Recently, companies have acknowledged the importance of branding their workplace as an extension and reflection of their corporate culture. However, for today’s workforce, it’s not enough to only brand the physical office space.
With the increasing migration toward compressed and unassigned workstations, more employees are working remotely, whether from their own home or a coffee shop or coworking space near their residence. Talent is moving to where they want to live first and finding a job second. To recruit and retain the most qualified workforce, companies need to carefully consider not just their immediate workplace, but also the surrounding buildings and neighborhoods. A company’s real estate, from macro-level location to micro-level workstation, is now a statement of its culture and a critical human resources tool.
Beyond the normal "space and place" necessities that companies seek in an office location, they should aim to envision and evaluate the cultural aspects of a location that will support their specific business goals. Business leaders need to look past office layout to identify the components of their corporate culture to curate a cohesive sense of place that drives social connectivity, bolsters productivity, and creates stickiness for the desired labor set.
Payroll is often a corporation’s biggest overall expense, followed closely by real estate. The cost of losing talent is too expensive to ignore, making placemaking critical in the early stages of a corporate real estate search. Chief human resource officers are becoming included more often in real estate strategy discussions, and firms are placing more value on the lifestyles their location’s submarket and ecosystem can support.
Placemaking consultants engage tenants in strategic placemaking design and strategy. Through identifying each client’s cultural and operational needs, consultants can provide effective business solutions for a company’s real estate that is contextual, unique and most importantly, truly valuable.
– By Sara Maffey, Vice President of Place Strategy, Atlanta, GA.