September 2, 2014

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http://bizmakoto.jp/bizid/articles/1409/02/news046.html

New Work Styles, New Offices

CBRE: Unassigned seating, a cafe, and murals for its 550 employees

Our editorial department received an email outlining a company’s new office and a

video of a wall covered in graffiti. We had to see this…

—By Daisuke Okada, Business Media Makoto

The Biz.ID editorial department received an email invitation to visit CBRE, a company that had

relocated to a new office. We were unfamiliar with this company. It had a cafe and murals and

had created a new office aimed at achieving a new work style. Was it perhaps a cutting-edge IT

venture? We decided to take a look at a video attachment that piqued our interest.

What CBRE does

CBRE relocated to new premises in the Meiji Yasuda Seimei Building in Tokyo’s Marunouchi

district, overlooking the Imperial Palace Square. After you leave the elevator hall you come to a

spacious entrance featuring a white interior and a spectacular view.

While companies are increasingly using unmanned reception areas, CBRE went against the grain

by stationing concierges in its new Tokyo office. This idea was apparently to showcase CBRE’s

commitment to complete hospitality. So, what sort of company is CBRE?

Captions:

The reception concierges welcome visitors with a smile.

In the waiting area, an art object made from plants.

The building overlooks the Imperial Palace Square.

In fact, CBRE is a Fortune 500-listed commercial real estate firm with more than 350 offices

around the world. In Japan, CBRE functions behind the scenes for corporate clients. For example,

it was involved in Kirin Holdings’ massive relocation and integration project. It also helped with

the sale of the Tokyo Bay Maihama Hotel Club Resort beside the Tokyo Disney Resort and

assisted with TOTO’s construction of a plant in India.

Departing from the traditional island layout

“Although CBRE moved to its current location on April 7, 2014, the relocation project started in fall

2012.” So say our tour guides Laurent Riteau, director of Workplace Strategy, and Mr. Manzur

Mahtab, IT Director. Mr. Riteau oversaw the relocation project, while Mr. Mahtab deployed

information systems to create an employee-friendly workplace.

Caption: Laurent Riteau (Above) and Manzur Mahtab

“Start by looking look at this photo,” says Mr. Riteau, the screen showing the Hamamatsu office in

2013 before the move. The desks were in an island layout that is the norm in Japanese offices,

with piles of paper in every space.

The Hamamatsu office alone was divided into five floors. This and offices in Shinjuku, Nihonbashi,

and in Saitama City were consolidated in Marunouchi in a large project encompassing around 550

employees.

Caption: A regular Japanese office.

The project goal was to materialize CBRE’s vision for tomorrow’s workplaces. The initiative thus

entailed interviewing and surveying executives and employees and carefully observing how

people work. It explored the time people spent at their desks, the time used in meetings, the

numbers of people using conference rooms, and the volume of paper consumed.

Mr. Riteau says that, “We amassed many facts through our research. We learned that people are

at their desks for an average of 61% of the time, with usage peeking at 74%. We learned that

while seated, people want to concentrate for about 25% of the time without others disturbing

them. They are happy around 65% of the time to deal with phone calls or other interruptions.

They spend another 5% of time in collaborative tasks with colleagues and 5% or so in

teleconferences.”

What is an activity-based workspace?

Based on such data, all 550 employees at the new office can use any available desk. Even though

there is around 18% less floor space, there are 324 regular desks. There are 400 workpoint seats

of varying desk and chair designs.

Caption: More than 15 workpoint variations.

The company switched to Windows 7 laptop PCs for all employees. It dispelled employee

concerns about information systems by setting up a help desk near the center of the office that is

constantly manned by IT department staffers.

Caption: Employees can approach a constantly manned helpdesk, thereby increasing peace of

mind.

The result is activity-based working, meaning that employees can choose workspaces based on

the task at hand. For example, they can choose from a regular desk with one display or a

workspace with two displays (or even a desk without a display).

Employees wishing to work uninterrupted can also use zones (accounting for around 20% of floor

space) in which chatting and phone calls are prohibited. There are booths for making phone calls,

and some employees take advantage of completely soundproofed private rooms in which they

can concentrate.

Captions:

Booths for concentration.

Open space for concentrating, where employees can relax while focusing on writing.

The 21 phone booths were originally intended for highly confidential phone calls and

discussions, but some employees also use them as alternatives to private rooms.

