Attracting and retaining talent will be a key focus for business leaders over the next five years: Survey

More than five in 10 (53%) leaders surveyed indicated so, alongside growing revenue through expansion and M&A (57%) and achieving organisational efficiency (54%).

With seven out of 10 business leaders in the APAC region anticipating budget increases through 2030, JLL’s biennial global survey, The Future of Work Survey 2024, delves into the changing landscape of work. It assesses the key priorities, challenges, and strategies that are top-of-mind for more than 2,300 business leaders globally. 

According to a press release, business leaders globally are mainly focused on three corporate goals over the next five years: 

• Growing revenue through expansion and M&A (57%),  

• Attracting and retaining talent (53%), and  

• Achieving organisational efficiency (54%). 

Further, the survey identified five areas of focus for corporate real estate (CRE) teams:  

1. Meeting the shifting and dynamic work patterns and talent demands  
2. Aligning and partnering with the C-suite to support CRE investment 
3. Identifying CRE activities for ‘AI copiloting’ and technology innovation 
4. Maintaining momentum on sustainability commitments  
5. Defining the future-fit CRE function 

Diving deeper into the implications of shifting work patterns, and how it will affect expectations in the workplace, the survey noted the following themes:

Meeting the shifting and dynamic work patterns and talent demands    

Firstly, the survey examined six factors that are driving the need for change:  

• A desire to increase and rebalance organisational headcount, in an attempt to recruit the right talent and skills to be future-ready; 

• A strong focus on organisational efficiency that requires smarter long-term investment decisions; 

• Competing visions of ‘how work should be done’ to achieve the best performance – often coexisting within the same organisation; 

• An attempt from ‘Office advocates’ to promote equal work practices among their workforce and to design more inclusive workplaces; 

• The recognition that flexibility in workstyles is the best way to strengthen organisational performance among ‘hybrid adopters’, and

• An opportunity for CRE teams to contribute to the Employee Value Proposition (EVP) discussion, by defining a compelling and evolutionary office model for their organisation. 

The results showed that 64% of respondents anticipate their company's headcount will increase by 2030. However, the biggest challenge is the struggle to plan long-term amid a rapidly changing environment. This is especially evident in the CRE sector, where professionals have had to continually adapt to shifts in workplace dynamics.  

This cautious approach to uncertainty has introduced complexities for CRE teams, who must balance investing in future-ready workplaces with a sharp focus on efficiency and cost management. 

The survey also found that while 77% of decision-makers once viewed hybrid work as crucial for attracting talent, 2024 has seen a strong shift toward office-based work. The preference is now nearly evenly divided between hybrid workstyles and full-time office presence. 

Currently, 44% of organisations, or office advocates, prefer staff to be in the office five days a week, up from 34% of employees working full-time in the office in 2022. Meanwhile, 56% of hybrid adopters employ various strategies, ranging from fully remote to requiring employees in the office at least three days a week. 

Diverse workstyles and their impacts 

Hybrid and office-based workstyles reflect a broad range of approaches that may even coexist within the same organisation, depending on job requirements. Large organisations (10,000+ employees) in EMEA and sectors like e-commerce, technology, and life sciences are more likely to embrace hybrid work, seeing it as a key part of their employee value proposition (EVP). 

In contrast, smaller to medium-sized companies (1,000-9,999 employees) in APAC or the Americas, especially in customer-facing industries like healthcare, retail, and manufacturing, tend to favour office-based work as they aim to maintain consistency in work practices and build solidarity among employees. 

Today, 49% of organisations in APAC are considered office advocates, who would like to see staff in the office five days a week – as compared to 44% globally, led by India and China. On the other hand, Singapore, Korea, and Australia lead the remaining 51% of APAC organisations who prefer hybrid workstyles. 

Technology and AI as agents of transformation in the corporate real estate function 

Across the globe, business leaders believe that CRE can add the most value by 

• Supporting business growth, 

• Enabling organisational efficiency, and 

• Reducing operating costs 

In APAC, the importance of digitisation in the CRE function is especially pronounced. Nearly two-thirds (63%) of decision-makers view technology and AI adoption as crucial for enhancing CRE’s future value.  

CRE leaders in the region expect more than 70% of their activities to be supported by AI by 2030, and 90% plan to accelerate AI investments, with half anticipating AI-enabled spaces by that time.   

With tech-enabled spaces expected to come sooner than initially thought, a ‘future fit’ CRE team should focus on high value-add tasks internally, while automation and AI take on routine and repetitive tasks and outsourcing partners are brought in for specialist tasks and individual projects. 

The survey findings also revealed four takeaways that decision-makers can use to secure organisational efficiency and build a future-ready CRE function: 

Define and co-deliver an evolutionary workplace programme 

Collaborate with business leaders and HR to shape the EVP and develop a compelling workplace proposal. Explore various options, select the most suitable for your organisation, and ensure flexibility to adapt to evolving workstyles and patterns. 

Create destination workplaces by providing ‘peak experiences’ 

Take inspiration from the hospitality and retail sectors to design an engaging and attractive worker journey enabled by technology. 

Harness technology and AI to meet uncertainty with flexibility 

Create AI-enabled spaces that are adaptable and capable of analysing space utilisation. Provide agile environments that meet various worker needs throughout the week. Enhance hybrid meetings by investing in advanced collaboration and meeting technologies that support diverse workstyles and team requirements. 

Bring the workplace to the employee 

Investigate 'hub and spoke' models to attract the more distributed talent pools of future workers and leverage external flex space operators to provide access to networked and convenient decentralised workplaces. 

Transform the CRE function 

Position CRE as a key driver of value and transformation within the organisation. Enhance the function by upskilling and leveraging specialised expertise through strategic partnerships to foster a high-performance workforce. 

READ MORE: The now and the future: Why HR needs to lead with wellbeing and agility