When the pandemic struck in 2020, almost overnight, office workers switched to remote working and PropTech quickly became a business imperative. To manage the fallout of the crisis, landlords, property managers, and occupiers embraced tools that enabled COVID-safe digital interaction such as virtual tours, electronic rent payments, visitor management systems, and automated lease abstraction. When 2021 arrived, it ushered in a different scenario, which emphasised accommodating the ‘new normal’ and preparing companies for long-term hybrid working. The ‘new normal’ was simply becoming ‘normal’.

2021 was also the year that PropTech attracted attention beyond the usual real estate insiders and technology investors. This specialised technology was on the broader business community’s radar. Senior decision-makers across a breadth of industries began to acknowledge the close links between workplace and workforce, recognising that this relationship plays an essential role in the success of the hybrid model. It wasn’t just the real estate team and sometimes the finance department interested in how PropTech could be leveraged – human resources and the C-suite were now in on the action.

As we look to 2022, many businesses are still trying to define which hybrid model will work best for their organisation in the long run. As a result, PropTech will be pushed further into mainstream strategic business conversations and inspire developments in three key areas:

Greater collaboration between HR and real estate

Regardless of which hybrid model businesses choose, their office space will need to be optimised to balance health and wellness with employee performance. HR’s overarching role is to ensure employees feel safe and motivated when they’re in the office. Facility managers can ensure these objectives are fulfilled by planning appropriate layouts, selecting desk-reservation apps, and analysing new space requirements while monitoring attendance, indoor air quality, and access. Silos between departments must be broken down to facilitate true collaboration and create a safe and engaging environment.

AI moves beyond lease abstraction

Uptake of artificial intelligence (AI) driven real estate technologies that help give investors, owners, and occupiers a quick and detailed picture of what is going on with their property and lease portfolios will continue through 2022. Once the true impact of the pandemic on retail spaces, offices, and other workplaces became clear, landlords and tenants needed accurate information that provided fast answers in areas such as Force Majeure clauses across their lease portfolios and other sections relating to their rights, responsibilities, and options. Nobody had the time to manually sift through endless pages of lease agreements to determine who needs to pay rent when offices are unoccupied or partially occupied, or who does and does not have the right to renegotiate or terminate leases.

AI proved invaluable in the lease abstraction process because it could quickly pinpoint the relevant information for landlords and tenants. As a result, businesses are now turning to AI for tasks beyond lease abstraction, including using it to digitalise contracts and other legal documents along with automation and the elimination of dashboards – all of which support the collaborative efforts of real estate, finance teams, and management as they make strategic decisions about lease obligations.

Improved energy efficiency

One of the major advantages of the hybrid office model is that when managed smartly and efficiently, it can help reduce costs – but there are other ways to streamline operations when rethinking the workplace set-up. It also presents an opportunity to evaluate energy usage based on space utilisation. Sustainability is, quite rightly, an important topic, and businesses will need to become more conscious about their carbon footprint and look for ways to reduce it. By using PropTech tools, companies can reduce energy bills and support sustainability, now a common goal for environment, social, and governance (ESG) programmes. Data can be sourced from IoT sensors, badge swipes, and employee and visitor check-ins to better understand actual usage for utilities such as air conditioning and lighting.

If fewer employees are occupying an office because of hybrid work arrangements, it may be possible to reduce utility usage. Such considerations are no longer the sole purview of real estate departments: Employees and investors are demanding that companies meet high standards of energy efficiency. Addressing these demands – along with the urgent environmental need to reduce carbon footprints – requires attention and action from all decision makers involved in developing long-term strategy. To make informed and astute strategic decisions, multiple departments and stakeholders need data and insights from across the organisation.

2022: The year PropTech goes mainstream

For companies planning and implementing a hybrid work model, it has become clear that real estate management has a major influence on corporate culture – from employee satisfaction to recruitment to ESG. Consequently, businesses are realising that PropTech doesn’t just support real estate organisations – it has a wider impact on the business and helps meet both immediate and long-term strategic objectives. While PropTech may not be part of every organisation’s mainstream business and technology conversations yet, 2022 will further elevate it as business leaders realise how it will underpin deeper relationships between workforce and workplace.

Download the ebook to learn more about how PropTech can help your business prepare for the workspace of the future and ensure that your workforce remains safe and engaged.

