when you build a headquarters or a hub space right that is a manifestation of your brand you're communicating to a whole bunch of different stakeholders not just the people who work on site and so you have to kind of okay I gotta stop you I gotta stop you in a good way I've done I've done this is now like my 12th episode of the podcast I think and you know we talk about we've learned a lot over the last couple years of the workplace say what you just said about the man say that again manifestation of your brain your space is the best this this is what I want out of the podcast scary these nuggets like I'm gonna steal this [Music] all right welcome back to another episode of connected conversations today I feel very fortunate to have this guest with us we have some really exciting stuff to talk about uh today with me I have Carrie Aldridge she's the director of strategic insights for CBRE and we have some exciting stuff that she's going to talk about that's coming out here in the near future that's going to help us guide us into the future of occupancy planning so with that Carrie Aldridge good morning welcome thank you for being here good to be here thanks for having me so Carrie as as we like to start these podcasts I love to hear people's origin stories right and what I like about talking about folks from the industry especially somebody like you you come from a similar background that I do where Once Upon a Time you're a space planner a workplace planner can you take us through your statement of qualification to why you're qualified to speak to this to speak to us today on the topic of the future of occupancy planning take us through it all right so I have spent the last 20 something uh years in a variety of corporate real estate roles I have done workplace strategy technology strategy academic planning event planning I have been all over the place and it really started with um doing Faith planning and Furniture specification for Herman Miller um and doing project management for various uh Furniture uh commercial Furniture contract Furniture dealerships um from there um a little storm you may have heard of Hurricane Katrina took me from New Orleans to Dallas when I relocated to Dallas um eventually got on with the Frito-Lay facilities team and you may know fritolay is part of PepsiCo um and that was an amazing experience that at Pepsi because at Pepsi I had a different role like every six to nine months and I went from being the cad manager doing all of the AutoCAD drawings doing Faith planning project management it um doing lead project management and eventually wound up implementing a Kaplan system for the North American portfolio and then expanding that out globally and it was that project that basically I raised my hand for um you know just to get exercise a new muscle and get a new experience right um it was that that sent me down the route of uh cre technology and eventually I wound up helping Citibank by managing their real estate technology tools I then went on to work and helped stand up the global pmo at Coca-Cola here in Atlanta where I am now hang on foreign yeah I'm like yeah like I feel like nothing you know both brands are great but I feel like most people lean towards a Coca-Cola side and I'm always I'm always like oh you have Pepsi that's great but anyway it's an interesting dialogue for sure and being from the south um Coke tends to dominate the soft drink side but I gotta tell you everybody loves a good Dorito or a Cheeto and don't forget that that's part of the healthy family okay sure no problem so um at Coca-Cola you know I helped stand up the pmo organization over there and eventually jumped from the end user side um where it spent the majority of my career to the service provider side and I went and did some technology Consulting um some occupancy planning sales and am now in in this role as a director of strategic insights CBRE helping tell the story of um occupancy management data so what I really like about your background is similar to mine but more extensive meaning I think you spent a little more time on the functional end user side than I did I spent about five years I sat in facilities departments I was a space planner but I really think it's a great path because as you matriculate through your career you take those things that you understand in these different roles by practically applying it in as a workplace planner as a you know project manager for technology implementation for end users and then you get to a CBRE and then you can speak the language of your prospects your customers and people who ultimately consume your insights because to me that's invaluable that if you haven't been there and done that how do you understand how to apply you know the insights or the technical to the function and I just I think that makes you a Swiss Army knife yeah yeah the that variety of experience has really served me well um not only did it really like open my eyes you know on the end user side it really helped me understand what is motivating all the decision makers and how cre fits into the larger you know business priorities right um uh but also then the technology experience gave me a little bit of exposure you know I can speak geek but I can also speak end user enough to be that liaison to get everybody talk together and be able to call out when something is slipping through the cracks or not meeting expectations so it really is that variety of experience and that that broad set of experiences but I mean I tap into that every day every day me too and that's what we try to do and that's why I want to do this podcast like I I've been at this 20 years functional side been in the facility Department's worked with a number of clients over the years have seen things go right seen things go wrong um and can really kind of talk the talk and speak to the the Carrie Aldridge's of the world so that we could have a relatable dialogue that also you know is something that's fun and engaging so I want to touch on something that you just said um before we get into the meat of our conversation where you said why Sierra what the decision