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. 

Supporting business growth is more important in retail (cited by 52% of respondents in this industry), banking (50%) and manufacturing (46%), while enabling innovation is paramount in the knowledge-based life sciences (48%) and technology industries (44%).

This increasingly complex and rapidly-evolving business environment demands an agile CRE function - one that is quick to test, learn and adapt, incorporating rapid iteration and experimentation to generate feedback and buy-in. It means thinking of the organization as a living organism that will continue to grow and evolve, rather than as a static environment. This calls for a better use of technology to collect and analyze data in real-time and extrapolate the implications, so CRE and business leaders are able to respond to changes in demand and make more informed decisions more quickly.

Blending the approach is a rational response to complex and changing demands being placed on the CRE function. Strategic partnerships can be used to complement internal skills and capabilities and to rapidly add expertise in response to sharp changes or where needed for specific projects.

• Evolve from operational implementation to becoming a change catalyst.
  Bring smart and innovative approaches to bear on business challenges and develop influencing skills to have a voice in key strategic business discussions and decisions.
• Strengthen relationships with the C-suite, business leaders and functional partners.
  Advocate workplace innovation across enterprise leadership including the C-suite by leveraging data to deliver the meaningful metrics senior leaders and the wider business need for critical decision-making and investments.
• Combine internal upskilling with external strategic partnerships to become future-fit.
  Perform a skills audit on your team, train and recruit where necessary. Build strategic partnerships to improve your performance across the entire real estate value chain.
• Embark on the AI journey.
  Adopt a ‘test & learn’ mindset, map the CRE activities that can be carried out by AI and develop strategies to develop the needed AI-enablement training programs and manage the associated risks.

The CRE function now has an opportunity to become a valued, trusted partner to business leaders, embracing technology to become an agent of transformation that enables smart, data-based decision making that sustains a high-performance workplace.

A ‘future fit’ CRE team should focus on core, high value-add tasks internally, while automation, robotics and AI begin to take on routine and repetitive tasks and outsourcing partners are brought in for specialist tasks and individual projects.