Bookmarks: 5 Interesting Articles That May Help You This Week

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.

1. Email Is A Distraction Treasure Chest

A lamp shade in your living room is diffused. It’s unfocused and spreads light around, but it’s not going to impress anyone or win any awards. We have lamps in every room of our home and I never even think about them. They do their job and softly light a room, but they do not stand out.

But a spotlight at a show, a laser or even yes, a light beam through a magnifying glass, has amazing powers. Those beams of light contain incredible strength to gather our attention. The military uses lasers as a weapon and movie stars want to be in…the spotlight.

Simply focusing the energy of light has a dramatic impact on its effectiveness.

And this principle applies not only to light, but to you and me.

2. Papa John’s to open HQ in Atlanta, create 200 jobs

Pizza delivery company Papa John’s plans to move its global headquarters to Atlanta from Kentucky next year, adding 200 jobs as it expands and rides a huge surge in business, thanks to the coronavirus.

Papa John’s International will relocate development, human resources, menu innovation and other departments to the Atlanta area from its hometown of Louisville. The company’s IT and logistics departments will remain there.

Company president and CEO Rob Lynch told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution the COVID-19 pandemic has helped Papa John’s have the best year in its history. As people work and attend school from home, sales have soared.

3. Productivity Drops as Work From Home Fatigue Sets In, Survey of Employers Finds

Nearly six months into the forced large-scale work-from-home experiment that the coronavirus pandemic caused, companies have started to report a drop in productivity as remote work fatigue starts to set in, a survey by architect and design firm Vocon found.

Vocon surveyed the heads of nearly 50 businesses around the country and found that 40 percent of them have started to see decreases in productivity as staff work remotely. Meanwhile, a quarter of them added their employees were feeling exhausted working from home every day. That runs counter to what the leaders told Vocon early on in the pandemic, when 56 percent of them in April rated productivity as “excellent.”

“That was a really big indicator for us that things were starting to fracture,” said Megan Spinos, the director of strategy for Vocon. “What we’re seeing in the comments is that there were other implications. Companies were having a really hard time keeping their culture together and a really, really difficult time onboarding employees. The workplace was really a critical place for them.”

4. Amazon Plans to Put 1,000 Warehouses in Suburban Neighborhoods

mazon.com Inc. plans to open 1,000 small delivery hubs in cities and suburbs all over the U.S., according to people familiar with the plans. The facilities, which will eventually number about 1,500, will bring products closer to customers, making shopping online about as fast as a quick run to the store. It will also help the world’s largest e-commerce company take on a resurgent Walmart Inc.

Amazon couldn’t fulfill its two-day delivery pledge earlier this year when shoppers in Covid-19 lockdown flooded the company with more orders than it could handle. While delivery times have improved thanks to the hiring of 175,000 new workers, Amazon is now consumed with honoring a pre-pandemic pledge to get many products to Prime subscribers on the same day.

So with the holidays approaching, Chief Executive Officer Jeff Bezos is doubling down by investing billions in proximity, putting warehouses and swarms of blue vans in neighborhoods long populated with car dealerships, fast-food joints, shopping malls and big-box stores.

5. Cushman, Industrious Form Alliance as Office Industry Rallies Behind Flex Space

Cushman & Wakefield PLC, one of the world’s largest commercial-real-estate-services firms, has launched an alliance with Industrious, a startup co-working firm, to build market share in one of the few growing office-space businesses during the pandemic.

The office industry has mostly gotten pounded this year, creating pain for investors in firms like Cushman, CBRE Group Inc. and JLL. Because of health concerns, millions of workers continue to work from home. Leasing and sales activity has evaporated, eroding billions of dollars of value.

But one of the few office businesses that is staying relatively strong has been managing properties for landlords. That business also has great growth potential because it is already beginning to play a major role in the workplace changes taking shape in a world of Covid-19.

Your success blesses others. I wish you a great a hugely impactful week!

Ken Ashley