Office Space Utilization

SAVANNAH, Ga. – Real estate owners and operators are implementing technology that can better serve occupiers by giving them more control over building access, amenities and other levers that can help boost workers’ return to the office, real estate technology executives said during a presentation at Realcomm IBCon. But with all these changes come increased complexity that has to be managed. 

“Every square inch of the property is being utilized between fitness centers, restaurants, frictionless lobbies and outdoor venues,” Tom Karounos, global head of building and hospitality at Tishman Speyer, said. His company develops and operates top-tier real estate across the country, with about $68 billion in assets under management. Rockefeller Center in New York City is one of their clients. “A lot of our customers are back five days a week …. So we’re trying to keep them comfortable in our properties and make it more welcoming for them to come back to the office.” 

Attempts to make space attractive include adding AV conference rooms, golf simulators and high-tech gym equipment, according to Brandon Van Orden, senior vice president and chief information officer at Cousins Properties. 

Karounos said he’s seeing more customers looking for conference room services. “A lot of folks don’t have high-end conference rooms within their space within our building,” he said. “They can’t afford it, and they just don’t have the expertise.” 

Providing these spaces and services helps keep employees in the building, bring other resources or employees to the region and into the building while driving revenue for Tishman Speyer, he said. 

Karounos said his company works with VTS and Swift Connect to provide a tenant experience app that enables occupants to manage their bookings. The goal is to give employees multi-building access and reduce the amount of time they spend at turnstiles entering buildings. “They may be in Building A today, and they may be somewhere in a different state the following day,” he said. “Now they can traverse that building frictionlessly in a different state.” 

But effectively implementing and managing technology creates its own challenges for facility managers and real estate teams due to the increasing complexity of the systems, the executives said. 

Previously, Tishman Speyer and other companies would roll out technology from the top down, Karounos said. “Now we actually do research and meet with our customers, not just our property management staff,” he said. 

“There’s a risk and reward,” he said. “There’s a risk when you’re installing a lot of new technology in your properties [of] who’s going to manage it?” For example, he said, you can put in a world-class audio-visual system that, when unmanaged, can fail to work when it is needed most. 

“When your Peloton or your yoga mirror doesn’t work, your [high-tech] gym is useless,” Van Orden said. “It used to be that if you could lift iron weights, it works. Now you’ve got a golf simulator. Talk about a maintenance nightmare. There are six different things that can go wrong on those things, and when one doesn’t work, the whole system’s useless.” 

The amount of support these systems require is one of the biggest challenges moving forward, Van Orden said. Many real estate companies don’t have the engineering skill sets needed to handle the design and continuous support for these systems.  

“We have one property that started out with Tesla chargers,” Van Orden said. “We didn’t charge.  It was free to customers.”

When the company decided it wanted to start charging for the service, it ran into technical problems it didn’t anticipate, he said. 

“There are some things you don’t think about, like designing the network for parking decks under buildings,” he said. “They don’t see the sky, so good luck getting cellular in there. So now we want to put in charging stations that accept credit cards with a point-of-sale system that has no cellular access. Good luck, right?”

Another issue is the cybersecurity risk as the technology ages. “You start adding these things, you add complexity from other vendors coming in and plugging things into your network and you always run the risk of cyber,” Karounos said. “We put all of our vendors, including ones that we approved, through a whole … cybersecurity questionnaire process. We take the vetting process very seriously and we partner with our procurement team to keep us honest, so there’s no kind of ambiguity.” 

“We recommend vetting partners out and making sure that we have a good support model and good relationship with them,” Van Orden said.

Workplace operators should think about how flexible space can help them meet the needs of workers who’ve become accustomed to choosing where they work, according to a JLL webinar focused on commercial real estate trends and rethinking space for smarter workplaces in 2025. 

“If you look around coffee shops, baseball games and building lobbies, everywhere is a workplace,” Kimberly Smith, senior vice president of workplace planning and strategy at JLL, said on the webinar. “People can work from anywhere, and they really expect to work from everywhere.”

That puts a premium on space flexibility, so when workers are in the office, they can find the kind of space that fits the kind of work they’re doing, speakers in the webinar said.    

“60% of office workers actually think that their home environment is better at supporting focused work than the office,” Paul Morgan, global chief operating officer of Work Dynamics at JLL, said on the webinar. “That’s a huge challenge as we’re trying to draw people back into the workplace to be supportive and productive.” 

