Written by Kieran Delamont, Associate Editor, London Inc.

THE PENDULUM MIGHT be swinging back in the direction of office real estate, a new survey from commercial real estate firm CBRE suggests, as more companies are shifting towards office expansion and away from the levels of contraction we saw during the pandemic.

Thirty-eight per cent of companies from across the U.S., Canada and Latin America polled said they anticipate expanding their offices in the next three years; only 20 per cent said so last year. The share of companies looking to cut office space dropped sharply, from 53 per cent in 2023 to just 37 per cent this year. CBRE suggests that it is evidence that the era of office contraction might be ending.

“It’s possible we’re past the peak of the office-downsizing trend,” said CBRE’s global head of occupier research, Julie Whelan. Some companies surveyed found that they had overdone it and are now seeing over-capacity offices on high attendance days. CBRE’s global president of advisory and transaction services Manish Kashyap called their findings “a significant step toward a return to growth.”

Whelan said that beneath the surface there’s a lot of interesting things going on with offices. In an interview with Charter, she said that commercial tenants are relying more on building amenity floors, and corporate landlords are increasingly advertising their amenity packages. Hot-desking is expected to keep increasing, and CBRE predicts that 70 per cent of employers won’t have a dedicated desk for each employee within two years.

And downtowns may also see some more life, Whelan noted, as companies want centralized locations; the hub-and-spoke office model talked about during the pandemic, she said, is “100 per cent not where the world is going.”

CBRE said that its survey shows businesses realizing that in the post-Covid world, what you’re offering with an office matters more than how strictly you enforce attendance ― and suggests that more offices will be willing to pay for great space in attractive, easy-to-access locations.

“Employees…want to come into a great place,” Whelan said. “It just doesn’t mean once you get into that leased space with all the bells and whistles that the company is responsible for, but it’s that journey right from your front door to the front door of the office.”

TRENDS

The pause that refreshes

The infamous smoke break is still part of the workday ― even for non-smokers

THE SMOKE BREAK has been a staple of the workplace for decades, or at least since it was no longer kosher to light a cigarette right at your desk. But fewer and fewer people each year are smoking cigarettes ― a problem for the Phillip Morris corporation and, to a lesser degree, for those fans of going outside for five to 10 minutes in the middle of the workday. But if you’re a member of the latter group, fear not: there’s still ways to find those moments of peace.

There is, for instance, the Diet Coke break, which rocketed to popularity last year on TikTok. “A Diet Coke break is something I do look forward to when I am in the office,” one 27-year-old marketing manager, Dedrick Boyington-Warmack, told Fortune. As he put it on socials: “There really isn’t a better high than going with your favourite work friends to grab a lil’ treat.”

Another is “alonement,” which boils the smoke break down to its essence ― being alone and free of your coworkers’ BS for ten minutes. Office designers are starting to build solo spaces into office plans. “It is the smoke break for the era of people who don’t smoke,” said TPG Architecture’s Ricardo Nabholz. Often the spaces aren’t workspaces, but little retreats from work. “It’s a place where you can just go in and close the door and have a moment of solitude to recentre yourself.”

But if none of that works, there’s also the old standby ― cigarettes, which we at London Inc. certainly do not recommend but which have nevertheless remained a popular way for young people to slack off on the clock. A survey last month found that Gen Z workers top all other generations for taking sneaky smoke breaks at work (although the survey noted that all generations take a lot of unauthorized smoke breaks).

Let’s talk dollars and cents though. A pack of smokes? That’s the better part of twenty bucks. Locking yourself in a small quiet room is free. And a Diet Coke? Three bucks; that’s the sweet spot. “You get a little boost of caffeine, you get fresh air leaving the office, and most of all, you get to spend time with your coworkers,” reasoned Boyington-Warmack. “The cool ones, of course.” 

WORKPLACE

Office politics

Do politics have a place in the office? It looks like most employees are voting no

IN CASE YOU hadn’t heard, there’s a U.S. presidential election in the fall. And probably a Canadian one next year, and maybe an Ontario election in the spring. And then you’ve got global conflicts in the Middle East, a war in Europe, protests just about every weekend here at home…

With all of the politics seemingly happening all the time, it appears more people want their workplaces to just stay out of it, a recent Gallup poll found.

“According to a new survey from Bentley University and Gallup, businesses are one group that people do not want to hear from on current events. Fewer than four in 10 adults believe businesses should take public stances, a decline of 10 percentage points since 2022.”

Across all demographics, more employees now want businesses to quiet up on politics than they did even two years ago.

The increased prevalence of politics in seemingly every facet of modern life has created headaches, to say the least, for business leaders and HR professionals. “Light political chatter has turned into highly politicized office debate,” wrote Toronto employment lawyers Howard Levitt and Muneeza Sheikh. “Meaningful workplace relationships are falling apart, employees are becoming demoralized and some businesses are suffering operationally.”

Some political talk is probably unavoidable; some heated political talk probably is, too. But it’s increasingly affecting who works where: 32 per cent of people told Indeed that they would consider leaving if their CEO started publicly expressing overtly political views, a number that goes up to 40 per cent among those under 34.

“The fact that almost half of us would rather quit our jobs over politically charged fractions than be open to respectfully coexisting is a telling sign of just how divisive we’ve become,” the study said.

What are workplaces to do? It’s a tricky spot. You can’t really ban political discussion, nor try to pretend that work is a place where you are able to completely leave politics at the door. The best practice, advise those in the HR field, is to try to roll with the punches.

“It is the work of HR to anticipate and respond to their unavoidable influence on our people,” said Lynne Hamilton, an HR executive. “The only truly essential response is acknowledging the burden and noise, and letting your teams know you are receptive to many perspectives and that you care about your team as humans.” 

SMALL BUSINESS

Ground broken, small business forgotten

A group representing small businesses in Canada is calling on municipalities to compensate those hit hard by roadwork and construction

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