Bookmarks: 5 Interesting Articles to Help You This Week

January 30th, 2017

Each week, I select a few articles that rise above the fray and hopefully help you on your journey in the CRE world. They pull from one of four "corners:" corporate real estate, technology, management science and anything positive. I welcome your comments on these articles and the submissions of others (with credit to you if I post them). I wish you a terrific week!Chick-fil-A is beating every competitor by training workers to say 'please' and 'thank you'"According to Chick-fil-A, the chain has the upper hand when it comes to customer service because it invests more than other companies in training its employees. The chicken chain's unique business structure, in which each franchisee is only allowed to open one Chick-fil-A location, further allows for more hands-on supervision and training." www.businessinsider.com[tweet_box design="box_09" float="none"]Please, Thank You, and LOTS of Chicken[/tweet_box]

Top 10 Hot Artificial Intelligence (AI) Technologies“Coined in 1955 to describe a new computer science sub-discipline, “Artificial Intelligence” today includes a variety of technologies and tools, some time-tested, others relatively new. To help make sense of what’s hot and what’s not, Forrester just published a TechRadar report on Artificial Intelligence (for application development professionals), a detailed analysis of 13 technologies enterprises should consider adopting to support human decision-making." www.forbes.com

A New Age Industrial Product Emerging To Meet Modern Needs

"Inspired by the creative office movement, a new generation of industrial flex space is emerging that combines creative office and industrial uses under one roof. Most of these projects recycle large old industrial buildings by dividing them up for multiple tenants.

This is a relatively new product type that appears most popular in mature urban locations with a large, educated young workforce, such as San Diego, Minneapolis, Seattle, Minneapolis, Los Angeles and New York..." www.nrei.com

Unusual employee benefits at Basecamp - the complete list"I’m often asked about the benefits we offer at Basecamp. Potential employees are obviously curious, but most of the questions I get are from fellow business owners and entrepreneurs. Everyone’s looking to know what everyone else is doing — as are we — so I figured I might as well post our current benefit list publicly.

Note: Since the majority of our staff works remotely, and some outside the US, some of these benefits are provided in different ways. For example, the 401k is only available in the US. We’re currently working on making sure everyone, no matter where they work, have commensurate benefits (or at least as similar as possible). We’re still working on this, so hopefully I can write more about how we’ve addressed this down the road." www.linkedin.com[tweet_box design="box_09" float="none"]Everyone’s looking to know what everyone else is doing — as are we — so I figured I might as well post our current benefit list publicly.[/tweet_box]

How Well Are #CRE Leaders Balancing Need To Attract Talent & The Need To Reduce Company Costs?"Corporate real estate (CRE) leaders around the world are focused on strategies to attract and retain superior employees and help enhance their productivity. At the same time, they must continually find ways to reduce occupancy costs. The overriding challenge is to balance these two goals, which are often in opposition to one another.

This is the picture that emerged from a new global CRE survey conducted by Cushman & Wakefield in conjunction with CoreNet Global in 2016 as a follow-up to the 2015 study of industry trends, which reinforces the criteria that is really driving occupier decisions. This year, our survey examined not only location and workplace strategy as corporate value drivers, but also CRE’s alignment with business strategy alignment." www.cushwake.comYour success blesses others. I wish you a great a hugely impactful week!Ken