There is little doubt the pandemic has had an irrevocable impact on workplaces worldwide, accelerating the switch to remote working and the adoption of new digital technologies to help manage the transition. But are we really going to see a homeworking free-for-all from now on? Despite the fact the sudden mass shift to home working demonstrated to most businesses that staff and executive teams could continue to be productive outside of the office, companies are managing the changes to the structure of work carefully.

Attitudes and concerns to remote working are still changing

Interestingly, a survey by MRI Software and CoreNet Global, the leading association for corporate real estate professionals, revealed that commercial occupiers were, in fact, tightening remote working policies. At the same time, landlords – initially shown to be more complacent than their tenants about the long-term damage by the pandemic in similar research in Q1 of 2021 – were growing more alarmed about the impact of remote working on their business when surveyed again at the end of Q3.

The Q3 survey of a group of nearly 200 tenants and landlords from a range of industries worldwide found that commercial occupiers’ willingness to allow all employees the choice to work remotely fell significantly from 39% to 26% between March and September 2021. Indeed, 70% of survey respondents planned to institute policies limiting remote working eligibility while increasing requirements to be onsite – up from 60% in March.

Despite the fact some corporate occupiers appear to be reconsidering the degree to which they will allow home working, the research also showed that landlords’ apprehension over the rise of remote work increased significantly over the same period. It revealed that 43% were concerned about its impact on their business compared to just 26% in March.

These findings indicate that corporate views on remote working are continuing to take shape at each new phase of the pandemic – as companies digest learnings and see how their operations are affected as the situation continues to play out.

Remote working is still reshaping workspaces

Nonetheless, the report findings make it clear that the wholesale shift to remote working since March 2020 has had a transformative effect on ways of working and the future of the office.

The analysis contained in the full research report, entitled MRI Software Market Insights: Views from Real Estate Occupiers and Landlords on the Return to Office, demonstrates that while attitudes to home working are still adjusting, the working world remains a much different place in the wake of COVID-19. The survey results show that, overall, nearly 80% of responding commercial occupiers have increased the availability of remote work since the pandemic. It also shows that 69% of respondents said that the worldwide shift to remote working during the crisis has fundamentally changed their long-term approach to space usage – only slightly down from 71% in March.

The key consideration for business leaders is how to better utilize their physical spaces. Tenants and landlords have an opportunity to partner on ways to return to the office safely and effectively. As more employees return to the workplace, both commercial occupiers and landlords realize that PropTech tools will be essential to planning and maximizing space usage, meeting the requirements of a hybrid office, keeping the workforce safe, and developing the best real estate strategies for the future.

Q1 2022 target for getting more people back to the office

The report also shows that commercial occupiers expect to see more employees returning to the office to collaborate and make use of resources as soon as it is feasible. In fact, 57% of corporate tenants expected to have more than half of their workforce back in the office by the end of Q1 2022. Landlords were even more optimistic, with 67% expecting the majority of workers to be back onsite by the end of Q4 2021.

Other key findings indicate that fewer companies saw a need for wholesale change in the Q3 survey than earlier in the year:

• 42% of corporate tenants indicated in September that they would require less space after the pandemic, down from 56% in March
• 49% of commercial occupiers were converting or expanding their use of hot-desking, down from 54% in March
• At the same time, 61% of landlords expected their tenants to lease the same or more space despite the prospect of more remote working in the future, but this figure was also down from March (67%)

Clearly, while the fact that successful remote working in just about every corporate sector has opened eyes to the potential of a brave world of home working, as the pandemic continues to play out and more normalcy returns, many are now expecting less of a radical change to the status quo. As the prospect of getting people back into the office seems more practical, more occupiers and landlords seem to reconfirm its value.

Tapping PropTech to support change

Although wholesale support for an entirely new work dynamic going forward appears to be softening somewhat, there is little doubt that attitudes both among managers and employees to remote working will never be the same – and that companies will have to deal with that reality. The research demonstrates that the vast majority of corporate occupiers do realize that and see a strong need to adopt technologies to handle the changes they face in managing the workplace. The survey showed that 70% of companies occupying business premises plan to adopt new technologies to address changes in space usage.

