The world of work has been turned on its head over the past two years. Not only is hybrid working here to stay, but employees have new workplace expectations amid evolving wellbeing, environmental and social concerns. As the purpose of the office is redefined, workplace and portfolio management strategies are becoming increasingly complex and sophisticated, necessitating greater reliance on CRE technologies and data-driven insights to meet employee expectations and boost performance on all fronts.

As companies emerge from the crisis created by the pandemic, corporate real estate (CRE) executives’ view of the workplace is evolving. More than half of organizations will make remote working a permanent option for all employees by 2025, according to JLL’s latest Future of Work research. However, more than 70% of CRE executives agree that the office will continue to be a central part of their workplace ecosystems in the long term.

As employees adapt to the post-pandemic world and office usage patterns continue to evolve, the office is being reimagined for new purposes. A new vision of the agile, smart office and CRE portfolio is taking shape, supported by dynamic workplace services aligned with today’s employee needs.

In the hybrid work model, the “office” has morphed into a workplace ecosystem encompassing the office, home and third-party spaces. For many organizations, the corporate office is becoming the primary destination for group work, including training, mentoring, collaboration and focusing around a specific project. In fact, 45% of CRE executives view collaborative working as a primary purpose of office space.

The office still matters as a tool for talent recruitment and retention, but employees increasingly expect flexible work policies, too. While hybrid working appeals to employees, it means that corporate office occupancy can vary widely throughout any given week or month, leading to sometimes-empty spaces, excess facility management capacity and unnecessary operating expenses. It’s no wonder that JLL’s Future of Work research shows that the most important strategic priority for corporate real estate executives over the next three years will be to successfully operationalize hybrid working and enable their organizations to remain agile and flexible.

Responding to today’s demands, forward-looking organizations are incorporating a new concept into their facility management (FM) model: dynamic service provisioning. While an FM team must provide certain services, including building security or equipment maintenance, regardless of daily occupancy, other FM services potentially could be calibrated according to space usage. In dynamic provisioning, the FM team proactively curates and manages a flexible level of workplace services - including emerging offerings related to employee wellbeing and remote work in response to real-time occupancy.

Just as some components of your real estate portfolio may be fixed or flexible, workplace services can become a combination of fixed and flexible offerings scaled according to data-driven insights.

Through dynamic provisioning, an FM team selectively and continuously adjusts the delivery of certain services, such as cleaning or foodservice, while delivering core services at a consistent level. Dynamic provisioning and other on-demand, scalable workplace approaches are made possible with predictive insights derived from the data produced by today’s building and workplace technologies. Data generated by wireless sensors, room reservation systems and security badge swipes can be analyzed to uncover workplace trends and needs and then inform service levels accordingly. 

In dynamic cleaning services, for example, data from wireless sensors will alert the FM team that a space has been used, enabling the cleaning team to focus cleaning precisely where and when needed. Using predictive analytics to forecast office usage, the FM team can right-size an onsite cafeteria or provide food options in multiple sites across a campus rather than three meals a day in a centralized cafeteria.

Dynamic provisioning is most applicable to offices, universities, and possibly retail facilities with varying usage and a need for high-touch service when occupancy is high. It is less relevant in facilities with constant operations, including data centers or high-volume distribution warehouses, that need a constant level of FM attention. However, building automation, smart building technologies and the data they generate are valuable to many property types, including manufacturing facilities, life sciences laboratories and data centers.

Alongside the short-term challenges of improving operational agility, resilience and efficiency, organizations are planning ahead for longer-term workplace changes. Now is the time to re-assess the people, processes and technologies you’ll need for the hybrid future of work.