of all the things we see like work from home and flexible work and hybrid work which all could mean different things to different people what do you think is really really important moving forward i think it could be as basic as even just you know again when you're booking a meeting i want to know who's attending virtually and who's attending in person in a in an office uh so that i haven't heard one single person say that yet [Music] all right here we are connected conversations i'm really excited about this one i'm here with kimberly castle she is the director of workplace advisory services i had to read that it's a mouthful for cbre kimberly how are you hey i'm good it's good to be here so here we are um connected via zoom um can you do me a favor and give me your statement of qualification why you're here today to speak with me on all things corporate real estate the workplace and technology yeah i'm excited to get to talk to you guys about this today um i this dates me significantly so i've been in the industry for over 25 years which is mind-blowing to me i have a degree in interior design uh from mount royal college in calgary alberta canada oh canada look what's behind me i know it's amazing that's one of the most beautiful places in the world i absolutely love calgary and grew up in canada so went to college there and right out of college worked for a very big oil and gas company there as a facility manager and space planner and then just sort of uh kind of grew from there was hired by brg which was later acquired by jll and that's really how i made my way to the us and so i've worked as a consultant for 15 ish years and prior to you know now i'm with cbre was with building i we were just acquired by cbre just a few months ago but prior to that i was the head of global technology for metlife and uh and really spent five years with them putting their technology strategy in place specific to corporate real estate really kind of everything related tech and and corporate real estate prior to the pandemic sort of hitting um and now been you know working as a consultant with building eye slash cbre for the last couple years well how did you because i did the same thing right i went i was a space planner i how i ended up a space planner is beyond me i stumbled into it and i've been doing it almost as i think i've been in facilities in real estate for 20 years yeah so i'm right there with you in the holy cow how did that happen yeah and somehow i ended up a space planner i have no interior design skills uh none of that i actually had to teach myself autocad i went all the way back to the aperture days yeah um when i was in new york i but i found the the thing that made me most successful in my career was coming from the functional space having been there and done that and used systems implemented systems and actually crawled under desks and looked at jack locations and had to lay out move plans with markers and clipboards as i'm sure you've you've had to do exactly that's what made me successful because it's like if you can't understand what the problems and challenges people face how are you supposed to provide help provide solutions for them so have you found that to be true for yourself yeah 100 i think that's actually contributes to really like the success i've had in this industry is i worked for petrocanada they're now called suncor they hired me right at a school and basically hired me to validate uh cad drawings and make sure their ass builds were accurate because they had been the first company in canada to perch again the statesmee to purchase spanfm which was like one of the first versions of tryriga and so i was really lucky because i also learned i was one of the first people to learn that system and so that sort of kind of got me into this cool niche in the in the industry is that i knew iwms tools because i was like validating the floor plans and drawing polylines and then worked as a facility manager for them just like you said posting you know numbers up for moves and you know redrawing floor plans when we had relocations happening um and so the fact that i've sat on both sides of the table and really understand the concerns of the business and then understanding what the technology does was really good at translating you know to our technical teams kind of what we needed to do or what we needed to change when we're implementing software solutions or approaching like a technology strategy so kim you're kind of derailing like the whole thing because i wanna now fret fred's our produce fred we're gonna have to come back to this and do like an origins a bobbin kimberly origin story because you kind of described like my background it's crazy right we all did we did the same kind of things and to me that's you know really a great foundation to move us to where we are today i was a consultant i was with cfi for 10 years so it was cfi and brg and then we were acquired by newmark and um you know that went the way it went and here we are today but for today's conversation um you know all this is really great um great background but for today i want to talk about what's going on now going on in our world and i have a couple rules the number one rule is we have fun with this um you know i don't want this just to be two talking heads uh for 45 minutes uh boring the life at everyone because i think we've been beaten over the head with this stuff i want to kind of get to the core of what's real what's really important what what you think are some of the things that are truly important and i start these conversations off and the other thing i ask is no buzzwords we can we can talk about buzzwords in a way that's kind of brilliant i'll do my best breaking them down but