Author: sundancecompany

Many smart people have cultivated an understanding of the attributes that make a great workplace. Keith Perske, a thought leader in workplace innovation, breaks down workplace attributes into six distinct buckets. Each contributes to engaging and connecting the employee to the enterprise.

These six components include:

• Workplace: Layout of the office including its space and architecture
• Technology: IT infrastructure supporting the work
• Human Resources: Policies supporting the people who do the work
• Culture: Values and ideals driving the work
• Wellness: Amenities and other provided support within the environment that contributes to overall worker health and wellness
• Brand: How the brand connects the company and the product to the space and the people within it

Workplace: The existing academic literature regarding how best to lay out space to maximize productivity is both expansive and exhaustive — and well beyond the scope of this blog post. However, a few key points: Architecturally speaking, ceiling height is important as it primes us for feelings of freedom and creativity. Also, regardless of the desk sharing ratio you implement (or don’t, for that matter), insist that every person be assigned a space, either a specific desk or a “neighborhood” of desks workers can call their own. This leads to greater employee engagement. Clearly, there are other considerations, but these two related to workplace are key.

Technology: Every worker in the knowledge economy, regardless of generational cohort, requires technology to perform work. How the company supports this within the workplace — and out of the workplace for that matter (either at the employee homes, client workplaces or some other third-party space) — is key to attracting and retaining employees. There is a big difference between shackling employees to a desk for lack of Wi-Fi in the workplace and providing employees with laptops, Wi-Fi, smartphones and the like, empowering them with the freedom to work from wherever they need in order to get the job done.

Human Resources: Related to empowering employees to produce their best work are the human resource policies supporting and incentivizing these behaviors. HR policies that provide for a flexible work schedule, create a sense of community, equitability and transparency, and empower employees to work from where they need without incurring negative effects are key to attracting and retaining Millennials.

Culture: It’s intuitive and generally accepted that people want to work in places and for companies that align who they are with what they do. Creating a workplace that is positive and energetic, where leadership is exemplified and on display, where gossip and negativity are not tolerated, where team members believe that the team is more important than the task, and where communication is strong and change is welcome, is a strategic objective that the workplace helps to define. To do so requires inclusion of all team members, strong values and ethics, and clear leadership. Exemplifying these ideals via the design of the workplace is a tactic that can be employed in support of creating a strong, positive culture. For examples, look to some of these companies that have designed some inspiring workplaces.

Wellness: Access to natural light, ergonomic furniture, clean air, water and food — these are the things that nurture us and make us productive. They are also the things that today’s workers are expecting to be provided in the workplace. Without them, you will lose your talent, the work they produce and, in the case of Millennials, your future workforce.

Brand: Like culture, this is one of the more ethereal and less concrete of the workplace components. But your company’s brand made manifest via your workplace is critical to attracting and retaining Millennials. If you are able to translate what your brand means to you and your customers by how you build and design your workplaces, you provide your company and employees a comparative advantage and engage your employees.

The story originally appeared on the Insigths website.

About The Sundance Company
Established in 1976, The Sundance Company has the experience to help you with your commercial real estate needs throughout the Boise Valley. If your requirements include property management, leasing, real estate development, project planning, construction or space planning then look to us. The Sundance Company has more than 1.5 million square feet of office and industrial space available in prime locations in the Boise metropolitan area. More information is available at www.sundanceco.com or 208.322.7300.

 

 

 

 

About The Sundance Company
Established in 1976, The Sundance Company has the experience to help you with your commercial real estate needs throughout the Boise Valley. If your requirements include property management, leasing, real estate development, project planning, construction or space planning then look to us. The Sundance Company has more than 1.5 million square feet of office and industrial space available in prime locations in the Boise metropolitan area. More information is available at www.sundanceco.com or 208.322.7300.

Everything we do in business today is digital — sending mail, signing contracts, attending meetings, even networking. The business card is one thing that digital will not fully replace anytime soon.

Here are five reasons why the old school business card is still important — and why you should have a pocket full of them at all times.

1. Swapping contact information digitally is impersonal.

Networking is about making genuine connections. Sending contact information via text or email on the spot is convenient but it is also extremely impersonal. Engaging in eye contact and actual conversation is how real relationships begin.

