Times Are Changing… Actually, They Just Did
Matt Newstrom
LEED AP, ConsultingMatt leverages more than 20 years of senior management and consulting experience in corporate real estate, workplace strategy, business development, building operations, construction, and process improvement to guide Hyphn's vision, strategy, and execution.
I’ve literally spent my entire career in the built environment. My career started when I was 16 years-old and decided to go to high school part time and began working full time as a carpenter. My career path was not the “typical” path and my plan beyond was simply: try to be the best at whatever I’m doing, give excellent customer service, take advantage of every opportunity that I’m approached with, and look for ways to improve my area of influence in the role I have. The journey led me from residential carpentry to commercial carpentry, lead carpentry, property and facilities management, project management, commercial real estate, owner’s rep project management, real estate strategy, and workplace consultancy. Most recently, three years ago, my current business partner (Shastan Jee) and I decided to make a leap from our respective careers to buy a commercial furniture dealership. There is a common thread that weaves through every job that I’ve ever had: buildings and space. Simply put, I love buildings and space and the challenges and opportunities of the people that use them.
When Shastan (who came from a great role at Nike) first bought what now is Hyphn, the most asked question was “why the heck did you two buy a furniture dealership??” Our answer was that we didn’t buy a furniture dealership. We didn’t buy the company to sell task chairs—even though we offer some really good ones! We saw the changing market opportunity on how companies view space, the value of space as a tool for their employees, the ability to shape culture, and the market need for someone to step forward and knit all of these things together. We bought a “furniture dealership” because we wanted to be at the forefront of change and needed a solid platform at the center of all of these things to start our work. That is why we bought SmitchCFI, which is now Hyphn.
We didn’t know it then, but know it now: all of the hard work that we and our teams have put into growing Hyphn’s internal processes, team, culture, technology, and work mobility prepared us for this COVID-19 crisis that we are all now facing. As we’ve watched the news unfold over the last couple of months, we began to take the threat to our business seriously. So, three weeks and one day ago, we launched a “Work from Home Preparedness - WFH” survey to our teams and thought that the results were impressive. In short, the data we got back was that well over 90% of our employees (not including field operations) were ready to shift to a work from home strategy and not miss a beat. We had time to address the other 10% that didn’t feel fully equipped, and get them comfortable by issuing some second monitors for home, spiffing up training on GoogleMeet, GoogleDrive, etc.
Hyphn didn’t realize it, but we were ready for an unprecedented global pandemic and a shift that I believe will forever change how companies approach the needs for their space and how they view the intersections of People, Place, and Technology.
Our team is working nearly around the clock to address the threats that COVID-19 has brought to our company and as a service-based organization, our clients’. As I can find time, I’m reaching out to other business owners, my old friends in commercial real estate, and clients to ask how they are doing and what they are seeing. I’m getting a lot of great information and finding some—mostly tech clients—easily pivoted to a WFH strategy, but others are being hamstrung by the stay-in-place mandate due to reliance on paper and lack of adequate technology. A few clients that had projects in which spending on “high-design” trumped functionality and technology are regretting the value engineering of things that support their employees because they were too focused on an object. Almost everyone has commented that when things get back to normal, that won’t be the normal of even three weeks ago.
My observations boiled down:
We have now proven that if you are an office worker, the majority of us do not “need” space to operate our businesses and do our jobs.
Human interaction is critical. Our team can WFH just fine, but wow, we really miss each other. The virtual happy hours (costumes are encouraged), lunches, coffees, and one-on-ones are great, but nothing compares to mixing it up in the office together.
Spaces that simply photograph well is not what the design industry will or should continue to prioritize.
Where does that leave us? After COVID-19 is behind us, how are we going to operate and how will we view space? Some thoughts and predictions:
People need to stay connected. The office will always be here, we can’t replace the value of in-person human connection and collaboration.
Real estate/space will continue to become more flexible. While I believe that the co-working industry may take a short-term hit, they will bounce back and continue to lead the charge on how people approach their real estate strategy.
Companies and designers will finally abandon the archaic model of every employee gets a dedicated seat. Data has been circulating for years that on average—across all industries—at any given time, no more than 60% of commercial space is being used. Why have people continued to pay 40% more than they need on the expense that is only second to payroll?
Companies will prioritize operational and project spend. This means fewer “really cool light fixtures” and more things that engage their employees, help them collaborate in and out of the office, and fully enable remote work.
People need to stay connected. Companies will invest heavily into quality virtual conferencing systems. Standard conference call services will either die or need to pivot to allow full VC systems with adequate lighting, acoustics, cameras, etc.
Companies will implement tools to understand exactly how much space they need prior to making a lease or purchase commitment and will use similar tools to monitor their utilization in real time. The use of real-time data will allow organizations to pivot quickly, not just to a downturn, but also for all of the surges we will see in the future.
What is ironic about where we are at today is that Hyphn has been hyper focused over the last three years to reach the vision that inspired us to create Hyphn. It required us to test and practice on ourselves first, which resulted in our ability to make immediate shifts and stay productive in this time of crisis. I’d like to say that we had Pandemic Planning on our 2020 strategic initiatives...but we didn’t!
Last year Hyphn invested heavily into our Workplace Technology Division, our Change Management Consulting, our Owner’s Rep Project Management, and we’re planning on making a big splash with major announcements on April 1st. We are considering the timing of making a major “splash” due to everything going on and we might wait for some of the dust to settle to party! But know that if anything in this post resonated with you, we’ve got the team mission-built to help.
Most importantly, everyone be safe, healthy, and when we can come out of self-quarantine let’s get to work reshaping how we work and evolving how space is used.