makers what's important to decision makers from the day I started in facilities and corporate boy has that changed that has really changed because when I was a space planner it was like people get a phone a desk a PC and then just make sure everybody's where they need to sit let's make sure the allocations are correct nobody's fighting with over uh you know a couple Cubes but that's really changed hasn't it it has changed big time and and you're right it used to be about executing a list of design standards you know that down to plant you know I've worked in organizations where you know we the size of the plant that you get in your office or in your workspace was part of the design standard it was kind of a command and control sort of situation yeah yeah absolutely and um I'll share I feel like this story this little anecdote here sums up how dramatically things have changed I used to work for a guy who once told me no one ever left their job or took their job because of their workspace and I remember you know this was 20 plus years ago and I remembered that feeling wrong at the time um but not really having any data and not really having an industry of research in a community to kind of um to kind of push back on that idea right so here was a real estate leader a decision maker who really felt like his role was about the financial bottom line about creating an efficient space based on these guidelines and standards and 20 years later absolutely we all understand that the workspace is going to either attract or repel is that person still had a job are they still well well as you can imagine that person retired because that was just a different generation and you know what he he was a product of of that environment I'm not saying it was right or wrong but it was very much it was a comment very much of the time well my dad my dad used to say to me early in my career my dad worked uh for the state of New York for 26 years in the prison system and he was like and I was I was I was changing jobs you know every two years or so and he's like what are you doing you can't be changing these jobs you gotta you gotta find a place because he's thinking I'm gonna retire I was like yeah and I had to sit him down and explain to him I was like Dad I'm not gonna retire from any of these companies none of these companies that I don't work I don't you know it's not I don't work for the state of New York I'm not that's not how things work in this and and that's what I and that's because the workplace has evolved our careers have evolved and things are much different than that's probably probably the Baby Boomers you know the Boomers and and back has had that mentality right Carrie it was very like you know you come in you punch the clock nine to five you got your you got your desk you got your computer and you know you got your phone so yeah those are Transformers and traditionalists really had that you know I need to build loyalty I need to build longevity I need to build relationships in the organization in order to have a viable career and you know I'm I'm a gen xer I have seen the value of having a variety of experiences with a variety of organizations um and it's really served me well to have those experiences and I gotta tell you at the beginning of my career I was a little I was a little you know wary of jumping around um you know and having those different experiences now I'm so grateful that I did it me too like I'm a Gen X and it's so funny because they talk about the different Generations in the workplace right a gen xer we did the same things we did the exact same things again at different scales yeah and then it landed Us in places where we can sit down and have a conversation which is a great segue for kind of today's topic and what we do on on this season of the podcast so this is season two and we branded this season Back to the Future so when I think back to the future I think of uh the Back to the Future Part Two where good old Biff got his hands on the almanac the sports Almanac I'm sure you you know what I'm talking about I'm right there with you all right Biff got his hands on the sports Almanac and then went back to 1950 and Biff came Rich because he had he had all the data right so in a couple couple days uh this is this is gonna come out after this happens uh CBRE will be releasing its Global workplace occupantine insights report for 2022. no joke over the last five years or so now you can tell me this report is not five years old I don't remember how far back I go but I've been reading this for the last few years I wait for these reports come out I send them to my internal teams I send it to prospects and customers this report I feel like especially with our topic is going back to the future I feel like a little bit this report is our Sports Almanac because at the end of the day you can't the data is everything right me Bob and Carrie can sit here and tell stories from back in the day and how things have evolved but without the data there's nothing behind it now on this podcast I've had Carolyn Cirillo from Herman Miller Miller Knoll excuse me I had Ryan Anderson from Miller Knoll these are folks with the data and you're one of those people so I'm really excited to talk about this I'm going to consider this our Sports Almanac um so talk to us a little bit about the 22 22 occupancy workplace and occupancy insights report sure yeah and I love talking about this I I don't know how much time you're willing to give me that I could talk about this all day unlike a sports Almanac which I can't even you know touch on um so the insights report is the culmination of a Year's worth of uh Gathering benchmarking data we work with our clients to gather a certain amount of benchmarking data every year um and then um call through that data take um anecdotal uh conversations we've had with clients uh case studies that we've developed over the year and basically identify themes that are influencing occupancy management trends that we need to respond to but also uh get an understanding of which direction certain data points are going into for instance like the most common