Power Reads: 5 Interesting Articles That Will Help You This Week

Each week, I select a few articles that rise above the fray and hopefully help you on your journey in leadership and the CRE world. They pull from one of four "corners": corporate real estate, technology, management science and anything positive. Each day we can become a better version of ourselves.

1. Hurricanes and Redwood Trees

It was early September of this year and two hurricanes were about to make landfall at the same time. This has never happened before in recorded history.

And as these storms were doing their damage, amazingly, three other hurricanes formed. We had a total of five storms in the Atlantic and the Gulf. This has also never happened before in recorded history. Welcome to 2020 - We are in Jumanji level 10.

Hurricanes, of course, can cause huge damage. This is true in real life, but it is also true as a metaphor. And hasn't life in 2020 felt like massive storm after massive storm has buffeted us? We had to deal with worried clients and teammates, scared family members, and very concerned children and parents. We have had social unrest, economic crisis and a political firestorm from all sides. Many of us felt like we had to lead when we were scared ourselves. When the entire family - corporate and home -is looking for leadership and you are dealing with your own gremlins, how do you stand in the fore and face down the metaphorical hurricane?

One answer is this: when your root system connects with other root systems, you will be immovable.

2. The Resurrection of the Office Phone Call

TWENTIETH CENTURY FOX/EVERETT COLLECTION

Call it the Goldilocks theory of the pandemic workplace.

Nonstop Zooms and video meetings are too taxing. Emails and Slack hold companies together, but written text can never capture the nuance of human conversation. What’s the answer? The humble phone call.

“A phone call is in many ways the happy medium,” says Marissa Shuffler, associate professor of organizational psychology at Clemson University. “It’s perfect for one-on-one discussions and has just as much richness as a video call, without overwhelming you with visual information.”

3. Silly Sweaters Aside, Workplace Holidays Will Be Different This Year

The holiday season will be much different in 2020, meaning that managers and HR staff need to potentially rethink policies on time off and staff get-togethers in an era of Zoom and working from home.

"It’s still super important for companies to do something in terms of community building and bringing employees together," HealthKick CEO Erika Zauner told HR Dive.

Perhaps the most important move is for leaders to check in with staff more often to gauge their stress, anxiety and mood. Many of the practices established at the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic may have slowly been swept aside, but with a traditionally stressful holiday season being supercharged by the events of this year, and many celebrating without family and loved ones, it’s especially important to open the lines of communication.

4. Here’s Where the Future of Worker Engagement is Heading

The modern workplace has changed irrevocably, but not in the ways we expected. All the same principles and requirements are intact, but the way we go about achieving goals and interacting with one another are evolving.

Interacting with physical spaces (conference rooms, doors, workstations) is still a thing, and it won’t be long before many remote operations fold back into the office, reinvigorating traditional workplace experiences. But that doesn’t necessarily mean things are going back exactly as they were.

Low-touch connectedness is key, with more contextual and yet distanced experiences spread throughout a physical location. To support this type of agility in the workplace – IoT is a desirable way to achieve it.

5. Though Offices Still Sit Largely Empty, Office-Using Jobs Are Returning

Some of the strongest sectors for employment growth nationally in October were the office-using professional and business services, financial activities and information sectors. These industries combined accounted for between a quarter and a third of all jobs added in October, depending on whether the data has been seasonally adjusted. For this job growth update, we took a deeper dive into office-using employment by market.

With so many office workers still operating from home, the notion of office-using employment may seem somewhat anachronistic at this time. However, it’s important to look at these jobs since they typically represent higher-paying professional and technical services positions that help drive demand for high-end multifamily, retail and of course, office space.

Office-using employment is highly correlated with office demand, so any sustained softness in employment for that sector could point to a weaker post-pandemic performance for office properties in a given region.

Nationally, office-using employment fell by 7.8% from February to April, but has increased by about 5.5% since. The sector overall remains down about 2.8% from the February peak.

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

Ken Ashley