76% of booked conference rooms actually vacant

Vital for businesspeople in Japan, conference rooms are also frequently wasteful. Mr. Riteau says

that his survey of usage rates revealed that 76% of conference rooms booked through the

reservation system were actually vacant. This was because people might simply book a room for

an hour but finish a meeting in 15 minutes or because a gathering was called off without anyone

canceling the reservation.

Caption: The Ote, the largest conference room in the new office, features one glass wall for an

open feeling. It is worth noting that the meeting rooms for visitors are named after

the gates and moats of Edo Castle.

For the new office, CBRE allocated the number of conference rooms and determined their sizes

based on usage data. The company increased collaboration spaces for small discussions 3.3-fold

while reducing the number of conference rooms to 23. Most of those rooms are for four to six

people; two are multipurpose spaces with desks and easily movable partitions. All conference

rooms encourage paperless information sharing, with one or two displays installed.

The company installed a motion sensor-linked reservation system. All conference rooms have

small entrance displays that name those reserving them and the times reserved. If sensors

cannot detect anyone using the rooms, the reservations are automatically canceled. Lighting also

switches on and off automatically, conserving energy.

Captions:

The open-plan Thames conference room.

A sensor-linked system that allows employees to reserve vacant rooms on the spot.

In this conference room with high chairs, a wall is used as a whiteboard.

Another open-plan conference room that looks more like a stylish living room.

Housing Japan’s second RISE Café from New Zealand

The office also features a RISE café exclusively for employees and visitors that can seat around

100 people. This facility also functions as a workspace in addition to being an employee cafeteria.

This is the second RISE café in Japan, New Zealand’s Mojo Coffee having opened its first here in

2012.

Captions:

A café unexpectedly inside an office area.

Mojo Coffee operates RISE Café.

The café can accommodate everything from casual gatherings to large seminars. It also serves

alcoholic beverages after 5:30 p.m. Messrs. Riteau and Mahtab recommend it as “the most

popular location in the company.”

Captions:

The café features a large TV monitor for sports fans.

Lunch offerings include healthy sandwiches.

The most popular item is the avocado sandwich; there are also coffee tumblers for

employees.

Why is there a mural in-house?

Given that none of CBRE’s 550 employees have assigned desks, you would wonder how they

would sort out where to find someone for a short discussion. This is one of the downsides of

unassigned seating. People might simply settle where they prefer, making the unassigned

location concept obsolete.

A smiling Mr. Mahtab says that, “A message app that all employees use is handy for these

situations. Someone wanting a face-to-face meeting instead of an online chat will look at a

comment beside the employee name. This person is currently ‘in Sydney.’ That person is ‘in

London.’” Those location names are what you would expect from a global corporation. I thought

perhaps that he didn’t understand my Japanese question.

But CBRE’s Tokyo office is actually divided into six zones. These are London, Paris, Sydney, Los

Angeles, New York, and Tokyo. The conference rooms are named according to the zones they are

in. If you look closely, you will realize that the interiors on the premises reflect regional

differences.

Let’s return to the murals mentioned at the start of this story. The mural in the Tokyo area is

covered with moat and carp drawings. The New York mural features pop art. The Los Angeles

mural is covered with graffiti. But none of this is for pleasure.

Captions:

The Tokyo area mural features a moat.

The Los Angeles area mural is covered in graffiti.

Wouldn’t you feel a little restless working here?

The pop art is blended in this place?

The murals have apparently surprised visitors from inside and outside CBRE, but the relocation

project has borne considerable fruit over the past year and a half. Conference usage rates have

improved from 25%, to more than 60%. While 92% previously said that there were no areas in

which they could concentrate on their work, that percentage has dropped to 33%. Compared

with 75% of employees once saying that there were no areas for collaboration, just 22% now

think so. The initiatives deployed at the Tokyo office have apparently been shared extensively

around Japan and abroad.

Finally, one outcome of this relocation project that I would like to highlight is that the office has

cut its paper stock by 92% by digitizing as much as possible. It is naturally impossible to eliminate

all paper because CBRE is in the real estate industry. That represents a reduction of around 28

million pages, or 135 times the floor space of Tokyo Dome. The installation of on-demand printing

systems has saved the company more than 30 million yen.

Captions:

Lockers are the only private locations of employees; professionally taken photos are

placed on the lockers to match names and faces.

The digitization of business cards has also contributed to reduced paper usage;

CBRE installed the Sansan business card management setup advertised extensively

on television.