More strikingly, the survey showed that an increasing proportion of landlords are beginning to see that they need new technology tools to deal with the workplace of the future. The percentage of landlords that thought their existing technologies were sufficient to manage changes in space usage dropped from 61% to 45% between the March and September surveys. The Q3 results also reveal that 61% of landlords expect to adopt new technologies to handle changing space needs, compared to 55% in the previous survey. The top functions named by landlords planning to adopt new technologies going forward included the ability to:

• Track and manage who is onsite (employees, visitors, contractors) – 63%
• Strategically manage long-term space utilization and layout – 53%
• Schedule and reserve desks – 47%
• Better enable hybrid meetings between onsite and virtual attendees – 42%
• Reserve and manage meeting space – 21%

The pandemic continues to see new phases as it develops. At the same time, businesses’ views on how to manage it and how they will reshape the way the office functions will continue to evolve as we move into 2022. Pandemic-driven technology adoption has enabled people to stay connected and collaborative no matter where they work and will continue to do so. However, organizations still recognize the benefit of bringing employees back to the office as part of hybrid working arrangements that support engagement, workplace culture and productivity. And to make a success of hybrid work, organizations need to put the right technology tools in place – like the MRI @Work solution set – to help inform decision-making and ensure businesses can continue to thrive in the face of all future challenges.

See the full survey results in the report here.

As businesses continue to redefine their return-to-work plans, corporate real estate professionals are returning to in-person industry events. In the fourth quarter of 2021, groups like BOMA, IFMA and most recently CoreNet Global have begun welcoming back industry specialists at a time when many pivotal decisions are being made about their office spaces, data and remote-work policies.

MRI Software was thankful for the opportunity to moderate a panel at the 2021 CoreNet Global Summit in Seattle titled, “Leveraging Technology for Strategic Workplace Decisions”. The panel featured Kay Sargent of HOK, Simon Davis of Impec Group, and Alecia Chandler of EBUSINESS Strategies. Andy Welkley, Senior Product Marketing Manager at MRI, moderated the discussion on the continued evolution of the office, the need for flexibility in a hybrid environment and how people are a pivotal part of a successful office transition. The conversation maneuvered down some interesting paths – let’s take a look at five takeaways from the panel.

Going hybrid provides an opportunity to cut costs

All organizations with a physical footprint are determining the best working model for their employees. A majority of the businesses we’ve spoken to are implementing hybrid work scenarios, which provides flexibility for the employees but creates new challenges for employers. The short-term problem of flexible working has been addressed with a short-term solution: hybrid work. However, the longer-term need for businesses is to evaluate the space they have for future decisions about their footprint.

If you are eliminating the need for all staff to be in-office all week, there is an opportunity for cost savings through various channels. Do you close the office on certain days to save on operational expenses like janitorial services? Do you re-evaluate the lease you have on your physical space to something more suitable to your new work environment? Do you shut down some offices? Take this opportunity to find cost savings during this period of monumental shift for your employees and your business.

Your meeting room problem is actually a booking problem

How often do you look for a meeting room at the office only to find they’re all booked? How frustrating is it to then walk through the office and see empty conference rooms, or one employee leveraging it as an office by themselves? The answer shouldn’t be to simply add more conference room space – the problem that needs to be addressed is how to book the space. This can free up under-utilized areas and also provide extra freedom for employees.

Setting parameters around who can book particular spaces, as well as setting requirements for occupancy can help alleviate some of these issues. Room booking software that enables you to not only see booking data, but also empower staff to easily view, book and modify meeting rooms can become a real advantage to getting people back into the office. The last thing an employee wants to do is come into the office for collaboration and not have the ability to collaborate.

You can’t manage what you can’t measure

Hybrid working models present opportunities to evaluate the places we occupy and the trends of how people use them. If you don’t have a means to measure the usage of offices and the trends of your staff, your business is likely leaving money on the table. Using access control systems, employee and visitor management sign-in software and physical sensor technology allows you to collate new data points that have never been more relevant. Operationally, it makes the management of buildings more efficient.

Data is only valuable if you know how to use it

Now you have data points, but what good is data if you can’t act on it? Hybrid working models give businesses a chance to constantly re-evaluate how people work. Today’s “return to work” plan may look nothing like your work practices two years from now. Many CEOs even see the shift to remote working being a temporary event and still want to see fully utilized offices post-COVID. Your data matters. Tracking your space utilization can effectively shape your long-term corporate leasing strategy, which in many cases, may swing expenses by millions of dollars. But you also have the opportunity to use this data to impact your employees’ lives. Knowing how they work allows you to cater to your most important asset: your people.

