CONNECTING TOMORROW’S LEADERS: The changing nature of the workplace is a challenge for the industry. How are property careers adapting to help businesses achieve their goals?
Landsec recently appointed a workplace director, Carissa Kilgour, whose entire job is to think about the future of work. Speaking on a panel at EG’s Connecting Tomorrow’s Leaders conference, she said: “I don’t think they know precisely what they want. They want flexibility, they want to be able to adapt and change, as quickly as technology is disrupting their own businesses and the way their people want to work. I think they know that the workplace is about attracting talent, enabling productivity of talent when they are in the workplace are key.”
The demand for flexibility has led a number of landlords to launch their own co-working operators. However, VTS senior director Sebastian Abigail warned it was not an easy transition to make, as co-working operators functioned more like a hospitality business than an office provider.
Derwent London director Nigel George said technology is changing the workplace, but it is not a threat to the future of the office.
“We are all human at the end of the day,” he said. “We want to be together. And the way really is to make your office spaces attractive. You cannot stop the technology, you have got to embrace the technology and let the technology work with you. But if you provide the building with cutting-edge technology that is when things really happen.”
Cushman & Wakefield partner, London global occupier services, Katie Mansfield, said a large part of her job involves advising corporate occupiers on adapting their workplaces in line with technological advances.
“Generally they are looking at cost, looking at the people and talent and at the location,” she said. “What we generally do is align their drivers and their business strategies around the portfolio. At the moment we are helping a lot of clients reconfigure their portfolios – predominantly they have a significant amount of surplus stock and a lot of that is around the technology piece, maximising the densities in order to utilise their workplace.”
Boxpark development director Matthew McMillan helps occupiers maximise returns but works with very different clients. The Boxpark concept creates viable spaces for food entrepreneurs through using meanwhile spaces intensely. “They are incubators for new food brands,” he said.
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