i don't want to support the buzzword movement it's just absolutely been inundating uh the last couple years so i'm going to throw a phrase at you and i want you to kind of speak about what what you think about and what you think the core components of that is um and that phrase is the connected workplace if i say to kimberly castle who has all this wonderful experience and has seen things from the early days transformed to where we are today what does the connected workplace mean to you yeah i think it's changed definitely changed a lot i think we all recognize that and i actually think we're still trying to figure that out a lot of companies are kind of trying to throw all this you know new technology at this problem that they have of getting back to the office and i don't think everyone's fully vetted what you know the connected workplace is but to me and kind of what i'm hearing is that it really is as an employee and i'm coming back into the office i really want to understand who's going to be there when i get there what spaces are available to me when i'm going to be in the office and then also as you know just like we are today you and i are virtually talking to one another i think we've all become a lot more uh a lot more better is that a word a lot we've been all become a lot better more better is definitely more better yeah more about about having these type of virtual engagements but i think part of the challenge is i want to maybe be in the office but if my you know co-workers are attending a meeting virtually then i also want to understand that because it might not make sense for me to be there so really kind of understanding that full um view of like who's in the office who who's going to be there when i'm there and just making my life easier as an employee regardless of kind of where i'm working whether i'm at home or at the office or in a coffee shop i think that's you know that that's really um fair and one it's basic right you didn't go down the path of something very complicated well i need sensors to tell me how many people are in the cafeteria right now i you just basically distilled it down to i just want to know who's there so if there's a reason for me to go into the office to collaborate with that person and they're not there and they don't show up well what was the point of me going into the office and this goes back to what i was saying to you before we started recording i was reading this this this report about work from home the core office and then the new buzzword the third place and the third place is now a hub it's part of the hub where people can go and meet and collaborate and while i definitely think it has value um but it's what i think it's more about what you just said yeah it's like do i really need to go to hq proper or can me say me and you worked in the same city exactly me and you get together go collaborate on whatever project it is we're working on maybe pull somebody in via zoom or teams or whatever um and go that route as opposed to going to an office not knowing whether or not somebody's going to be there yeah or needing all these bells and whistles to do all that stuff yeah i feel like a lot of people are really just trying they're guessing at what they need and you kind of touched on it a lot so one of the things that i'm doing you know with building eye slash cbre now is we are getting hired by a lot of companies to help them determine you know what sensor solution they should use or what room reservation tool they should use without really understanding why they even need it or why they think they need it and i think you kind of touched on it you know a lot of times they think they need all these special things with regards to censors and what they're going to manage but they actually don't even know why they just feel like we better have this because everybody else has it and when we kind of dig into really the true requirements what they're really looking for they probably don't need a sensor solution at the end of the day or even the requirements around those solutions aren't necessary right so i guess that leads to me leads me now now that you so eloquently kind of distended it down you you brought it down to like the most basic level right you brought it to the most basic level level who's there i'm i don't want to guess i just need to know um if my colleagues you know my manager et cetera et cetera i was gonna be there so now let me ask you this since you've been out there now for the last two years and i've seen you do a presentation on this um what is real of all the things we see like work from home and flexible work and hybrid work which all could mean different things to different people and sensors and and contact tracing and all these different things what's real what do you think is really really important moving forward i think uh i think it could be as basic as even just you know again when you're booking a meeting i want to know who's attending virtually and who's attending in person in a in an office uh so that i haven't heard one single person say that yeah like almost like no almost like like the response shows you know how in outlook it says you can track who accepted almost like a check box that says this is ver virtual in person yeah i want to know that you know it goes back to the whole thing like if i i think the reason for us going into the office you know into the future now is going to be different it's going to be probably for collaboration just because we you know i work from home 100 of the time so similarly if i'm going into an office i want to make sure my co-workers that i can collaborate with are actually there and so it really is that simple if they're all attending virtually then it