Forward-looking organizations are creating high-hospitality work environments that allow for flexibility, according to Smith. These environments recognize that employees no longer expect to have assigned desks and would like different areas for different types of work: Areas for focus, areas that encourage collaboration and areas that can be used for both. 

Most days of the week, Smith said, nearly 48% of employees are doing focus work, with the remainder split between face-to-face and virtual collaboration.

Smith encouraged the use of flexible furniture with adaptable architecture so that work environments can be modified as needs shift. It can also help to implement technology systems that can enable efficient space booking and collaboration, she said.

It’s also important to create clearly defined “team neighborhoods” that can drive connection, said Jaymie Gelino, global chief operating officer of project and development services at JLL. 

“How we're using [a space] as a team, and then how we have those neighborhood connections to adjacent spaces – that'll give us some more flexibility around utilizing the space in a more prominent manner,” Gelino said.

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By JLL

Most companies are still reshuffling their office spaces to better suit the needs of staff and leadership. From issues with noise and temperature levels, to a poor mix of community and solo space, many current spaces are just not yet measuring up.

But construction costs are climbing. To balance budgets with evolving tenant and employee expectations, companies are more frequently devoting dollars to retrofits rather than new construction.

Recent data shows fit-out costs have increased globally over the past year, with the majority of markets reporting higher raw material prices and half seeing construction cost bumps, too. Average office fit-outs now land at about $280 USD per square foot and $278 CAD per square foot, depending on location.

And if you don’t get that fit-out right? You risk losing high performing talent and taking a hit to the bottom line.

"Supporting both hybrid and face-to-face work requires adaptability, collaborative and private space, multi-functional rooms and integrated technology," explains Andrew Hudson, Senior Director for Project Execution with JLL Project & Development Services. "All of which impact capital expenditure.”

Since even the cost-conscious approach will have you facing increased spend—from materials to mechanical systems—we’ve got some ideas to help you nab savings opportunities where you can.

Strategic spending nets strong returns

First things first: project execution starts with thorough space analysis. Before diving into architectural drawings or ordering new finishings, successful project managers conduct detailed assessments of existing office usage and identify improvement opportunities.

Before breaking ground, make sure you invest in some serious cross-departmental collaboration. Aligning finance, HR and operations teams on expectations and budget prevents costly mid-project changes and ensures renovations meet actual workplace requirements—on time and on budget.

And whether you’re pitching or red lining a fit-out project, you’ll want to look beyond expenses to help stakeholders consider the potential returns they can generate for your business. Measuring return on investment (ROI) is more than weighing benefits versus upfront costs. Think of the workplace as a tool to tackle critical business challenges:

• Talent Attraction and Retention – Intentionally designed spaces are powerful recruitment tools. Environments that reflect modern work preferences and support diverse work styles demonstrate company commitment to employee satisfaction, helping organizations stand out in competitive job markets.
• Productivity Enhancement – Strategic workspace design significantly impacts performance. The right mix of focus areas, collaboration zones and creative spaces fosters innovation, improves concentration and boosts usage rates.
• Future Adaptability – Flexible designs accommodate changing team sizes, work patterns and technology advances. This adaptability provides long-term cost savings by reducing needs for frequent major renovations or relocations.

Who’s on your team?

Once you’ve determined potential costs and returns of your fit-out, you’ll want to make good on your commitments. Successful renovations require coordinated expertise across multiple disciplines. Teaming up experts in the following areas covers all of your bases:

• Leasing Strategy – Make lease amendments and secure favorable renewal terms based on the value created by renovations.
• Design and Planning – Create spaces to meet current needs, while anticipating future demands based on workplace trends.
• Construction Management – Coordinate every phase, from initial design to final fit-out, ensuring on-time, on-budget delivery and minimizing disruptions.
• Workplace Strategy – Match physical spaces with business needs; it’s all about connecting place, people and technology.

Cost-effective renovations create spaces that work harder for businesses, transforming into resilient portfolio assets. With 86% of commercial real estate (CRE) leaders focused on cost reduction, smart decision making and prioritizing ROI is critical.

JLL’s real estate services combine a global platform with trusted local experts across every sector and asset class. Our holistic approach includes leasing, design, portfolio optimization, project management, facilities management and other workplace solutions that help you realize the potential value of your real estate portfolio

Real estate experience firm HqO today launched a system of record for customer experience in commercial real estate, which the company says will help empower property owners and operators to drive long-term asset value. 