Two individuals with their heads buried in their phones typing away won’t create any kind of significant memory of the encounter. You can easily transfer the information from a business card to your mobile device after the conversation.

2. They are the most effective direct marketing tools.

Email marketing, search engine optimization and paid media all do a great job of attracting leads and prospects, but they still aren’t as effective as an in-person meeting sealed with a handshake along with a business card exchange.

You can encounter a potential lead or contact at any time — tradeshows, industry conferences, happy hour, airport lounges — and arming yourself with business cards at all times will ensure that you never miss an opportunity to make a valuable business connection. Keep some in your pockets, wallet, money clip or laptop bag so the next time you encounter a prospect you are prepared.

3. A business card is the first impression of your brand. 

When you meet someone that could potentially be a great prospect or connection, don’t you want him or her to walk away with a great first impression? A memorable business card does a lot more than just pass on an email address or phone number.

When I make a connection via my business card, I don’t want my brand associated with the word cheap. A retail store trying to make a great first impression wouldn’t create a storefront sign with a piece of cardboard and a Sharpie. I have that same mentality when it comes to my business cards.

My goal is to make a memorable first impression — I use metal business cards from MyMetalBusinessCard.com for extra impact. They make a great first impression and they also act as a great icebreaker. I have never once had a conversation end after handing over my business card. A unique business card will actually fuel the conversation even further.

Yes, they cost more — but think of how many unnecessary expenses you can cut to allocate funds for great business cards. Hold off on the ping pong table and espresso machine for the office and get some business cards that will make a great first impression.

4. Creative business cards get shared — continuing to market for you.

A business card is a physical object that a potential prospect leaves the encounter with. Your brand stays with them.

If you meet a prospect and exchange email addresses and phone numbers you each walk away with another contact on your mobile phone — it ends there. If you hand over a creative business card that makes a great impression that person is likely to show it to other people — putting you and your brand in front of additional prospects.

5. Business cards show you are prepared.

Have you ever had someone write his or her contact information on a cocktail napkin and hand it over to you? How about someone that had a mobile phone with a dead battery? It isn’t the most professional approach.

If you met two individuals and one was scrambling to find a pen and something to write on and the other person simply pulled out a business card, who would you want to do business with? Showing that you are prepared at all times is a great indicator that you are professional.

Fear not. Conversations will still end with, “Let me give you my business card,” at least for a little longer.

The story originally appeared on the Entrepreneur  website.

 

About The Sundance Company

Established in 1976, The Sundance Company has the experience to help you with your commercial real estate needs throughout the Boise Valley. If your requirements include property management, leasing, real estate development, project planning, construction or space planning then look to us. The Sundance Company has more than 1.5 million square feet of office and industrial space available in prime locations in the Boise metropolitan area. More information is available at www.sundanceco.com or 208.322.7300.

 

 

About The Sundance Company
Established in 1976, The Sundance Company has the experience to help you with your commercial real estate needs throughout the Boise Valley. If your requirements include property management, leasing, real estate development, project planning, construction or space planning then look to us. The Sundance Company has more than 1.5 million square feet of office and industrial space available in prime locations in the Boise metropolitan area. More information is available at www.sundanceco.com or 208.322.7300.

 

 

About The Sundance Company
Established in 1976, The Sundance Company has the experience to help you with your commercial real estate needs throughout the Boise Valley. If your requirements include property management, leasing, real estate development, project planning, construction or space planning then look to us. The Sundance Company has more than 1.5 million square feet of office and industrial space available in prime locations in the Boise metropolitan area. More information is available at www.sundanceco.com or 208.322.7300.

 

About The Sundance Company
Established in 1976, The Sundance Company has the experience to help you with your commercial real estate needs throughout the Boise Valley. If your requirements include property management, leasing, real estate development, project planning, construction or space planning then look to us. The Sundance Company has more than 1.5 million square feet of office and industrial space available in prime locations in the Boise metropolitan area. More information is available at www.sundanceco.com or 208.322.7300.