metrics that matter to organizations um you know things like uh people density and head uh and space density in terms of square foot per person square foot per um per seat and try to get an understanding of of where those metrics are going we then try to contextualize those you know themes and put them in a report for folks to enjoy right so we also offer um the supporting information that benchmarking information to our clients to go a little bit deeper on but it's the insights report that gets the widest distribution it's available to the public right so in that insights report what you typically see are you know some juicy stats square foot per person is going up square foot per person is going down you know the average workspace size is X you know that kind of stuff but this year we went in a little bit different direction and tried to um understand the signals that are impacting um occupancy management as a whole and we identified three basic themes and the first one isn't going to be a surprise to anybody it's this idea that flexibility is changing how we work um and um the purpose behind flexibility ability is changing how we deliver Services how we deliver technology and then also the actual layout and design of space because that can't be forgotten that can't be forgotten because at the end people are gonna people are gonna say I want to work from home right they're going to want to work from home and they're going to want like we are right I'm in my I'm in my home office I imagine you're in your home office but somebody's still there are people who do need to go into the office and there are times when you will need to go into the office so occupancy planning is still super important because you have to create a space that people want to come to and all those things that we've talked about but it can't be forgotten yeah yeah um flexibility you know let's not confuse flexibility with total 100 remote working flexibility is navigating through spaces in the way you choose working wherever you feel productive it's not a binary you're either in or out you never go into the office kind of situation and I think that gets lost in the sauce I I do absolutely and that's why I wanted to pause there and say it's it's not it's not just this remote work concept and these things that are being the drum that's being beaten on LinkedIn you know at the end of the day those spaces need to be purposeful and they need to be planned well absolutely absolutely and the purpose may change and may be different from one organization to another there is no one right size fits at all yeah um that we identified yeah the uh uh is the how modern metrics are changing and how we're moving away from planning space and measuring how we plan a space to measuring how the space is actually used the reality of the stake um the third theme that we feel that personally I'm the most passionate about is uh what referred to as data management is risk management and what we did is we reflected back with client and uh really kind of dissected the pain points over the course of the pandemic and found that most of them were data driven or data related um and it stemmed from different organizations level of data maturity right like how much how good were they about keeping up their floor plan their space assignments things like that and how that either supported their response to the pandemic or handicapped their response to the pandemic um and so those three themed data management is risk management modern metrics measure reality and the purpose-driven flexibility we framed up this year's report based on those three things awesome so let's go let's go to number two this is one that I am I am somebody who's a big proponent of this topic meaning again I'm going to go back to my space planner days and me before I had a cathum tool actually doing departmental allocations by hatching it different colors by hand in AutoCAD um you're laughing because you've probably done that as well um we are moving and I've seen this a number of times at different conferences um the talk track has really shifted over the last five years I would say it started to trickle in I think the aipac region um of the globe was much more ahead of their time in this kind of conversation in terms of uh what is the actual utilization show me my attendance uh they started the neighborhood and Concepts long before anybody else did and as the pandemic came along it kind of forced the rest of the world to really start looking at utilization metrics meaning what I say is either how this is either attendance or how the space is used as opposed to how is the space allocated and if you could talk to that a little bit I'd really appreciate it yeah absolutely one of my favorite topics um so we we joke around um you know within our group but um occupancy is not utilization um and the difference between those two um is really uh the story of how that evolved you know so you just mentioned that from the APAC teams we saw you know the the first signs of using utilization data um and I agree that that aligns with uh my experience and the data that I've seen as well that they really kind of led the way from an industry or sector perspective it was also the technology organizations and the financial institutions that use data day-to-day in their business so they tend to have a culture of data thinking right um that adopted utilization first and saw the benefits of tracking utilization um you know on a on a portfolio-wide or a building level just depending on their their own needs um I think though that because this kind of evolved organically over the last eight to five years and there wasn't a that definition or or attitude or Outlook towards utilization for many years we have confused occupancy rate with utilization and what we've traditionally done you know as space planners as occupancy management as cre reporting data driven people is we have reported occupancy rates and occupancy has been based on the allocation of space I'm going to assign one butt to one seat and then consider that seat occupied well that was great when we didn't think