
It’s a great question because we can’t come up with a single metric or set of four to six questions that measure well being because that’s a complex topic. If you think about, I mentioned that business performance is ultimately people performance. Well, people performance hinges on well being as well. And so we’ve seen it shift. That’s no longer enough just to provide a fitness center or gym membership. You have to think about the whole individual, right? And since the pandemic, there’s this renewed increase in priority of well being because we realize how important that is. And like natural light and view and connecting to nature. You talked about walking. Meetings have always been important, but now in design, we’re seeing that indoor air quality, you know, having the ability to have fresh air, increased air exchanges.

Frank Cottle [00:25:16 ]:
So that for interrupting, did the air quality issue, not just fresh air, but air quality cleanliness issue. Was there a breakthrough on that? That is pandemic related?

Janet Pogue McLaurin [00:25:29 ]:
There was, there was clearly a shift. There’s this new awareness. I mean, even on the airplanes, you know, now it’s a very high air exchange. We’re not recirculating stale air. We’re trying to increase bringing in fresh air. Some of this, you didn’t sit next.

Frank Cottle [00:25:48 ]:
To the guy I sat next to on my last flight.

Janet Pogue McLaurin [00:25:51 ]:
But that’s, that may be why I’ve got a little bit of a cold myself. But, but, you know, it’s, it’s, there is a new awareness of it, but it also went hand in glove with sustainability and how we’re thinking about energy consumption and how we need to be thinking about our planet and, you know, wellness it just ties it back right down to the individual. So that’s one.

Frank Cottle [00:26:19 ]:
And I’m gonna interrupt. I apologize, but you just said sustainability. And I’m gonna go back to the 85% of small businesses. A small business that has 3000 sqft in a building somewhere has no ability whatsoever to impact air cleanliness, to impact efficiency of energy, to impact any of those things themselves, or very, very. It’s so small, the impact they can have that, you know, it’s nothing. If you’re building a campus, I can see the energy. If you’re building your own building, I can see if you take so much of the building, you can give the landlord, you only take a Leeds building, you only take a well building, etcetera. You can set certain standards, but most businesses can’t do that well.

Janet Pogue McLaurin [00:27:16 ]:
It seems overwhelming, but even small steps make a big difference. So think about the next time that lease comes up available. You can choose to pick a different building. You can band together as tenants and demand that the landlord starts to look at certain things. Being able to change the air exchange is not a fundamental shift in building design. That’s an operational things. So there are operational and design things that you can do. But even as a small tenant having, providing the ability to have outdoor work areas, you know, up on that rooftop that’s shared by the tenant and making sure the landlord puts Wi Fi and that you can connect to it, and that people have laptops, that is something in a. Even in a small tenant’s purview to be able to do. You know, if you think about relax and restore kind of spaces which are the also impact the well being of people, you know, it. It’s operational. Of how instead of timing every Zoom call to the half hour or, you know, full hour mark, cutting it shorter to so that people have the ability to get up, get something to drink, move around. Putting hydration up front and center, you know, is something every tenant can start to do. You know, it’s. It’s starting to think about adding plants, a prayer room, things that people. Well, whatever your employee mix really needs, it becomes really important.

Frank Cottle [00:29:00 ]:
You know, what you’re describing for a small tenant is the perfect shared office workspace, the perfect coworker, the perfect co working center, the perfect business center. Using an earlier label, you’re talking about those facilities, generally, the well designed ones, and most of them are these days, are taking into consideration almost every single thing you’ve mentioned so far and provide it at the smaller level along with the flexible work model.

Janet Pogue McLaurin [00:29:37 ]:
And many of the landlords are also trying to compete against the co working by starting to provide these in multi tenant buildings, too.

Frank Cottle [00:29:47 ]:
And that’s where there’s a company in the Netherlands whose specialization now, and I think John’s got around 20 buildings. He started this about three years ago. He goes into buildings and does nothing but work with the property company that owns the building to install a variety of amenities throughout the building and structures that makes the entire building feel like a community design, even though it’s just a cruddy old building, because all those things, amenity wise, can be added and people love it. Those buildings are all just crushing it right now.

Janet Pogue McLaurin [00:30:29 ]:
Yeah, and we’re seeing that principle, that idea expand to office parks and we’re seeing in districts in a downtown area, it could be a small little town, but now starting to apply that for, you know, a walking distance so that everything is right there because the businesses, even small businesses, can band together to go, what are we missing? Can we leverage something? Can we add this or start to foster, you know, pulling a business district together to kind of think about something? You know, there’s one other really important point, Frank, and that’s that loneliness has never been higher. And if you talk about, well, wellness and well being, the social connection with other people is absolutely critical. And that’s one of the things we’ve seen a huge spike, particularly with hybrid work or that part of the. The staff is remote, as you mentioned before. And being able to have a place that people connect with one another is really important. Even if you only have 20 people in your office space, you know, rethink how the reception works. Maybe it’s not a manned receptionist with the formal seating area as it was years past. Can we make it more an inviting space that guests can go over and serve themselves a great cup of coffee, or that employees are also using that space so it feels more like home. It feels comfortable, but it feels welcoming. And that is a place that people can start to come together and not feel like, you know, they’re going to the office and then going into a room and shutting the door and trying to get work done. But it’s really a reason to come together. That shared purpose and feeling like that sense of belonging.

