The Future of Work Survey 2024

JLL’s biennial Global Future of Work survey has been exploring the evolving world of work since 2011 and is recognized as a leading industry publication on the emerging CRE trends. This year, we draw on the experience of over 2,300 CRE decision-makers and the perspectives of JLL experts, highlighting the key areas of focus and strategies CRE leaders should be prioritizing over the next 12-24 months and beyond. Future of Work 2024 is part of JLL’s Future Vision program, a scenario-led exploration of the future of Real Estate. 

The 2024 Future of Work program will investigate these factors in a series of articles, beginning here with a look at the implications of shifting work patterns and their effects on workplace expectations. We will examine what this means for CRE leaders and their teams and how they should respond to meet the evolving needs of their organizations and staff.

Organizational headcount growth

‘Hybrid adopters’ and ‘Office advocates’

Business expectations

How to deliver change

Despite the tight labor markets, the recent mass layoffs in several industries and the rise of AI and automation, survey respondents feel positive about the future. 64% expect their headcount to increase by 2030. But a rebalancing of skills is also taking place, as employers are looking to recruit the right profiles that will enable them to be future-fit.

The three most-cited corporate goals in the 2024 survey are: growing revenue through new markets and M&A, attracting and retaining talent and achieving organizational efficiency. The latter raises ongoing questions around the best ways to achieve smart growth and to reconcile potentially competing expectations, leaving organizations with a delicate balancing act. What’s the best way to secure organizational efficiency and attract the right talent? Should employees work together in the office, taking advantage of face-to-face interactions? Or should they be offered maximum flexibility, to allow them to decide where and when they can perform at their best? And what type of workplaces should CRE teams offer?

While approaches to office attendance vary widely, decision makers appear ready to invest. 65% of respondents said they expect their overall CRE budget to increase between now and 2030, but it will have to be invested cleverly and responsibly, in a context where CRE teams are still struggling to be perceived as value drivers and not merely cost centers.

Even though there is often a gap between what employers expect and what is happening in reality, CRE leaders must assess whether the return to more office time will continue and what this means for office utilization. They also need to consider how space design can support the coexistence of different workstyles within their organization. For example, planning for full-time attendance for populations of engineers, while tech support teams might work in a hybrid manner. Despite this complex and evolving landscape, it’s clear that the office is central to work: 85% of organizations have a policy of at least three days of office attendance per week. And 43% expect the number of days in the office to increase by 2030, though this may still be within a hybrid work strategy for many organizations.

The hybrid adopter and office advocate styles actually reflect a wide spectrum of visions and might even coexist within the same organization - depending on job requirements. Organization type and location are also influencing factors. The survey shows that ‘Hybrid adopters’ are more likely to be large organizations of 10,000+ employees and based in EMEA, where hybrid workstyles are now considered a key component of the Employee Value Proposition. Hybrid also appeals to certain types of organization, such as those in e-commerce, energy & renewables, technology and life sciences. Notably, these are all new economy, knowledge-based industries where staff attraction and retention are crucial to success in high-growth sectors.

On the other hand, ‘Office advocates’ are more likely to be small to medium sized companies with 1,000-9,999 employees and to be based in APAC or the Americas. Interestingly, they are largely in industries which are either customer-facing or have a large proportion of non-office staff working onsite, such as healthcare, retail and manufacturing. Their preference suggests these organizations do not want disparity in work practices – management at home and workers on the shop floor - and are using office-based working to build solidarity across the whole workforce.

Strikingly, differences in workstyles translate into distinct and complementary approaches to the workplace. Perhaps as a consequence of the need to make the five-day-a-week workplace inclusive, Office advocates are making a concerted effort to address diverse workplace needs: from accessibility and generational requirements, to culture and neurodiversity specificities, 1 in 2 Office advocates consider themselves as highly efficient in addressing a wide spectrum of needs, while only 1 in 3 feels so among Hybrid adopters. They are also more likely to pay a premium to occupy buildings with leading health and wellbeing credentials, demonstrating higher readiness to invest in the provision of high workplace experience standards. Once again, those nuances in the approach can apply within the same company and CRE teams need to orchestrate them smartly and subtly.

The Future of Work survey results indicate challenging times ahead for CRE professionals, as they grapple with portfolio and location strategies, as well as the demands of their organizations’ shifting work patterns.

As CRE teams ready themselves to help deliver the most attractive work environment for their organization, while securing organizational efficiency and building a future-ready CRE function, we set out four ways in which decision-makers can succeed:

The 2024 Future of Work survey underscores the evolving nature of work patterns and the consequential expectations placed on CRE. Organizations are actively seeking support from CRE to address their dynamic short and long-term requirements, while also grappling with the simultaneous and possibly contradictory need for both efficiency and growth.

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