that seats could be shared and that was great when we assumed assigning a butt to a seat meant the seat was going to be used those two things are no longer true they weren't true five years ago either but they're certainly not true now as more organizations adopt hybrid working so we can no longer look at occupancy rates as a true measurement of portfolio performance we have to look at utilization then that opens the door for what's utilization you know what it how did one organization capture utilization data how do they Define it how do they analyze we see a lot of organizations capturing utilization at a building level because they only have access to badge swipe data that's super helpful you know that's a great gateway drug to measure and utilization right um once you swipe into the building you have no idea where they go what's no idea what they're using no idea no idea so I'll share a little dirty laundry here uh when I worked at Coca-Cola I never went to my desk you knew if you wanted to find me you needed to go to yetu which was an amazing coffee bar that Coca-Cola headquarters is beautiful and I chose to camp out in that coffee bar all day long right so my utilization rate would have been high but if you as a designer as a space planner wanted to make choices about what kind of space to build build out my data wouldn't have helped you because I wasn't sitting at the desk that you assumed I was sitting at I was sitting at an open air coffee bar with our where I could collaborate and kind of meet and greet and socialize and work heads down in between right that was my work Style on site and I think it's true for a lot of other folks who want to go to the office to collaborate socialize to build a network and are going to grab little moments of heads down space in informal areas not at a desk because you just made a really and this is a use case that I talk about that I don't think is talked about enough in terms of using utilization data to inform your workplace design because if you have if you have that coffee bar that is a red spot on your heat map five days a week you're going to want to figure out why and how you can design more of those types of spaces to be utilized then if you look at the cube form that's in the upper right hand corner of the building with no sunlight that is constantly a green spot you have to figure out how to you know bring some of those Design Elements over to that area or maybe turn that area into something that's not necessarily an employee space or something I think that's a use case that's not touched on enough in terms of yeah well then you'll enjoy reading the report I've got my little plug in there um so because um one of the things that we've highlighted and we talked to clients a lot about this but one of the things that we highlighted in the insights report is that utilization data isn't just about measuring your portfolio efficiency of the space utilization of the space it's also about understanding your employee preferences and your employee work habits what happens when you know that what happens what are you going to do with it what are you going to do with it don't just collect the data and let it you know go stale somewhere you have to take that data and develop data driven personas right because it's that data that's going to tell us what employees really want what their habits are telling us they want not survey data not the potentially biased focused group information that kind of data that we've relied on the past that's super helpful and helpful information we want to hear from employees what they say they want but what we really want to do is then balance what they say they want moment with the actual data of what they do and that utilization data helps us understand their habits and their preferences that are actually playing out in the real world so like you said we can build more of the types of spaces that attract them to the office more of the types of spaces that they actually use in reality um and if we're doing this on an ongoing basis we can always stay ahead of the trends and the evolving work habits and the evolving work Styles so that as we're refreshing space we're doing it Based on data based on utilization patterns in the data not our perception of what happened in the past not our perception of what worked in the past we're measuring based on and we're planning based on reality not based on you know our perception of what happened and success and that that's exactly what I wanted you to touch on I definitely let you witness there because it also what it also does is imagine if you're in a young young employee a young professional and you go on a tour of a place that you potentially are going to accept and offer letter from and you see spaces you're like wow they seem to really get how my generation wants to work and then as you're walking through your tour the HR person the recruiter person says well we solicit this information via data that we track and and we we constantly refresh it's gonna make somebody feel like well this is a place I want to work it's going to make them it's going to enable them to attract that Talent don't you think yeah yeah potentially yeah absolutely I think um people feel heard when they see the kind of spaces that they want to work at right they they feel like I thought my tribe these are my people I want to work here absolutely but it's not even just about the recruiting it's about your business partners in the community and everybody else that's exposed to your space you know more and more we see clients who use their headquarters space for community space we see client that are using their space as an extension of their marketing and engagement with customers so you know when you build a headquarters or a hub space right that is a manifestation of your brand you're communicating to a whole bunch of different stakeholders not just the people who work on site and so you have to kind of open mind up here I gotta I gotta stop you I gotta stop you in a good way I've done I've done this is now like my 12th episode of the podcast I think and you know we talk