The Future of Work Survey 2024

Companies are planning to expand in the coming years and many are ready to invest, but not at any cost: their CRE teams are acutely focused on proving ROI, and on demonstrating the value that comes from smart, responsible decisions. While 65% of decision makers are expecting their Corporate Real Estate (CRE) budget to expand by 2030, 62% also believe they will have to achieve a better utilization of their CRE portfolio.

To achieve this ambition, CRE Leaders realize they have some challenges to overcome - their functions are often perceived to be cost centers rather than driving value; their teams don’t necessarily have the skills and capabilities required for the future and there is an opportunity to transform and develop new operating models and more strategic partnerships – both internally and with external organizations.

Drawing on the Future of Work 2024 survey results, JLL has identified three key priorities required for the CRE function to become a powerful agent of transformation within organizations.

CRE executives have hard decisions to make, with short-term and long-term priorities often pulling in different directions. For instance, supporting business growth and innovation is important. But so is delivering efficiencies, or even cost-cutting. Similarily, continuously-changing working patterns present another tricky challenge, with employees spending more time in the office than two years ago, right-sizing will be a core priority. But it’s not yet clear what the right size will be.

Business leaders believe the areas where CRE can add the most value include the following: supporting business growth (41%), driving organizational efficiency (38%) and reducing operating costs (37%). Yet, environmental, social and governance (ESG) initiatives also remain key to the roadmap that many CRE leaders are expected to develop in the future.

Beyond the general trend, there is some variance across regions and industries. Organizations in the Americas region are more likely to expect CRE to support business growth, innovation and efficiency. Companies in Asia Pacific are more focused on digitization. There is a greater expectation on delivering sustainability through the CRE function in EMEA – as the only region with environmental impact as a top-five priority.

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.

CRE decision-makers find it difficult to focus on long-term goals: due to the changing organizational landscape, 41% report challenges with thinking and investing for the long term. Flexibility, agility and resilience are now perceived as the second most important skill for CRE to deliver value.

This difficulty is compounded by the perception of CRE as a cost center, rather than a value driver, cited by 41% of the survey respondents. CRE leaders struggle to report the right metrics to demonstrate business value. In this context, increasing access to relevant data will allow CRE teams to communicate with the C-suite more effectively and identify areas for investment. Better partnership with the other business function will also be key to ensuring a coordinated approach, greater alignment and the ability to respond quickly to changes in business priorities. If CRE is more integrated with and aligned to the wider business, it is also more likely to gain C-suite sponsorship.

Shifting towards being influencers rather than simply implementers also requires new skills: 46% of CRE leaders say influencing and leadership will be critical in the future. Consequently, more CRE decision-makers expect to report to business transformation or technology by 2030, while fewer will report to finance or operations.

Concerns about a shortage of relevant internal skills and talent are higher than in the 2022 survey, reflecting an increasingly complex CRE environment. This is a challenge highlighted by 40% of respondents today. Shortcomings in data and technology are the most urgent priority. To thrive in a volatile environment, CRE teams need to adopt the right enabling technologies and to acquire the skills to use them. What’s more, CRE leaders believe that 70% of their activities will be at least partially supported by AI by 2030. And a quarter of the CRE function could be mostly automated. But while 87% of respondents consider that AI could help to solve major CRE challenges, the skills are not there yet. 63% of decision makers see technology and AI adoption as critical for enhancing the value that CRE delivers in the future.

Other key skills cited by at least 45% of respondents are: creative and analytical thinking and scenario planning. The demand for these skills, alongside holistic problem solving and entrepreneurial mindset, reflects the need for being smart and agile in a changing environment.

The sheer number of diverse skills required to transform the CRE function means more businesses are looking to tap into specialist external expertise. Across a range of activities, from workplace strategy to lease administration, 40% of CRE decision-makers report that a mix of in-house and outsourced resource is the most likely model over the next five years, compared with 25-30% who had adopted a blended approach in 2022. A further 20-25% are considering mainly outsourcing their CRE activities by 2030, to access the skills they cannot find internally.

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.

Four recommendations for corporate real estate professionals

1. 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.
2. 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.
3. 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.
4. 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.