HqO’s new platform aims to address challenges resulting from disconnected data and systems by consolidation building operation and tenant experience insights so that facility teams can create “vibrant, profitable properties” that provide flexibility, hospitality and measurable workplace ROI, the company said in a release. 

Alongside the platform, HqO is releasing its REX Framework, a methodology that aligns experience delivery with financial outcomes, which it says helps organizations create outcome-driven environments “where every interaction transforms properties and drives tenant satisfaction, operational excellence, and long-term performance.” 

By connecting three workflows — asset management, tenant lifecycle and building operations — the platform connects the tenant journey to the investor lifecycle and enables teams to set and evaluate key performance indicators across commercial real estate, HqO says. These metrics include net operating income, capital expenditure and return on investment for asset performance; satisfaction and retention for tenant experience; and uptime and efficiency for operations, per the release. 

“The smart operators are really developing a methodology for catering to different personas and stakeholders within the customer segment,” Chase Garbarino, CEO and co-founder of HqO, told Facilities Dive. “They have their investors and they have their tenants.What’s the difference between how [different employees] access the office, versus the person who is negotiating the lease and doing the administrative work?” 

The REX Framework breaks down to five parts — assess, activate, engage, monetize and measure — according to Garbarino. “First and foremost, when you think about how people assess space, there’s been a secular change in the ROI of the workplace,” he said. While traditional commercial real estate assessments take the physical environment and basic occupant survey information into account, they fail to look at the different types of work being done at a particular location, Garbarino said. 

“What's the difference between somebody who needs concentration space … versus a scrum team of engineers that are working on a software project, versus [those working] on a hardware project,” he said. “The set of variables that need to be assessed has gotten dramatically more complex in terms of how people get onboarded.” 

Once an asset is assessed, HqO then provides owners and operators with AI-powered insights, including lease renewal forecasting, operational planning to improve NOI, and benchmarking performance across assets and regions, to “activate” properties and drive improvements. 

Return-to-office trends have pushed flight-to-quality in the office market, driving prime building vacancy levels down and increasing rents in Class A+ and Class A office buildings, but overall vacancy rates remain elevated. This has resulted in decreased rents for lower-class buildings and forced operators of non-prime stock to raise concessions in hopes of attracting tenants, according to a CBRE analysis released in March. 

As a result, owners and operators could benefit from leveraging tenant experience data to improve asset performance and operations to attract demand, Garbarino said. 

“We can’t all pay 200 bucks a square foot at Hudson Yards,” he said. “Most tenants are not going to expect [that] experience, but they’re going to expect better than what they had,” he said.  As a result, operators are going to have to provide more service offerings that are temporary and mobile, with amenities that are significantly less expensive, he said. 

“Where the capital markets are, it’s not super easy to completely reposition an E+ asset to make it an A-minus or an A, not even necessarily a trophy [asset]. There’s going to need to be some creativity in terms of, ultimately, how they gussy up these assets,” Garbarino said.

Occuspace, which uses sensors to collect data on building use, id offering a micro sensor aimed at measuring how space is used at the room level, giving facilities managers insight into occupancy patterns for conference rooms, flex spaces, phone booths and other areas. 

The product enables Occuspace to cover 100% of building space, complementing the company’s Macro sensor that’s designed for larger, open work spaces, the company says. 

“There's a lot of opportunity to make better use of [a smaller] type of space,” Linus Grasel, co-founder and chief information officer at Occuspace, said in an interview. 

Founded by two students at the University of California, San Diego, in 2018, Occuspace’s sensors and software aim to provide building operators with an anonymous way to collect occupancy data to help them make space planning and redesign decisions. 

The company’s focus has been on “neighborhood-level granularity” — analyzing occupancy on a department- or floor-level basis so clients can make ROI decisions — but with its new addition, it’s aiming to provide more granularity, Nic Halverson, the company’s co-founder and CEO, said in an interview. 

The Micro sensor uses what the company calls privacy-safe millimeter wave technology — a type of radar — to detect occupancy levels and send data to the cloud for AI-driven analysis. The sensor’s range provides approximately 400-square-foot coverage without the need for a dedicated Wi-Fi connection, the company says. 

Clients have been asking for the higher granularity capabilities, Halverson says. 