about we've learned a lot over the last couple years over the workplace say what you just said about the man say that again manifestation of your brain your space is the best this this is what I want out of the podcast scary these nuggets like I'm gonna steal this your space your your physical footprint is a manifestation of your brand absolutely yeah any any yeah your workplace is a manifestation I have not the manifestation yes but that's so powerful that is so powerful what you just said hang on one more question who's done this well name name a firm that is I got to put you on the spot who's done this wall who's headquarters have you walked into and say this is a manifestation of their brand and boy would I love to work here or partner with these folks um you know when I walked in when I was considering going to work for Coca-Cola and I walked into their headquarters building that um had recently gone through their workplace 2020 um uh renovation um I felt exactly what they intended for me to feel I felt surprised I felt Delight I felt like the walls oozed Coca-Cola and it wasn't like you know syrup dripping from the walls and the ceiling and stuff like that it was that this was the brand that I grew up with this was the polar bear commercials and the Santa Claus this was everything I thought about when I thought about Coca-Cola was somehow manifested itself in the personality of the building it was in the fit in the finish it was how they did The Branding it was the sense of humor in the graphics and the way finding as you navigated the building it was this thoughtful integration of that brand identity into the physical space and it it made you kind of tap into this emotional connection that you had to the brand which I frankly didn't even know I had until I you know had to think about it you know as part of you know deciding whether or not I was going to go and work for them I think they do it really well I've seen a lot of organizations those organizations that kind of live and die by brand out in the market Nike Pepsi Coca-Cola they bring that back to their internal employees to their internal spaces their workplaces and they provide they kind of live their brand in their workplace and they provide those spaces um that really like we just said manifest their brand in the workplace um and I think more and more you know you see you see data-driven organizations use data really well in the marketplace you see brand driven organizations you use brand really well in their workplace they are integrating what they know what they do out in the market into their work environments and I think that those organizations that understand brand and brand loyalty are also really driven to prioritize the employee experience because you know their customer experience is so important to their success this is this is such a fresh fresh perspective on on everything that I've been talking about over the course of the last 12 episodes um this is something that it took me 12 episodes to drag this out and I'm gonna I'm gonna give another plug here for the cbra brand I've been fortunate enough I've worked with Seabury for years in one way or another and I've been invited to CBRE cbre's office spaces in San Francisco and Chicago and when I think in a cbra brand and I walk into those offices that sit atop these major metropolitan areas and I walk in and I see the community spaces I see the reception area I instantly feel smarter I feel I feel lucky I was like who let me in here like I'm probably gonna I don't want to make a mess I don't want to touch anything you know I just automatically feel the CBRE brand because CBRE to me is the biggest it's not to me but Seabury is the biggest corporate real estate uh firm in the world so they should have the best office space in the world and in my opinion my even if we were even if we weren't with Seabury I would say well I've been in CBRE spaces and they re their brand really comes through in their spaces because I immediate I immediately feel elevated when I walk into a CBRE space I really do absolutely yeah you know and you hear we hear a lot about the um uh the trend towards Wellness in the workplace and and uh you know employees wanting to um feel like their um organizations and their employees are making good um cultural and political decision things like that yeah all of that is the result of employees wanting to feel like they're doing something meaningful and that they're part of a community a work community that that's meaningful right and being you know being part of the brand part of the energy is just an extension of that right they want to feel like they're doing meaningful work they want to work in a place that um uh you know a physical space that represents the work that they're doing and the culture that they're a part of you know it makes me feel smarter when I work in a place that makes you feel smart um and I like to feel smart you know that is an emotional connection that that workplace and your opinion of that workplace you know that's an emotional connection I have based based on that experience that's powerful you just and like when you said that it evoked that that sentiment where I've walked out of buildings and be like wow I feel like we had a really great day of you know meetings and collaborative work and and all that stuff and a lot of it was just the environment looking across the San Francisco cboy's building in San Francisco looks like something out of a movie like when you walk into the lobby and and the one in um Chicago you're looking at the corn Cobb buildings and you're you're looking out over the the Chicago um you know the the the the the greater Chicago skyline and it's just like you're sitting there and you're feeling inspired and you know when you said that I equated that to and serendipitously or coincidentally to the to my time in offices like cbra delivers for their their own intern General employees and it's so true so let's talk a point about Point number three now that we covered Point number two data management is risk management this is another term that's near and dear to my art