Space is cheap compared to the price of people

It’s hard to recruit and retain talent. The flexibility of working from home during COVID changed the perspective of many employees about not only what they want to do, but how and where they want to do it. Putting technology in place that makes working from the office even easier than working from home gives your staff a reason to want to work at your company. It can be hard to sell employees on culture when they are absorbing it virtually. Businesses need to put real value not only on the costs associated with flexible spaces, but also on the cost of losing talent for lack of flexibility. Commuting into an office can be burdensome, but for an employee to know they can easily and effectively book a desk and a meeting room for collaboration allows your company culture to shine through – keeping your employees satisfied.

Facilities Managers, Directors of Real Estate, and Building Managers have the ability to truly impact the future of the business both financially and culturally with the decisions that they make over the coming months. Putting your people first has never been more important, and the ability to leverage technology to also save money in the process brings this area of an organization to the forefront of future executive-level decisions.

CoreNet Global was a fantastic educational conference, and you could feel that all in attendance were thrilled to finally get back together in a safe environment. CoreNet members will have free access to the audio recordings of the sessions, so check out the panel discussion. Next year’s CoreNet Global Summit in Chicago will be another great opportunity to evaluate the progress made in the industry toward reinventing the workplace. Learn how MRI Software can help you make the most of your hybrid work policies.

In the spring of 2021, the commercial real estate sector looked ahead to a bright future as the global vaccine rollout was underway, and businesses everywhere considered how best to bring their employees back into the office.

But just as all things in today’s world are subject to change on a moment’s notice, so has the thinking of landlords and tenants in the face of unexpected speed bumps in the return to “the new normal,” including the rise of the delta variant and discussions surrounding vaccine and health requirements.

MRI conducted two surveys – the first in March and the second in September 2021 – to see how landlord and tenant views on return to office plans have changed over time. Now that businesses have 2022 in their sights, let’s take a look to see where both parties stand today.

Firming up return to office timing

Our first survey from Q1 2021 indicated that a large percentage of tenants were unsure as to when they’d bring more than 75% of their workforce back into the office, and landlords, didn’t expect to go back into the office until later in the fall or winter.

Data from the Q3 2021 survey, however, shows that tenants and landlords now have stronger ideas as to when employees will be brought back into the office. 57% of corporate tenants expect to have more than half of their workforce back in the office by the end of Q1 2022, while landlords were more optimistic, with 67% expecting the majority of workers to be back onsite by the end of Q4 2021.

Return to the office policies are being cemented

In our survey from the first half of 2021, landlords and occupiers alike agreed that some time in-office should be required for employees, but plans were not yet set in stone. Our data from Q3 2021 shows that 70% of respondents planned to institute hybrid work policies that include onsite requirements, formalizing plans as return dates get closer.

Policies around hybrid work and office requirements have largely firmed up across the board, with nearly 80% of all respondents increasing the availability of hybrid work. We also see that 69% of respondents said that the worldwide shift to remote working during the pandemic has fundamentally changed their long-term approach to space usage, which is consistent with the initial survey. Nearly half of the respondents plan seating capacity for less than 75% of their workforce.

Occupiers and landlords need flexible technology to meet new challenges

In Q1 2021, landlords felt mostly confident that they had the technology in place to handle a return to the office, but this is no longer the case. With changing space requirements and the need to better understand the health of employees and visitors that enter the building, both occupiers and landlords now see a strong need to adopt technologies to handle changing requirements.

According to the data, 70% of corporate occupiers plan to adopt new technologies to manage changes in space usage. The percentage of landlords that thought their existing solutions were sufficient to manage changes in office usage dropped from 61% to 45% between the two 2021 surveys. The most recent results reveal that 61% of landlords expect to adopt new technologies to handle changing space needs, compared to 55% in the previous survey.

The latter half of 2021 is not turning out the exact way that many predicted, but landlords and tenants are adjusting their expectations and assessing new technologies and their own space requirements in order to facilitate a successful return to the office. As we continue into 2022, communication between all parties and solutions that flex to a business’s individual needs will be crucial in transitioning into a new normal.

Get the full survey data from the report:

MRI Software Market Insights: Views from Real Estate Occupiers and Landlords on the Return to Office, by MRI Software and CoreNet Global