wouldn't make sense for me to make an hour drive all the way to the city right for me to have a meeting with them where i think we get confused uh in terms of trying to track all these different things about like checking into a workstation or checking out and i think those are more specific to the the people that are managing the facility as the employee it's kind of a pain in the butt for me to now have to like book a workstation and check into it and check into that workstation and if i don't check in within a certain time then i get bumped um what do you think is the better solution for that so if that's a pain in the neck and that's you go to any conference now there's now three new vendors i've never heard of selling a room reservation what is a yeah solution what do you do what doesn't annoy people i want it to be simple i want to if i need to at a very minimum i probably need to let the my company know that i'm coming into the office but does it but is it necessary for me to actually book actually book a workstation and i say that because you know while we have a lot of companies kind of making that shift to like now i have only flexible bookable workstations she did it that's it fred end it she just dropped the buzzword it's over but what i found really interesting i'm working with a client right now and they have no intentions of going that way everybody still has assigned offices assigned workstations and like they were the first where i was like oh wow and me as an employee when i first heard that everybody was making this shift and you know thinking that you know the reason we're doing this is because we want more control over who's coming to the office and covid like i want to be in my own desk i don't want to share it with somebody else if there's like all these like issues they're saying are in the air and cleaning is an issue i want my own station i don't why would why do i want to share this with somebody now somebody else said that i'm not saying but you said it way more eloquently but it's like why would you want to have all these open reservable spaces that you have to know who sat there you have to then send cleaning people to go through and clean only those then you have to do contact tracing in in the event that i show up with my cooties and i cough all over the desk um that then somebody else comes in and they then you have to do the contact tracing the cleaning and it's like you're right it's like it should just be your desk yeah i mean the only reason i feel like having bookable workstations would be a good solution is if you're really trying to decrease your footprint right you're trying to like minimize the amount of space you have because you recognize maybe not as many people are going to be in the office and it's just a better use of space but if you're really like i just i was always very surprised about that shift initially because i'm like i now more than ever i want my own desk right yeah it's really interesting to hear you say that because i don't know that people ask their employees that our companies aren't asking okay what's what's the solution for that i mean a lot of it is uh employee surveys but i don't think that's a question that's posed it's more like due to the office do you you know kind of a early question you asked like what would make you feel more connected those are the types of questions that are being asked not like would you prefer a an assigned seat or a you know a flexible workspace space so you're basically taking everything and distilling it down to like the most just ask the question is what you're saying just put it on the survey do you want a desk do you want your own office yes or no and if and if you i think this is maybe where we're getting into trouble right now is because a lot of folks are saying well i don't want to come back to the office now i want to stay working from home and so maybe that's the challenge is like if i am saying i want to work from home but i want a dedicated workspace in the office there has to be then a guarantee that i'm going to be coming into the office more frequently so i could see how that could be a difficult battle especially in those geographies like say a san francisco were rented in new york yeah super expensive yeah you need to know that stuff but for me like you just touched on another thing where in my time last probably 15 years i've worked from home and it's like i typically haven't had an office to go to yeah here or there like i was in san diego and for a brief time we had office space in la and i would trek all the way up there and i was like wow it's kind of nice to sit down my co-workers over here let's go to lunch let's go for a walk around the city and then come back inside and have our meetings together and it's like i almost think the work from home stuff is good and bad and at the same when i did when i did work out of smaller apartments my computer was on a desk that sometimes i could see when i was in my living room yeah it's like i got that thing i got to do tomorrow and maybe i should just go over there sit down and bang it out real quick and i know then like four hours later you're still sitting there right yeah well i was about to pick up my phone but i just knocked it over almost wiped out my whole setup here but like even this makes it even worse because you're replying to emails and things like that on the weekend but i think for me the whole work from home thing in there some people want to be home all the time and i understand that if they have kids or they have responsibilities and things like that but going to the office um you know when i travel for work or i get an opportunity to be in a space like that um it feels different i feel i feel