because he's talked to our internal teams our internal sales reps our bdrs and I say he with the data he or she with the data is the one who wins right at the end of the day you can't make informed decisions without the data and that came to the surface over the last few years can so can you please talk about this a little bit boy did it uh you know um thinking back over the last couple of years chatting with clients about it you know what they and go you know going through the experience with clients you know we saw we saw a lot of organizations struggle with responding quickly because they didn't have the data they needed we saw organizations uh you know have to delay asking essential workers back to the office because they didn't know where people sat they didn't know who is where so that they could create social distancing plans that would allow them to come back safely um we saw um organizations that didn't have you know something as simple as an Upstate floor plan so that they could do wayfinding to help people navigate buildings elevator Banks things like that safely right and for large organizations that are constantly caring and feeding for their data that you know that wasn't an issue right but so many organizations out there have not been able to prioritize real estate data management um because of their their scale you know the size of their organization when they have pursued doing that in the past it was cost prohibitive but now technology allows just about anybody you know to be able to track that data um when we talk to clients about where they are in terms of data routines data quality data and integrity lots of organizations get it they're they're feeding the data beast and and they're they're well down the maturity route but we have so many organizations that still have to develop that skills that and that kind of a culture of data thinking and the rigor around data governance um those organizations really felt handicapped during the pandemic they Now understand that this is in a once every five year kind of activity or a once a year we're going to walk the building and have somebody note down on a piece of paper I use it where you know right there with right there with you babe I did it too um you know and we still have some organizations that do that but more and more they realize that that's not going to cut it anymore because at the drop of a hat you may have a geopolitical you may have a an Emergency weather situation you know these things are becoming more and more so many so many disruptive events that are that are you know possible right um but you may need to drop the uh you may need to react at the drop of a hat right and you may need to do it remotely um and you may need to share information with the board you may need to share information with emergency responders all of those things require the care and feeding on an ongoing basis of your space data um but luckily technology does a lot of that where you and I used to have to walk the building with a clipboard now we can supplement that manual labor with some technology tools to make it easier and you know when I think about uh when I think about the the insights report right and think about talking to clients about where we're going in the future of occupancy planning that is the future right taking the manual labor out let leaning on technology to do a lot of that tactical data Gathering data management so that we can focus on the stuff that really matters we can focus on occupancy strategy rather than occupancy planning right getting away from the Tactical getting away from the manual getting into the more strategic meet of the conversation um about utilization about how the space is being used about employee preferences and habits not about who sits where well also to to tack on to that look look at what publicly traded companies are now being required to do from a lease accounting standpoint which started years ago um to report their leases on their balance sheets so now they start to look at it more strategically well if that building is only 40 percent utilized let's get it off the balance sheet yeah right so there's that then what's coming next is the ESG requirements you know it's you know it's environmental social and governance you're how you plan that it's all ties into it so if you have a in a building that's that's you know you know really raising your your your carbon footprint you're going to want to get out of that building because SEC is now looking at it and potentially he's going to Levy some fines because you're you know your carbon footprint is is too significant right and then yeah Drive times to offices and all that other stuff these metrics are Beyond important they've been erased from when we started all the way up to how even the SEC is looking at it right but the things that you just mentioned if you think about it occupancy rates occupancy data would not help you answer those questions you need utilization data you need the reality of how the space is being used not how we planned for it to be used right um and they're you know the the ESG as a motivator you know we people want to work for companies that are doing good they really don't want to work for companies that are perceived as doing bad right so you know let's win by doing good right but we win you know double and triple you know down the down the line it has a trickle-down effect when your employees then feel that they're working with an organization that um they can feel good and proud about about working with so it's not even just the financial win um or the you know minimizing your legal risk right it's just like you win on so many levels but you have to measure reality you can't look at your seating plan and determine whether that's an effective use of your portfolio performance um you know your seating plan which is your occupancy data is not going to tell you what you need to make smart decisions about um you know the portfolio performance it all goes back to utilization it does and that's that's where we are in this day and age so let's let me ask you this uh we start to wrap up here