Although there is less ROI potential with them, individual rooms potentially provide an easier decision than entire floors or sections for building operators that want to drive change. “Even if it’s not the big ROI, this is where we can start making decisions, and it’s super valuable space,” Halverson said. 

Organizations trying to attract employees back to the office often don’t have the right mix of spaces to meet their workplace needs, the company has said. With data, organizations can be more intentional in how to right-size the mix of space, it says. 

“Conference rooms are apolitical,” Grasel said. “It’s easier for you to drive change around your conference rooms because they don’t belong to anyone.” Conference rooms are also some of the most popular — albeit poorly used —  space types, Grasel said. 

“From the data we've collected, in conference rooms of up to 15 people, on average [there are] two people in there at any given moment in time. So there's a lot of opportunity to make better use of that type of space,” he said. “That’s where the new sensor comes in. We’ve learned that to make decisions on conference rooms, you have to be a little bit more surgical about which conference rooms provide the highest opportunities for optimization.” 

Occuspace’s new Micro sensor launch comes amid the company’s over 100% year-over-year growth since 2021 and a $6 million series A funding round in March. The investment, led by Lewis & Clark Ventures, will help the company accelerate its growing service to higher education, corporate and government facilities, it said in a release. 

While scaling to meet demand in existing verticals, the company also had plans to invest in integrations with HVAC systems, Grasel said, citing recent research on the potential benefits of occupancy-led building controls and automation. 

“What are the other use cases? It gets me pretty excited,” Halverson said. “We’ve tried our hardest to stay focused on the office space world, where we know we can drive these decisions and return ROI. But even in office space, our clients are coming up with new ways to use the data.” 

Demand control ventilation and occupancy-driven custodial cleaning are some low-hanging fruits that have already driven substantial cost savings for clients, Halverson said. One of Occuspace’s clients is now using its occupancy data to optimize cafeteria operations and reduce food waste. 

“They reported that they’re getting a 2-to-1 ROI on our data by reducing food waste in the cafeteria. They use our data to understand how many people are in the building at like 10:30 a.m., and then the cafeteria staff cooks food for that many people,” he said. 

The age of mostly assigned desks in office environments has waned, with the percentage of companies opting for assigned seating declining from 83% to 55% in 2024, according to CBRE workplace project benchmarking data. 

In contrast, hybrid and desk-sharing models are gaining acceptance, increasing from 12% to 36%, reflecting a growing preference for flexibility and activity-based work environments, the firm says in a report on effective spaces as part of a series on global workplace and occupancy insights. 

However, a significant disconnect between organizational perceptions of workplace strategy and the reality of their office spaces still exists, CBRE says. Many organizations are clinging to outdated models and failing to prioritize activity-based and collaborative environments that are crucial for a hybrid workforce, the firm says. 

Higher density

The employee-to-seat ratio has been rising sharply since 2021, and now more than 60% of organizations report having a target sharing ratio at or above 1.5 employees per desk, CBRE says – and the amount of individual spaces has decreased from 51% in 2021 to 40% in 2024. 

Workstations between 35 and 49 square feet have become the standard, now constituting 64% of workspaces. This contrasts with a decrease in larger private offices, which declined in popularity from 16% to just 4%, “indicating a significant realignment in space utilization and leadership preferences,” CBRE says. 

As organizations work to increase the amount of collaboration and teamwork-oriented spaces, the office has also “begun a renaissance, fueled by a surge in employee engagement, networking and socialization,” CBRE says, noting “we are witnessing the emergence of vibrant, modern workspaces.” 

Despite the decline of individual offices and increased importance of open, collaborative spaces, employees still prefer to meet in enclosed spaces, with enclosed meeting room use more than double that of open areas, says CBRE, citing data from the XY Sense Q2 2024 Workplace Utilization Index. This is likely due to employee desire for visual and audio privacy, with use of private focus areas 21% higher than open workstations, “reflecting a growing need for quiet zones in the office,” CBRE says. 

“In the overall open-office world, quiet spaces are not something we have done generally very well,” Alana Dunoff, strategic facility planning consultant and adjunct professor at Temple University, said while speaking at IFMA’s World Workplace conference in October. “We like [closed spaces] to take a phone call, to just think for a minute.”

Amenities highlight wellness and community needs

Amenities aimed at transforming the workplace into an experience represent a fundamental shift in how work and community are perceived, according to the report. These amenities include town hall spaces with bleachers for dynamic gatherings and health-focused areas like quiet rooms, library-like zones and lactation facilities. 