 

 

About The Sundance Company
Established in 1976, The Sundance Company has the experience to help you with your commercial real estate needs throughout the Boise Valley. If your requirements include property management, leasing, real estate development, project planning, construction or space planning then look to us. The Sundance Company has more than 1.5 million square feet of office and industrial space available in prime locations in the Boise metropolitan area. More information is available at www.sundanceco.com or 208.322.7300.

 

With vacancies falling and rents rising in growing numbers of submarkets and slices within the U.S. office sector, demand for office space is expected to remain at post-recession highs for the next two years, according to CoStar Portfolio Strategy analysts recapping the office market’s past year performance.

“2014 was a great year for the office market,” said Walter Page, director of office research, during CoStar’s State of The U.S. Office Market 2014 Review and Forecast. “The keystone mark is that net absorption was up 42% from a year earlier. The fourth quarter in particular was very strong, with over 30 million square feet of net absorption.”

Net absorption of office space rose from 64 million square feet in 2013 to 91 million square feet last year, a 42% increase. Also, the amount of office space absorbed for the year was nearly double the level of new office space added to the market.

Over the next two years, CoStar expects annual absorption to be very similar to 2014, in the 90 million square foot range. The level of construction deliveries should ramp up, as rents have increased across the board and vacancy numbers have continued to tighten, helping make the case for new development.

The strong demand suggests that occupiers have gradually slowed the trend of shrinking square foot-per-employee office footprints, and the shadow supply of empty office space left over from the Great Recession is diminishing as growth moves forward at a very strong clip, added Page, who was joined in the presentation by U.S. Market Research Manager Aaron Jodka and Managing Director Hans Nordby.

The national office vacancy fell 70 basis points from 12% to 11.3% in 2014, the largest decline in office vacancy since the end of the recession.

Vacancies are declining across the board across markets, submarkets and building types and quality levels, with the exception of medical office properties, where vacancies are holding steady at a historically solid 9.6%.

Many markets are now falling below the national vacancy average, with nearly every metro showing year over year declines, with the exception of Washington, D.C., which saw a slight increase, mainly because of strong construction activity.

As demand shifted into high gear during 2014, the percentage of office submarkets with declining vacancies rose to its highest point of the recovery, Jodka said.

“It’s not just a few energy or tech markets or CBDs, this is a feel-good story across the country,” added Nordby.

The vacancy recovery has been particularly strong among newer properties seeing the highest demand by tenants, said Jodka. While buildings 2008 and newer have seen vacancies plunge from a high of 45% in 2008 to nearly 10% in the fourth quarter of 2014, older generation space from the 1980s, much of it located in less desirable outer-ring suburban submarkets, hasn’t recovered at all.

“That’s not where tenants want to be,” Nordby said. “Oftentimes, they want to be in the CBD or the very closest-in suburban submarkets.”

Markets where demand for new properties is especially strong include Minneapolis, Orange County, CA; Nashville, Dallas/Fort Worth and the East Bay area of San Francisco. New product is logging higher vacancy rates in markets where demand still isn’t quite matching the rate of new construction or are still dealing with an overhang from the last cycle, such as Miami, San Jose, Los Angeles, Washington D.C. and Portland.

Building upon that flight-to-quality thesis is the rising demand for newer 4 and 5 Star space, which is seeing double the rate of absorption of less quality space, Page said. Demand for high-quality space grew 2% from 2013 to 2014, versus 0.9% for 1, 2 and 3-star space.

“Another interesting thing is that at this point in the market cycle is that this flight to quality continues to grow,” Page said. “At this point in the previous cycle, it was not as strong. As tenant footprints shrink, it’s a lot easier to tell them, we’re going to put you in nice space rather than not-nice space.”

Another emerging trend is after seeing most of the action in suburban markets over the last few quarters, activity in CBDs is starting to pick up significant demand and grabbing its fair share of the market, Page said.

Overall demand strength has given owners the confidence to raise rental rates. Rent growth, which closed 2013 up 3.3% year over year, performed even better last year, logging 3.7% growth, nearly double the rate of inflation.

Construction continues to stay in check in most metros. Deliveries of new space rose 9% from 43 million square feet in 2013 to 47 million sf in 2014, very balanced at around half the rate of net absorption. The under-construction pipeline of 81 million square feet a year ago increased a whopping 32% in 2014 to 107 million square feet, 18 million square feet of the activity in Houston.

