Flexible, attractive and intelligent: Offices millenials demand

This article was written and published in Spanish and has been translated into English via Google Translate. Click here to read the original article.

The world is changing, the economy is still faster and the offices have to accommodate and serve the new demands for companies to meet their objectives.

The value of a workspace is no longer found in its cost, maintenance or amplitude. These three pillars of the past have been relegated to a second plane in the real estate market, which has listened to its client and is revolutionizing the homes where the money of a company is produced: the office.

"The world of work is changing: technological innovations are redefining how and where work is done." With this headline was presented the paper on the closest future of the corporate real estate that took place yesterday within the Corenet Global Summit that is being developed this week in Madrid.

The buildings not only provide a common space for the professionals of a company: a good office attracts and retains talent, joins the work team and, therefore, allows to improve the commercial objectives of the companies, as explained yesterday by representatives of large companies such as Tom Carroll and Neil Murray, EMEA Director of Corporate Research and CEO of Corporate Solutions, respectively, of JLL, who he accompanied Kate Langan at the Group General Manager Property conference.

"The real estate sector has become a strategic lever for the transformation of companies," was summarized before the presentation of some of the concepts or challenges facing the business world, which is already prepared for a majority of millennial professionals.

Some data speak for themselves. It is foreseen that the flexible spaces will go from coping 19% of the total portfolio in the current office market to 31% in 2020, according to a report prepared by JLL. Reason for this is, among other things, technology, which allows efficiency to be accelerated if not productivity, and is the top priority in the investment of companies in the transformation of their offices, stressed the executives of the British consultancy.

Another important point is the attraction and retention of talent. A good workplace, intelligent and digitized, is "key" when accepting or not a job for 82% of professionals questioned by JLL in their report on the future in corporate real estate.

However, and despite the fact that the three managers agreed that this transformation of the workspaces is unstoppable, some data from the consultant's dossier reveal the challenges that remain to be met. Almost 80% of executives rate the human experience of their employees in the company as very important or important, but only 22% say that their companies are excellent at offering a particular or differential experience to their employees.

Coworking: flexible fashion space

In the eagerness of coupling their companies to the new demands of millennials and the market, many companies are betting on offering a coworking business model. It is the flexible fashion space: spaces without barriers, modular and hired à la carte.

This was discussed at Corenet Global Summit by experts such as the Vice President of Workplace Strategy & Enterprise at giant WeWork, Ronen Journo. The executive spoke of the key to "education" in spaces such as coworking, a market in which his company is a leader and has been present in Spain since last year.

Journo was joined in the session by other executives including Sue Asprey, director of corporate solutions for JLL in the United Kingdom, Miguel Lepe, Corporate Director of Amadeus IT, and Dirk Schlotter, Director of Real Estate Worldwide at Verizon. The conference offered data on the rapid growth of flexible spaces and their difference depending on the part of the globe that is viewed.

With America at the forefront as the main demand for flexible spaces, in the twenty main European cities will already concentrate between five and seven million square meters of this type of workplaces in the next five years.

This article was written and published in Spanish and has been translated into English via Google Translate. Click here to read the original article.

Join us in Miami Beach, June 5-7 for the Global Online Marketplaces Summit.