Every commercial real estate (CRE) property, tenant, and employee has different needs.
Driving renewed value to the office requires a unique approach to workplace events and engagement strategies.
Despite recent changes to the workplace, many employees still prefer their company’s physical office for a variety of work functions. 39% of respondents in a recent Gensler survey said that their company’s office is the best place to connect and socialize with their team members.
So how can you, as a commercial property owner or operator, ensure that the experience you are providing is the most beneficial to your tenants? There’s no better way to personalize engagement opportunities and experiences than to gather feedback and usage data directly from the people who use your building day in and day out.
Michael Ewert, Global Head of BI & Data Solutions at JLL Technologies recently pointed to the necessity of data: “Every company needs to understand data to create their competitive edge. Occupiers are now focused on how to enable the right hybrid workplace, and investors on how to revamp existing buildings to meet future demands. Good data empowers these decisions.”
Improving Workplace Events and Engagement
There are four main types of data and analytics that can help property teams achieve a true, customer-first workplace environment: spaces data, experience data, people data, and tenant satisfaction data.
Spaces
Spaces data measures the ways that physical and digital spaces throughout a property are used. Equipped with these insights, teams can uncover which amenities are most popular, and understand which tenants are using these spaces the most.
For instance, as an asset manager looking for the ROI of expanding an onsite fitness center, analyzing usage data from the past six months is incredibly valuable. If the amenity is not being utilized, why expand it? CRE professionals no longer have to make these investments based on guesswork.
Experiences
Monthly ice cream socials are not going to cut it anymore. Employees expect engagement and team-building activities to be exciting and personalized.
Thus, analyzing experiences data is key to iterating on future strategies. Experiences data allows property teams to learn how their tenant experience investments are performing by benchmarking amenities against best-in-class assets, revealing what content and events are most popular with a given building community, and tracking tenant e-commerce and retailer revenue trends.
When Intercontinental Real Estate wanted to drive value to their non-amenitized property at 955 Massachusetts Avenue, they partnered with HqO to foster employee engagement via a workplace experience app. Out of various event ideas, the team found that holiday events, trivia contests that offer prizes, and community offerings were the most popular drivers of app use, and received the most clicks. This data piece told the team these key events were worth investing in in the future.
People
Improving tenant retention, engagement, and attraction strategies starts with understanding the people and behaviors at a given property.
People data combines tenant demographic and behavioral data to uncover engagement and platform adoption trends. Property teams can access engagement and interest profiles for every tenant company, allowing them to create tailored engagement strategies to improve tenant retention.
For instance, if trends indicate that around fifteen tenant employees eat and work at your property’s on-site cafe three times a week, you can offer them a company-wide cafe discount. Identifying these small opportunities to brighten an employee’s day is a great way to drive loyalty and satisfaction.
Tenant Satisfaction
Tenant satisfaction data helps property teams understand tenant satisfaction on an ongoing basis, so they can learn about their customers and make improvements in those areas.
This enables the entire building population to provide feedback through their building app so teams can see overall property ratings, amenity satisfaction, and other feedback — by asset and by tenant.
Make Data-Driven Investments Today
Data-driven strategies are critical to maximizing workplace investments, and CRE professionals have already begun to leverage tenant data from their workplace events to create loyal customers and a thriving workplace environment.
An end-to-end workplace experience platform provides this data in real-time to enhance tenant engagement, which in turn allows property teams to proactively increase retention, attract new tenants, evaluate and prioritize amenity investments, and drive a higher NOI for the office.
Now is the perfect time to improve your employee engagement strategy with data-driven insights: learn how in our latest industry guide.
