Low risk, high reward workplace

Experiments for office real estate portfolio right-sizing

How is low occupancy impacting commercial office portfolio right-sizing strategies?

After the pandemic, many companies have struggled with low office space utilization and decreased occupancy across real estate portfolios. Knowing that, it is crucial to acknowledge that your right-sizing strategy is likely impacted by low office attendance.

Apart from human capital or labor, the cost of commercial real estate is regularly the greatest cost for a business. The cost of holding underutilized office spaces exacerbates this expense, because in a world where people aren’t using available real estate, the cost of space per occupant rises. The lower the utilization of a space, the less value you are receiving from it.

What is commercial portfolio right-sizing?

Portfolio right-sizing ensures that locations within your workplace portfolio are properly sized, located, and ready to support future workplace needs.

To right-size your portfolio, you must take inventory of current assets and existing spaces to understand how you can consolidate your portfolio to optimize for higher costs savings and an improved employee experience.

Right-sizing doesn’t always mean downsizing, either. Sometimes, right-sizing means recognizing heavily-used areas in your commercial real estate portfolio, and increasing those areas to continue to enjoy high utilization of high-engagement spaces.

A right-sized workplace is one that’s been reorganized or revamped to meet the needs of an increasingly hybrid workforce. As more companies implement return to office policies as well as hybrid work options, the workplace itself has to evolve.

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A space shifting to more collaborative as individual focused work moves to WFH time.

Keeping an office design stagnant doesn’t serve employees well, since their expectations change and develop over time. Traditional workplace norms don’t look the same as they did five, ten, or fifteen years ago, and they will continue to change as new generations enter the workforce. A right-sized workplace is dynamic, efficient, and always adapting to meet the needs of its users.

Some of the benefits of right sized workplaces:

Potential lower carbon footprint due to reduced portfolio footprint. Empty space still uses energy.

Increased retention of happier and more engaged employees. Well utilized spaces create a better experience for employees.

Massively reduced commercial real estate spend over time. By right-sizing you can conserve funds and focus them on mission critical efforts.

A more inclusive workplace to support DEI initiatives

Functional, well-used spaces that are designed with intention, Understanding which spaces are used and shifting to a data driven workplace design creates better experience

Start your experiment now

Three experiments you can start now to right-size your commercial office space.

Click each experiment to expand.

1. Consolidate your office spaces to reduce operational costs

2. Internalize your expenses by subleasing unused office spaces

3. Bring the off-site, on-site

The Low Risk, High Reward Workplace

Download a free template to design your experiments

Download a PDF version of the guide to running experiments in a low occupancy world to walk you through experiment design and how to produce a business case.

It includes a template to run your own experiment.

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