By CBREVoice Team
In 2011, CBRE faced what some might have considered a problem: 40 percent of its office leases worldwide were set to expire within five years.
However, CBRE, the world’s leading commercial real estate firm, saw this as an opportunity to practice what it preached to its clients, by reimagining and redesigning its offices as workplaces of the future. That included upgrades to design and function, as well as making operations more environmentally friendly.
“We have an opportunity once every 10 years to go in and most effectively impact the workplace culture,” said Chris Bone, senior director of CBRE’s Global Facilities practice.
That’s when CBRE’s Workplace360 initiative was created.
The upgrades began two years before the leases expired, and were inspired by innovations already achieved in CBRE’s Amsterdam office, which focused on promoting collaboration, efficiency, and employee health and well-being.
To achieve those goals, a lot of traditional beliefs about workplace design had to be challenged, including the need to designate space per person. Instead, the Workplace360 environment is based on a “free-address approach,” where there are no assigned desks, offices or cubicles. In their place are up to 15 different types of workspaces based on “carefully calculated employee-usage patterns,” said Georgia Collins, who co-leads CBRE’s Workplace practice in the United States.
“Our new spaces are more attuned to the ways our employees work throughout the day,” Collins said. “No longer do we program space assuming a person will sit at a workstation for a full workday.” The offices have also gone paperless.
The results to date? CBRE has achieved savings of $13 million in operational rent costs by occupying smaller footprints, and the free-address models means it has 28 percent more capacity to increase its employee roster.
In addition to monetary upside, the workplace evolution has helped CBRE reduce its footprint by up to 25 percent, contributing to a reduction in waste, energy and carbon emissions. That includes a 35 percent savings in water consumption per office, a 27 percent reduction in electricity consumption and 67 percent increase in waste diversion. Thirty of the offices are now LEED certified, and 11 more are on the way to receiving the certification.
Employees are happy, too. CBRE reports a 90 percent employee satisfaction rate and says 93 percent of employees would not want to return to a traditional office environment.
The Workplace360 initiative has won numerous awards and was a major factor in Forbes’ selection of CBRE as among the Best Companies to Work For in 2016. The upgrades also serve as examples for clients looking to make similar changes to their own office space.
“The built environment is an experience,” said Paul Suchman, CBRE’s global chief marketing officer. “It’s an investment in your people and their ability to deliver on the corporate message, the corporate promise. It’s about the human experience. And each time this is done successfully, there’s another fascinating and very human story to tell.”
To find out how your workplace can help build competitive advantage, download CBRE’s white paper “Building Competitive Advantage.”
