The past year gave rise to new terminology to explain workplace phenomena: The “hushed hybrid” model and “coffee badging.”
The former describes a tendency for managers to quietly assent to breaking from corporate return-to-office mandates to appease workers; the latter, a trend of employees showing up as required only to get credit for it – and maybe snag a coffee – before returning home to work.
No matter the name for it, the conclusion for those drawing up plans for today’s office environments has been the same. … “People just don’t want to show up to the same mind-numbingly boring offices,” local developer Ralph Zucker said. “They’d rather work from home. Maybe they’ll show up briefly for a meeting or because they’re asked to, but they’ll go back home to work.” Zucker, CEO and president of Inspired by Somerset, has been part of building an alternative in the Garden State, one that he believes will provide employers more return-to-office success stories – and less cause to invent lingo.
At the developer’s Bell Works in Holmdel, a 2-million-square-foot mixed-use property referred to as a “metroburb,” Zucker said part of what’s driving the occupancy rate of the campus to about 98% is how the property’s amenities are making for a more palatable in-office experience.
“What we’ve seen is there has been a flight to quality and an embrace by employers and their employees of working in an interesting space, activated places, places that feel alive,” he said.
“When you provide them with an exciting and interesting place to work, they’ll show up. … And that’s much more important now than what I’ll call pre-pandemic times, although we believe this trend existed before.”
Outside of New Jersey, Inspired by Somerset is seeing the same excitement, with its more recently reconfigured AT&T research center in Chicago, Bell Works Chicagoland, leasing more than 400,000 square feet of office space in its short run since breaking ground. Rental rates across their “metroburb” concepts are also climbing to new highs, Zucker reports.
That’s bucking a larger trend in the commercial real estate market, he added, which has been one of communities constantly shedding office spaces, especially in suburban areas.
“Outside of downtown sections of cities, these properties are simply being destroyed – turned into data centers, warehousing or residential structures,” he said. “That’s happening at not-insignificant numbers.”
Zucker anticipates more companies instituting return-to-office policies in the years ahead. They could also be enforced more strictly, potentially to counteract that so-called “coffee badging” trend.
What he expects won’t change is the local workforce – especially the younger side of it – demanding more of their company’s workplaces than in the past.
He’ll note that the older generation of workers has their own concerns, as a potential tenant indicated in a recent call with Zucker.
“They told me straight up that the younger group in offices are all about the emotional appeal and the social aspect of the office, while the upper tier that’s maybe a few years from retirement is much more concerned with something like covered parking,” he said. “They don’t care about what an office looks like as long as they can park in the building and not be exposed to the snow or rain in the winter.”
The take-away for him, however, is that the workforce is getting younger. And they’ll need new reasons for coming into the office in 2025 and beyond.
“As we see it, to quote Mary Poppins: A spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down,” Zucker said. “With there being fewer jobs available than two years ago, it might be easier to tell employees what to do, but we still see people will leave their job for more flexibility or even move away and do remote work. So, it’s still easier to attract employees to the office than just tell them this is something you just have to do.”