The story originally appeared on the CoStar website.

About The Sundance Company
Established in 1976, The Sundance Company has the experience to help you with your commercial real estate needs throughout the Boise Valley. If your requirements include property management, leasing, real estate development, project planning, construction or space planning then look to us. The Sundance Company has more than 1.5 million square feet of office and industrial space available in prime locations in the Boise metropolitan area. More information is available at www.sundanceco.com or 208.322.7300.

 

 

 

About The Sundance Company
Established in 1976, The Sundance Company has the experience to help you with your commercial real estate needs throughout the Boise Valley. If your requirements include property management, leasing, real estate development, project planning, construction or space planning then look to us. The Sundance Company has more than 1.5 million square feet of office and industrial space available in prime locations in the Boise metropolitan area. More information is available at www.sundanceco.com or 208.322.7300.

 

The full extent of the way digital technology is transforming British working life is apparent in new research published by Brunel University. The study – essentially a snapshot of the digital revolution in 2015 – found that 98 percent of the 830 businesses surveyed have a website, 8 in 10 manage finances online, 53 percent provide flexible working and 63 percent see innovation as a way to improve customer satisfaction. However, the study also reveals a major gulf between big business and SMEs, with larger firms significantly more digitized than their smaller contemporaries. This raises concerns over the preparedness of the SME sector at a time when the Government’s growth agenda has prioritized nurturing and supporting new and evolving enterprises – and for whom the digital battleground has broken down traditional barriers to entry.

For the first time the study has created a scoring system for measuring the digitization of British business. It also reveals wide-ranging regional variations in the digitization of business, with the East Midlands and South West emerging as the most digitized regions of the UK – ahead of businesses in London.

The Applegate-Brunel Digitization Index (ABDI) is a new measure against which companies can benchmark their digital maturity as a business, and by which policy makers can assess the health of businesses and sectors against a consistent measure. This survey covers four main areas of business operations – buying, selling, innovation and management. The study also provides a national gauge to assess the take-up and use of digital technologies by businesses across UK regions and industry sectors. This index will be published annually, to track both overall movement and also changes in different regions and types of business.

Key findings of the index include:

• 98 percent have a company website
• 88 percent make extensive use of online banking
• 64 percent find more than half of their suppliers online
• 63 percent expect digitization to further improve customer satisfaction
• 53 percent provide remote access to staff
• 52 percent research customer requirements online
• 46 percent have an intranet
• 45 percent make more than half of their purchases online
• 44 percent spend more than half of their marketing budget online
• 41 percent have adapted their websites for tablets and smartphones

Stuart Brocklehurst, CEO at Applegate Marketplace commented: “In just 25 years the world wide web has transformed British business. Life without a website today is simply unimaginable and businesses big and small are embracing the ability to research, to source, to pay and to manage through digital technologies. Engagement is universal, although our research does suggest many businesses can do still more to reap the benefits of digital technology fully. For example, whilst they research avidly online, only one in five businesses sell their products online. Also, more needs to be done to help the SME sector digitize at the same pace as big business to help them compete on an equal footing on the UK and internationally. The creation of this index to measure digitization will help provide a benchmark for the business community to ensure it is making the most of technology in order to invest in business growth for the future.”

Professor Zahir Irani, Dean of Business, Arts and Social Sciences at Brunel University London, said: “This new index provides businesses with a means to better understand themselves, through assessing what competitive advantage they have or to help prioritize those gaps they need to close to enhance their own performance. We see companies being able to make strategic decisions about where and how they invest based on information taken from this survey. Policy makers have a real opportunity to use the data to direct Government funding to inform regional, cities and town digital agendas.”

The story originally appeared on the Insight website.

About The Sundance Company
Established in 1976, The Sundance Company has the experience to help you with your commercial real estate needs throughout the Boise Valley. If your requirements include property management, leasing, real estate development, project planning, construction or space planning then look to us. The Sundance Company has more than 1.5 million square feet of office and industrial space available in prime locations in the Boise metropolitan area. More information is available at www.sundanceco.com or 208.322.7300.