more productive even though i'm the guy who goes there and just shoots the breeze by the way even if they have water coolers anymore i don't know well i'm the guy who shoots the breeze in the break room i stuff in my face with snacks but i still feel like more connected to something and i'm i'm i i work i work to live i don't live to work um and that's me dropping a cliche not a buzzword that's very appreciated yeah to be clear to clarify what i'm doing here but i don't know i i just think like it's really important to have that that sense of belonging i work for a biotech when i when i first moved to san diego um and i got a job as a facility planner to move the entire company i was grossly underqualified for it i would run moves like on a floor-to-floor basis in new york and then i got this job i talked my way into this job in san diego where i moved an entire company i figured it out yes it went very well they had it went very well i swear but they had these things called tgs on fridays where everybody would get together in the courtyard and they'd have a party and like nowadays you know they do things like with kegs and at halloween time it was a costume party but is every friday everybody's out there in their flip-flops in their shorts and their hawaiian shirts just enjoying that sense of community did you do that i don't mean to cut you off but did you do that at metlife or suncor in the places where you were on the workplace team yeah that's what i was going to say you know i was thinking about life in particular because i live in texas and our headquarters for metlife were in new york so once a month i would make a trek there and i you know i loved going because i think you mentioned you know you use that word connected again you start to feel a little bit disconnected from your team when you're working remotely and so when i was in new york it did give me that opportunity to just kind of get back on the same page make sure everything you know make sure you're on the same page with your team you do feel more like a team we definitely would always grab you know dinner or lunch while i was there and and spend some social time together because i think that's also important when we're building you know just work connections and wanting to be able to um help each other when we're doing day-to-day work it's certainly i think we've all experienced this where there are certain people that we work better with uh because we maybe have a longer relationship with them or there's some sort of personal connection that we have versus or you're more willing to help or or go out of your way to do something for them versus somebody that might be new or not to say you wouldn't help them but there's just a different uh way you're approaching things i think the producer of this show is fred tracy he works for nival great guy um and when me and fred when fred joined the firm a few months back i happened to be in boston and me and him had collaborated on a couple things um when he first joined the first thing i did is said i was like fred let's go have dinner let's go have dinner in boston so me and fred spent an hour or two to a couple hours together we got to know each other so we kind of get a better sense for the way we like to do things yeah and i know how fred approaches his portion of this and fred knows how i approach this portion of this so it certainly does make for a better experience having that face time you know just building rapport right building rapport and i think honestly kimberly i think that's a problem across the board with these things and how generationally when i was a kid it was like meet me here at six o'clock because there was no there was no and my friends would be there meet me at the flagpole at the at the elementary school exactly i had to be there because there was no cell phone to say oh i can't make it or yeah and you know you had to be home at a certain time and like my parents weren't worried about me and calling me all the time just be home by dark home once once the street lights go on exactly i'm home but it they're really at the end of the day there's this great human element to these things that i think as a society we've kind of gotten away from with even now email seems archaic like i get more text messages hey can you go do this thing for me yeah that thing for me yeah similarly with us i think we use like those collaboration tools like teams or to communicate more quickly yeah i will say because what we've distilled this down to is the human element right you've kind of broken this down the thing that is real is the human element yeah that's that's what's real forget everything else everybody's talking about it's this human element thing what i always liked about whether it was social media or something like this is me and you may not have ever had the chance to have this kind of conversation yeah if we didn't connect via social media circles right that's how connected with you or co-workers who now work with you that i've worked with them and they can say yeah you can have a conversation with bob he's a good dude um but the social media aspect in this aspect where kim's in texas i'm in colorado yeah and we could spend an hour kind of telling stories and talking about what's real and i think i think that's a great part about technology yeah i mean i think that's i agree and i think just throughout my years of experience you know obviously my focus is tech and so yes i think there's an importance that it plays in the you know in the workplace and just in our day-to-day lives but i think we too often rely way too heavily on it and forget about the it's supposed to be in an enabler right it's supposed to allow us to do things like you just said