do you have we talked about who did something well right and this one I'm not going to ask you to name names as you've gone through this give me a story where you walked into a customer Prospect um and you said holy cow this is a mess like just if you can I would love like how bad was it like have you seen like to the point where they had nothing to the point where it was outdated by five years just give me a horror it's Halloween time give me a Horror Story a Horror Story um unfortunately I've seen a lot of those and you know when your business is to help oh yeah when your business is to help people you're usually being called by people who need help right you know people don't call you don't call you as frequently to come in when everything's working really well don't call a plumber when the sink's working just fine that's right yeah um you know so I you know I think back to Q like Q3 of 2020 you know kind of the height of the pandemic and you know when there was uh this angst about will our essential workers are making it happen they're in the office but we want to start bringing other people back in um but we still have to maintain social distancing that was the busiest time during the pandemic right because organizations needed help and they didn't have floor plans they didn't know where people said and client after client would come in and say well we've got these Dead Sea Scrolls down in the basement because we don't have a capital or an items system but we've got these um you know floor plans from 1979 when the the when the building was built and there's some sticky notes and um you know some some floppy disks over here from this construction project and then we think our furniture vendor has the latest um layout in AutoCAD from 1989 when we Rebo reset the furniture you know and you know the admin of each team can tell you where people sit and you're like how is that I need to know I need to call I need the list so I can start calling like how is that amazing I know how it's possible because what happens is our biggest in in the eye in the technology world right is particularly iwms our biggest competitors do nothing more often than not people just say all right well we've been operating on email spreadsheets and these these hard copy drawings or these PDFs so we're just going to keep doing that we've gotten this far we're gonna so I always tell the younger generation your biggest competitor is not who you think it is it's do nothing your biggest companion your biggest competitor is complacency yes yeah it's the status quo um you know but more and more organization and I think that's one of the unplanned you know outcomes of the the pandemic was it kind of shook people awake and said you know what got you here what's been acceptable so far is no longer acceptable it's no longer acceptable because here's an emergency situation in which you were not prepared to respond and by the way there will be more emergency situations in the future so you know if for no other reason then continuity of business please be prepared but by the way there are so many other reasons to be prepared to keep that data maintained but for some organizations that have not been able to prioritize that in the past that that was a huge motivator and a huge wake-up call that you have to put you have to commit to a certain amount of care and feeding for that data in order to be ready and in order to keep the business in business during an emergency situation yeah management and Carrie with that you know we we've gone for quite a bit of time here and it the time has flown but what I want to do is call back to some of the things I heard here and as we look at the global workplace occupancy and insights report by CBRE you are one of the three authors of that uh insights report it's out now we will be providing the links in our description of this podcast we'll provide the links in the comments and I will be re-sharing all over social in support of this report um what we see out of this report are three themes that you touched on Purpose Driven Flex modern metrics and data management is risk management but the biggest nugget that I took out of this was uh your physical space your workplace is a manifestation of your brand which I love so much and I think if we look at all these key points and we take these and we go and read that the the insights report that you've provided to the to make generally available to the public I think that can help set people on a course much like Biff with his Almanac to set himself on a course to success going back to the future I think this reports like this and data like this are super important as we move to the future of occupancy planning to the future of the workplace to the future of the way we approach things I can't thank you enough Carrie for spending the time with us today um I always try to end these with a little bit of gratitude you are very well spoken you have great anecdotal um information and story and anecdotal stories to go along with the the data-driven insights that you have and I'm very grateful that you spent the time with us today but more importantly I'm very grateful that there are people out there like you and your team doing this work and providing it for free so that people can have their own version in the Almond act to set themselves on a course for Success so good on you uh you're appreciated in this industry for these things and I I really enjoyed the time we spent together today it's been a selfish pleasure I um thank you for the opportunity to stay connected um and the invitation and you're most welcome we we love this data um and we love other people who love this data so you know whenever you want to geek out on the data I'm happy to chat heck yeah so with that this was connected conversations that's Carrie Aldridge from CBRE go read uh the global workplace occupantine insights report it's out now and let us know what you think drop it in the comments but again uh Amba masichetti that's Carrie from CBRE this is connected conversations we'll see on the interwebs next time take care bye take care bye [Music] thank you