Frank Cottle [00:32:28 ]:
Well, you know, there’s so many things here. The topic we go on for days we could on this, and there’s so many challenges to face. But I look back over my career. I’ve been in business since 1970, so close to 55 years now, 45 years of that have been spent in the flexible workspace industry. And I look at the changes that that industry, which is all about amenities, it’s all about bringing these things together, have made. And the biggest major change is addresses with the human side, not just the design side. The design has always been there. The design has always been there. Amenities have always been there. Location around external amenities has always been there. But the biggest change, instead of just saying, well, we’re going to have a cheap cheese and wine mixer once a month and call it networking, which is important, has been to the conscious effort to foster a stronger sense of community inside of the space in order to deal with the neurodiversity issues, in order to deal with loneliness, the wellness issues, and in order to create a more joyous workplace, if I can use that word. And I think that that’s a major thrust forward, that maybe large companies are learning that from the flexible workspace sector, maybe vice versa. Or maybe we’re all learning it together or from hospitality.

Janet Pogue McLaurin [00:34:16 ]:
Hospitality. Hospitality sector.

Frank Cottle [00:34:18 ]:
Hospitality sector. All of those things are coming together now to create a more interesting workplace.

Janet Pogue McLaurin [00:34:28 ]:
I agree with you.

Frank Cottle [00:34:29 ]:
Then we’d all be happy. So that’s the next challenge for you with Gensler, is to figure out how do we repurpose buildings to a higher efficiency of mixed use so that cities can be vital 24/7 instead of twelve five. And how do we get rid of commute so that people work where they live and live where they work, rather.

Janet Pogue McLaurin [00:34:57 ]:
Than the 20 minutes neighborhood as we’ve talked about.

Frank Cottle [00:35:01 ]:
Right. I mean, there’s all these, you know, we really have to come to that in order to bring everything we’re talking about today into its highest level of realization.

Janet Pogue McLaurin [00:35:16 ]:
That’s right. And it’s not unlike how a tall, small town already works. Right. It’s taking those principles and applying it to sections or districts of a city. And I think city planning is evolving with these ideas.

Frank Cottle [00:35:31 ]:
It’s making the affordable housing in the city so that people don’t say, well, take Manhattan as an example. Let’s see. I have a family of four, my wife and two young children. I want to live in Manhattan. What do I have to earn in order to do that? Where each of my kids actually has their own bedroom and there’s a family room, not just a small living room, and there’s a eating area in the kitchen. You know, how do I actually have a. Oh, no, forget it. I’m moving out to Glen Cove. I’m moving out to Long island. I’m moving to New Jersey. I’ll commute in. I’ll sacrifice my commuting whatever that is. I hate that commuting. I’ll sacrifice and commute because I can’t afford to live in the city. So we have to repurpose so many buildings that can gain a higher level of efficiency with office space, use overall, and use some of that space for residential. That’s my view, at least.

Janet Pogue McLaurin [00:36:43 ]:
That’s the next frontier. And taking the premise that maybe all the buildings of the future are already here, and how do we repurpose to your point? And, you know, Gensler’s been studying that, like, what’s the hundred year building? How can it morph and change? You know, we talk about how things have evolved over our four decades of the career. You know, we’ve shifted from thinking about, you know, how many people can you put in to a space to thinking about how to make it more effective to now thinking about the experience, right? And kind of the shift from real estate metrics to people metrics. Now we can start to think in terms of how can a building evolve, you know, the workplace of the future. Your podcast is called workplace of the future. Well, that is an elusive, you know, it’s always, it’s an evolving workplace, right? Or the workplace of the future is always out there. And, and cities need to evolve. The workplace needs to evolve because we as people are evolving and how we work and the technology and the tools we use are evolving. So, of course, the workplace has to evolve. You know, there was one really interesting stat in our last research. We found that only a third of the workplaces have been redesigned in the last three years, 21% in the US. That is a staggeringly low number.

Frank Cottle [00:38:13 ]:
Surprised at that? I’m actually surprised that it’s that high.

Janet Pogue McLaurin [00:38:17]:
It’s shocking. I mean, there’s been this wait and see, and yet we all work differently, right? And we work very differently than we did in the last three years. And so how do we think about the workplace? Certain things might be the same year to year, and other things need to evolve, not unlike how retail experiences evolve and change. You know, a store is not absolutely the same every time you walk into it. And so we need to be thinking about what’s evolving and changing, and how can the workplace keep pace?

Frank Cottle [00:38:53 ]:
Well, here, here’s, if you take that three year metric of change, I could easily identify, in my opinion at least, why. And I would say, well, let’s see, everybody’s waiting till their lease terms out, because when their lease turns out, they’re going to renegotiate their space with a landlord. The good news is they’ll be able to squeeze some tenant improvements out to make those changes. The bad news is they’re going to take half as much space as they currently have, as a result of which the landlord’s going to be broke and don’t have the money for those changes.

Janet Pogue McLaurin [00:39:32 ]:
Did you see the latest CBRE report that actually people are starting to expect they got too small, they’re now needing more space.

Frank Cottle [00:39:40 ]:
Well, that’s the constant evolution versus occasional revolution issue and that’s the way it should be. But I think that sadly, it takes an event oftentimes to cause a revolution, which is where we oftentimes make our progress.

Janet Pogue McLaurin [00:40:04 ]:
That’s true. And we had quite the event, didn’t we?

Frank Cottle [00:40:07 ]:
Oh, yeah, yeah, that’s for sure. Well, this has been quite the conversation. Janet, I’m so grateful to you for your time today. I know how busy you are and you just got back from Shanghai. You don’t look, I know that you’re tired.

Janet Pogue McLaurin [00:40:22 ]:
You’re talking my favorite, my favorite topic. So I get energized.

Frank Cottle [00:40:26 ]:
I’m really, really grateful for that. And I’d love to be able to engage again at a time in the future and pick on some more topics.

Janet Pogue McLaurin [00:40:36 ]:
We’d love that.

Frank Cottle [00:40:37 ]:
Well, thank you very much and we’ll look forward next time.

Janet Pogue McLaurin [00:40:42 ]:
Sounds great. Thanks. Frank.