it took me five minutes but i think you're right like i think this is a challenge that everybody's faced with right now we're all trying to find what's the magic technology that's to make this like you know us getting back to the workplace amazing and the best experience and it's a very like while it's a big part it's also a very small part of that and i think it really is because we've been so disconnected for the last few years it really is like what's the easiest way to just again going back to the top of this whole call is like what's the easiest way to get us connected quickly and yeah and easily me as an employee i don't want to have to have 20 different apps or technology that i need to try and log into and validate something and enter my information to to be in the office i want it to be as easy as possible again you did it you did a fantastic job distilling it down technology is enabled is an enabler yeah i can't even get the word out technology is an enabler it's not the end-all be-all and to your point when i go to these conferences now i work for a tech company right and i will be the first one to say and i really do do this where i would say you don't need that yeah you just don't need that why don't you just get it down to the most basic thing that you need ultimately to plan your space manage your operations or plan your portfolio um well at the end of it you have too many people too many companies right now that is saying technology is necessary it's the end-all be-all and you're not going to be able to accomplish anything in the future yeah about technology and you just said no that's not the case yeah i disagree i mean i think it's you know i think it's um certainly pushed a lot of things forward because i i mean for how many years have companies been like yeah maybe we should look at censors and then they're like no we just don't have the budget or we can't get approval from hr or whatever was dragging their feet and i think this whole situation the last couple years has been a catalyst to say well now we really need these sensors and it's a it's a way for them to validate that they need them but i think there still is not a really clear understanding on what exactly they're measuring and why they really need them well i do you know again the sensors i i have a very specific take on sensors um i do think in the right use case they're important exactly um and the way in which that data is used is important other than you know certain things like pretty pictures and yeah trying to have this really slick app it's more about the data what do you do with that data and the bigger picture of things so it's funny and again this is why i think these conversations are important number one i work for a software company right i work for a software company i'm saying you don't always need all the bells and whistles and then you um advise companies on you know the technology direction they should go in and you're very honestly and straightforwardly saying i don't know if it's the end-all be-all and you need to see it as just one more piece of the bigger puzzle that all starts with the human being yeah now outside of that i'm gonna ask you another question second die from technology what is important to the human element of the workplace what what is the most important thing because i see a lot of stuff even in tv ads and linkedin that i don't feel is really authentic i think it's just talk and not so much action what do you think is really important to the human element of work i think it i get it so for me it's always gonna come back to again how easy is it for me to just do what i need to do okay um i don't know that i need like a special space to do what i do all the time especially me or you maybe because we're more sales type people we could probably do our work anywhere but i really do think it's just easily connecting to one another and being able to work anywhere and not being given so many rules and guidelines about like you have to be in the office five days a week oh get out of here with that what do you think it is what do you think it is no i i gosh i think you you hit the nail on the head because like i was um recently gifted a laptop bag and it's like i don't know if i really carry my laptop around that much i mean if i have to you know build some type of presentation or something like that but a lot of what i can do or need to do yeah is by picking up the phone or using some of the again technology is enabling me it's not it's not the focus of my life so it's kind of unchaining me from having a big laptop yeah i think you touched on it there though like i think that's one of the challenges specifically kind of in real estate that i think we kind of get we look like we're behind the eight ball on is because we're all using like iphones or whatever kind of phone you have where it's very they're very intuitive we are you know everyone's very smart about technology and how to use like apps and like searching things and i think we don't give our employees enough credit for how and smart we are about how to do things and so i think literally a lot of these apps that will compensate yeah like i think a lot of the apps and stuff that we're rolling out to our employees are not as intuitive as they could be we may make it way more complicated than it needs to be and uh you know it could just be so much easier like you said a lot of folks i'm not necessarily one of those but a lot of folks do most everything on their iphone right i probably use my computer more just because i feel like i need all these screens well you also have deliverables right yes in a lot of cases you have deliverables that include presentations yeah documentation and spreadsheets at times