“While the overall increase in amenity space allocation remains modest — up a mere 6 percentage points from 11% in 2021 to 17% in 2024 — this shift toward experiential spaces supports attraction and retention of an increasingly hybrid workforce,” CBRE says. 

Full-service restaurants and cafes are the most common workplace amenity, reported by 55% of respondents to CBRE’s 2024 benchmarking survey, followed by free parking at 24%. Wellness spaces, multi-purpose space and lactation rooms were also in the top five amenities at about 15%, respectively. 

By prioritizing employee well-being through things like ergonomic furniture, noise-reduction strategies and flexible work arrangements, organizations can create a healthier, happier and more productive workforce, CBRE says. 

Co-working space has also become an “essential tool” for companies aiming to support growth and contraction strategies, mitigate uncertainty and accommodate a distributed workforce, CBRE says. More than 40% of companies with medium-sized portfolios between 3 and 12 million square feet are planning to either increase or maintain their use of flex office space, contrasting the 17% of larger portfolios over 12 million square feet that plan to decrease their current use of flex office space use, according to the report.

Return-to-office mandates are heating up again, with well-known companies like Starbucks, Target and Google ordering employees to increase their time in the office. Some have initiated voluntary exit programs for those who would rather not. 

Hybrid work arrangements remain common and integral to the workplace, however, with office operators investing in collaboration technologies that can effectively facilitate flexible work and engagement between employees, whether they are in the office or remote, according to studies. 

Starbucks corporate employees will have to return to the office four days a week starting in October, the company announced, offering workers who would prefer to leave a “one-time voluntary exit program with a cash payment,” CEO Brian Niccol said in a letter to employees, CNBC reported. The company head previously told workers they were at risk of being fired if they didn’t return to the office three days a week.

Target’s commercial unit employees are being asked to return to the office at least three days a week starting September 2, CBS News reported. The Minnesota-based staff will be able to pick which week days suit them best, according to a memo by Chief Commercial Officer Rick Gomez. 

Elsewhere in the state, Maplewood-based 3M informed employees that it will require them to be in the office at least four days a week, while U.S. Bank and General Mills this year enacted their own three-day-a-week office mandates. The state is also pushing for more attendance from workers, with Gov. Tim Walz asking state workers to return to the office for 50% of their workdays. 

Walmart and Google have issued similar orders in the past six months, with Google introducing a voluntary exit program for some U.S. teams and tightening return-to-office policies for remote employees living near offices, Fortune reported July 11. 

A survey by Cisco found a “clear, global trend toward increased in-office work,” with 72% of respondents’ organizations having mandates for working in the office, according to the company’s 2025 global hybrid work study released in June. Nearly half, or 46%, of respondents said their organization’s hybrid work policy requires more time in the office than prior policies. 

In part, these initiatives have helped drive an increase in office visits, according to data from location analytics software firm Placer.ai. Following a decrease in attendance in May, foot traffic recovered in June, improving 8.3% year over year, but still 27.4% below 2019 levels. June was the fourth busiest in-office month since the pandemic, according to the Placer.ai, which analyzed foot traffic data from about 1,000 U.S. office buildings. 

The increase in attendance was led by Miami and New York, with both nearing full post-pandemic recovery. Atlanta, Dallas and Houston also outperformed the U.S. overall. San Francisco, which remained furthest from pre-pandemic attendance levels, also was making progress toward getting people into the office, Placer.ai says. 

Hybrid work, collaboration tools remain crucial

Despite the trend, 40% of interactions in the office still have at least one person joining remotely, on average, according to Cisco’s survey. 

Hybrid work arrangements remain “a cornerstone of the modern workplace,” Cisco says. It notes that 90% or more of employers and employees recognize collaboration technology as crucial to enabling engagement and flexibility, resulting in increasing investments in these technologies. 

Despite the availability of collaboration tools, only 49% of employees feel workflows are seamless across all work locations, underscoring the need for better technology devices and capabilities that can provide better employee experience, according to the report. 

“As the future of work continues to evolve, it is essential to invest in flexible and scalable technology that adapts to changing workforce needs,” Amit Barave, vice president of product management for Webex at Cisco, told Facilities Dive in an email. “At a high level, facilities and IT must prioritize an integrated and seamless experience to ensuring that hardware and software work together harmoniously. This enhances operational efficiency and also provides a cohesive user experience that supports productivity.”

Integration of the tools is key, Barave said. 

“First and foremost, success hinges on understanding the actual workflows and needs of your employees,” he said. “Before making deployment decisions, take time to understand how teams collaborate, what their pain points are, and how new tools can genuinely enhance their day-to-day.”

Advanced analytics tools can help leaders assess employee satisfaction and the adoption of collaboration tools and workplace resources, according to Barave. But facility managers must be careful when making decisions around these tools, especially as it relates to the technical support required to maintain them, he said. 

For example, when weighing in-house versus outsourced support for these technologies, operators must critically assess several key aspects, such as the specialized expertise of support teams for hybrid tools; their scalability and flexibility; and robust security and compliance measures. 

They also must ensure there are clear service level agreements in place for response times, and determine whether the support is proactive or merely reactive, Barave said.  

“The user experience for accessing support is critical as well, as it must be intuitive and efficient for employees working from anywhere,” he said. 

To better serve organizations and their employees during this transition period, the relationship between facility managers, real estate operators and businesses must take the form of a strategic partnership, according to Barave. 

“The key is regular, proactive conversations focused on understanding each business’s goals — especially as hybrid work continues to evolve,” he said. “Facilities managers and operators can ask, ‘What are your priorities for the next 12–24 months, and how can our spaces help you achieve them?’ and provide data-driven insights to support better decisions.” 

Corporate and commercial real estate operators should also establish clear metrics for success and a feedback loop. By measuring tangible outcomes, like increased productivity and improved employee satisfaction, office operators can validate technology investments, identify areas for adjustment and continue to better align their solutions with evolving business needs, according to Barave. 

“Success comes from listening closely, adapting together, and always aiming to enhance partners’ business outcomes,” he said.

Downsizing of office space has peaked, Cushman & Wakefield says, with return-to-office strategies accelerating demand for space despite uncertainty in the broader economy, according to a report it released in conjunction with CoreNet Global. 

Following years of footprint rationalization, pent-up demand for office space is now evident, with about an eighth of occupiers planning to expand their footprint, and average lease sizes growing 13% in the past two years, the firm said in a release. Cost continues to drive commercial real estate decisions, with pressure to reduce and control spending “remaining as strong as ever,” Cushman & Wakefield and CoreNet Global said in the report. 

Only 32% of the 235 commercial real estate leaders surveyed in the first half of 2025 said their companies plan to further trim their real estate footprints, as office utilization rates stabilize at between 51% and 60% globally, according to the report. 

Utilization rates are still below pre-pandemic norms but rising steadily globally as more organizations implement structured return-to-office policies. However, these impacts are more subdued in the Americas, where just 20% of organizations reported utilization of about 50%, compared with over 40% of businesses headquartered in Europe, the Middle East and Africa and the Asia-Pacific, the report says. 

Although financial metrics remain the cornerstone of real estate-decision making, multiple factors — political and economic instability, shifting workplace behaviors and difficulties in forecasting and measuring return on investment — are creating uncertainty and lack of clarity that have left many organizations “hesitant to act boldly,” Cushman & Wakefield said. 

“Some CapEx decisions are being delayed by a quarter or two by the current economic and geopolitical uncertainties, but this will only delay decision making temporarily — it won’t derail occupiers from their long-term glide path,” Rob Hall, head of integrated portfolio management at Cushman & Wakefield, said in a statement. 

Remote work has altered office dynamics, leading to evolving space needs and tenant expectations, Matthew Harrison, founding partner at Harrison Law, a business law firm in Arizona, wrote Monday in JD Supra. As more employees work from home, organizations are subleasing surplus space or downsizing, while others switch to flexible office arrangements that span small satellite locations, co-working spaces and rented meeting rooms. 

“This has led to office landlords encountering new challenges and having to adapt to prevent vacant offices and potential cash flow problems, such as by reducing rental prices and offering higher-quality spaces prioritizing outdoor areas, greenery, and natural light,” Harrison wrote. 

Tenants are demanding more from their landlords as well, with 85% of occupiers now expecting landlords to provide "enhanced amenities, services, and workplace experiences,” Cushman & Wakefield says. Just under half, or 46%, are willing to pay a premium for these upgrades, leading to a near-10% rental premium for top-tier office space, per the report.