i have to do that as well but it's not it it's not i'm not for the bulk of what i do i'm not i just picked up my laptop which is not a good idea i'm gonna wreck the whole set setup here but um i don't i'm not necessarily chained to it anymore so it's making things simple i guess you know providing what's the minimal viable product that you need to provide to your employees so that they feel like they need to do what they feel like they need to do their job yeah and it's like the thing i think of when when i just when that just came out it's like do i really do companies really need a slide i'm pretty sure i've been on a tour where there was a slide that went into a ball pit or something like that do you really need that room full of bean bag chairs or that that nap pod or you know this kind of stuff the walking desk or yeah there was definitely a trend where that was the thing right for a while where these were like extra cool spaces but i think you know i think about this even you know when i would go into the office at metlife they had we they like a lot of companies had these really cool meeting rooms where they were like stand only meeting rooms or like you said beanbag chairs and quite honestly i literally just want to go into a conference room that has a regular conference room table to set my laptop laptop down on the table and be able to connect to the webex or whatever your zoom or whatever i don't want to have to stand for an hour in this cool funky room or sit on a beanbag chair to have a meeting with my colleagues like i really do just want to sit on a meeting room table it's just like i i remember going to these places some of these places were real slick and it was like okay i could see where i would want to work here um it's a good vibe it has a cool view of the transcontinental building um in san francisco or you know the workstations are very well laid out you know i think that's thoughtful yeah and all this other stuff um like you said it's like i just want to go have my meeting i just want to go sit down have a conversation maybe i need a projector maybe i need somebody to come up you know come up on screen because they're virtual going back to what you said i need to understand who's virtual see i listen kimberly i'm really really good listener who's virtual who's in person and i need those type of amenities i don't need to stand up don't need beanbag chairs and i don't need to slide into a ball pit yeah um in order to make me feel like a mortgage yeah so it's like and that was the trend three four years ago like i used to go up to silicon valley all the time for the big tech companies and i think some companies get it right and i think some companies are are just way off so i guess as we kind of wind wind this this down you know some of the things i heard from you is just at the end of the day right now what's most important is the human centric aspect of work i just kind of buzzworded um human centric is kind of a buzzword but it's one i actually like yeah because i think what we learned over the last couple years people and the relationships with people are really important especially when you go through what the world went through these last two years so what you said is getting down to the human element of things who is going to be in an office where are we going to meet making that personal connection and then remembering that technology is just an enabler it's not the end-all be-all and sometimes you just need the bare minimum to do what it is that you're paid to do did i get all that right yeah it's just like just keep it simple keep it simple you're not supposed to say that though kimberly you're a consultant who wants to run up all these billable hours and produce no but that's my job really right is to really help them a lot of companies don't understand what they're really trying to solve for and it really is to get to the bottom of let's just keep it simple what is your real requirement here let's pare it down and figure out what you actually need and i think you did that very eloquently i think you articulated that very well right out of the gate you by far smashed the no buzzword rule for sure if anyone broke it it was me um kimberly i've seen you speak before um you're you're a very good speaker you're a very good resource in this industry i really appreciate that you took the time to spend a few minutes with me and share your knowledge with me and i appreciate again the time that you took to spend with me today especially since you're going through this big transition of joining the cbre team congratulations on that thank you yeah it's well deserved i've always had a good experience working with cbre in my career um and my final question to you is being from canada and representing uh lake moraine here in the background what's your hockey team well i will have to see the flames i suppose because i i went to college in calgary but i live in texas now dallas stars so i gotta go for the stars would you get absolutely crucified in in canada if you came back and were rocking a stars jersey or t-shirt sweater i'm sorry i well no because i think i'm at least staying true to my uh canadian hockey roots now if i had like a cowboys jersey on that might be a different story because i also am a big cfl fan calgary stampede calgary stampede is that great greatest outdoor show on earth no the uh calgary uh stampeders you're right stampede oh okay is the cfl team but i'm from saskatchewan so the saskatchewan rough riders that's my team that's your squad very good all right we learned a little something about kimberly castle and her um her sports affiliations thank you very appreciate you much and i really appreciate the time you spent with us [Music]