JLL is working with Microsoft to improve its workplace management technology and help streamline flexible work environments, the company announced.

Through the JLL Osis technology, facility leaders will be able to automatically convert AutoCAD drawings and integrated workplace management system data into the indoor mapping data format used by Microsoft Places. This will enable its operators to more rapidly provide automated floor plans that can help employee experience and reduce the time and cost needed for manual conversions, JLL says. 

In May 2024, JLL began piloting Microsoft Places, an AI-powered connected workplace app, to support hybrid workplace models. The application simplifies the booking process for meeting rooms and shared seating, allowing employees to see where team members booked tasks and automatically release unused rooms or desks that have been booked. 

Bolstering the product with its own Osis technology will improve the processing and updating of spatial information in integrated workplace management systems with proactive portfolio data sharing that can help to reduce time and cost for commercial real estate and IT teams, JLL says. 

The system also integrates with Microsoft Copilot, providing information to IT, real estate and facilities teams to inform space management and adoption, Microsoft says. 

“This collaboration will enable businesses to seamlessly integrate Microsoft’s suite of AI-Powered solutions with JLL’s comprehensive real estate services, empowering organizations to create more efficient, flexible, and engaging work environments,” Brennan McReynolds, principal group product manager and strategy lead of Microsoft Places, said in a statement. 

“For space managers and planners, Osis ensures that updates to portfolio and floor plan data are reflected immediately in Places,” added Reeves Davis, president of technology solutions at JLL. 

Integration costs remain a significant barrier to adopting workplace and AI technologies, “due to a lot of the existing technology that we use around commercial real estate often facing compatibility issues,” Jaymie Gelino, global chief operating officer of project and development services at JLL, said on a webinar in May. “Legacy systems weren’t really designed to cover the modern data processing demands that we’re looking at.” 

To help with this challenge, the Osis integration for Places will also be compatible with both legacy and modern BIM formats, JLL says.

The U.S. coworking sector added nearly 4 million square feet in the first quarter of 2025, with national coworking inventory increasing 2% quarter over quarter to reach 7,840 spaces, according to a report by CoworkingCafe, a platform that provides flexible workspace technology to businesses and remote workers. The 145 coworking spaces introduced in Q1 were in both maturing urban hubs and emerging second-tier markets, it says. 

Despite efforts by employers to bring workers to the office more frequently, employees are seeking flexibility in both schedule and location, which is driving demand for flexible office options, according to Cushman & Wakefield’s 2025 flexible office outlook. 

Overall, coworking prices saw another quarter of mixed movement. The median monthly subscription price for an open workspace held steady from Q4 2024 at $149, but some markets are seeing sharp price spikes and others are seeing declines, per the CoworkingCafe report. “In Manhattan, for example, open workspace rates jumped sharply, climbing from $240 to $339. On the flip side, Chicago saw its average fall to $125, down from $143 in Q4,” it states. 

Dedicated desks followed a similar trend, said the CoworkingCafe report. While the national median average monthly subscription for a dedicated spot stayed at $300, large markets including Boston, Houston, Denver and Nashville,  Tennessee, saw prices soften just slightly or remain steady, CoworkingCafe said. 

Chicago stood out among large markets with a 16% quarter-over-quarter increase in its coworking space, adding 1.1 million square feet, to bring its total to just over 8 million square feet, the report states. 

Average coworking size also continues to tick up,  rising 1% from the end of 2024, per the report. “That modest increase keeps the trend of stabilization going as operators balance space efficiency with the demand for larger, more versatile layouts,” the report states. 

Some markets, like Chicago and Florida’s Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater market, saw large average space increases; others, like San Francisco and Brooklyn, New York, saw declines. 

“Although the national shift was modest, the range of changes across cities tells a more complex story: Some markets are scaling up aggressively, while others continue to right-size based on local demand and economics,” the report states.

The leading coworking operators — Regus, HQ, Industrious, Spaces and WeWork — continue to dominate the landscape, expanding their nationwide footprint 6% in the quarter, to a combined 1,822 total locations at the end of Q1. Altogether, these five providers now account for one-quarter of the coworking spaces tracked nationwide, per the report. 

CBRE acquired the remaining 60% of Industrious in January for $400 million, integrating the company into a new unit, Building Operations & Experience, that combined the flex office provider with CBRE’s existing enterprise facilities management, local facilities management and property management segments, the firm said.