Real estate leaders have long focused on the inevitability of workers returning to the office post-pandemic, arguing that firms will rediscover the importance and necessity of in-person collaboration...
Employer Brief
The Employer Brief is a bi-weekly National news offering which will help the Commercial Real Estate Industry acquire and retain the best talent to run their business. Those hiring rely upon this brief as the best way to stay updated on the industries offerings. This Brief is published every other week and provides open rates (and click-through-rates) not available anywhere else in Commercial Real Estate.
The hybrid office plan seeks to offer everyone flexibility. But as more firms return, it's clear this new workplace principle is causing its own hiccups. A recent Wall Street Journal story details...
Women in commercial real estate have shouldered an incredible burden during the coronavirus pandemic. As a handful of them told Bisnow recently, the combination of remote work, home schooling, and...
Unsplash While the pandemic has created uncertainty, it's also created new opportunities and roles within commercial real estate. At a time of rapid shifts and emerging market trends in commercial...
Pixabay/bernswaelz Property managers have seen their jobs get upended by the coronavirus pandemic. In the past year, everyone has become fluent in debates around wearing a mask, indoor exposure,...
Creative Commons The rough start to 2021 has raised fears of a burnout spike in the workforce. Months of pandemic stresses, parenting challenges and the ongoing economic fallout have left workforces...
Patrick Sisson, Amid the tragic loss and shocking statistics coming out of the recent surge in coronavirus cases, another deleterious side effect of the current pandemic may be employment...
Patrick Sisson, In a year of nonstop news and a bitterly contested presidential election, it can seem like politics, and political opinions, always bubble beneath the surface. Commercial real estate...
Patrick Sisson, The nightmare scenarios pundits paint about commercial real estate right now — malls and retail boarding up, offices remaining empty for months, large-scale developments pulling the...
Partick Sisson, Josh Feinberg remembers starting out in commercial real estate in 2007 as a college graduate who found himself hacking together low-tech client presentations on Microsoft Word. Now the...
Felicity Frances, Tristan Capital Partners Chairman Ric Lewis isn’t afraid to speak bluntly about how an organization should increase diversity within its ranks. “Just do it,” he said during a ...
Felicity Francis, Commercial real estate’s archaic practices are turning the next generation of talent away, and unless the sector starts thinking strategically about the way it combines people and...
Alexandra Marvar, As the new school year kicks in and the coronavirus pandemic continues, parents are making calculated choices to prioritize their families, sometimes at the expense of their...
Alexandra Marvar, As of late June, 42% of the U.S. labor force was working from home full time, and a third was unemployed — making it a work-from-home economy. During that time, TopResume...
Alexandra Marvar, The circumstances of the coronavirus pandemic have forced tech adoption at an unprecedented rate: The construction industry is implementing augmented and virtual reality, robots...
Alaxandra Marvar, Even on a good day, more than half of U.S. workers are unhappy in their jobs. During the coronavirus pandemic, recent studies reveal that percentage is even higher. Now, as more...
Alaxandra Marvar, According to the World Health Organization, contact tracing — along with testing — should be the “backbone of the response” in order to slow the spread of the novel...
Alexandra Marvar, For commercial real estate companies that didn’t have a crisis management plan, the pandemic has been a rude awakening. It has also been an opportunity to take notes. According...
Alaxandria Marvar. As Gov. Mike DeWine lifts stay-at-home restrictions for general offices and a number of other business types in Ohio, some corporate office tenants will be reunited with the...
Christie Moffat. It’s one thing to be considered a good employer when things are normal. But what about when a pandemic hits? Being a great place to work hasn’t typically meant having the...
Over the last few years the commercial office market has garnered its fair share of the news led by the high-flying WeWork phenomena. What has not hit the front page until last weekend in the New York...
Analysts and investors have been trumpeting the significant growth prospects for seniors housing with the aging baby boomer generation’s 72 million people born between 1946 and 1964. Developers and...
Yesterday we celebrated Veterans Day, a time when we honor those who have served our country and reflect on the importance of our armed forces, especially in times like today when the geopolitical...
More companies offer new fathers more paid time off to spend with their new baby and mom. The rub is that companies are having a hard time persuading dads to take advantage of the offer. The Wall...
Applications for a number of elite business schools have been falling over the last five years, but this last year saw an even steeper rate of decline as the programs tried to attract international...
When “baby-boomer” parents were in the workforce, the corporate funded pension plan was the key to a comfortable retirement. Alas, most companies abandoned pension plans and replaced them with...
I am an early riser and arrive in the office at about 6:00am because I like the quiet time. While preparing for the day I stream CNBC’s Squawk Box for up-to-the-second business news. Depending on...
The big news of the week is the downward spiral of WeWork and its founder Adam Neumann. The biggest loser is SoftBank, which invested in the company based on a $47 billion valuation that looks today...
Not surprisingly, the Wall Street Journal ran a front page feature yesterday reporting that workers are leaving the largest cities in droves and taking their jobs with them. When Congress...
Every year for the first column after Labor Day I wish all of our readers a very happy New Year. Today begins a sprint to the end of the calendar year and the race to next summer, so in many respects...
In ten short years, 2030 to be exact, America’s dependency ratio–or the percentage of non-working citizens who rely on those who are employed–will exceed 70%. It doesn’t take a rocket...
I was amazed when I heard that FedEx is dropping its agreement with Amazon and will no longer deliver the behemoth’s packages. FedEx has said that Amazon represented less than 1.3% of its total...
Today a degree from Harvard will cost the lucky student $220,000, but Harvard has said that their students can expect to earn at least $140,000 or more upon graduation. The US Department of Education...
Two weeks ago FaceApp roared on to the scene and went viral as millions of users took selfies with the app, which after running through a digital time machine, transformed their faces to how they will...
Ever since the first Model-T rolled off the assembly line the economy has continued to find ways to train workers while at the same time, drive automation. Well, Amazon is in the thick of it now. The...
There is a growing crisis in our country and it impacts the next generation of our best and brightest talent who will be responsible for the economy as baby-boomers turn over the reins . The crisis...
New York City is one of the hottest multifamily markets in the country, but the New York State Legislature has put an end to that. A new law enacted last week halts an owner’s ability to convert...
A few months ago my son left Minneapolis for a great career opportunity in Austin, which was okay, but he had a German Shepard and a cat. Well, to simplify his life in the relocation, and to focus on...
Last Friday the Labor Department reported for the 104th straight month the economy added jobs, but the news wasn’t all roses because 75,000 jobs were added vs 263,000 in April. The lower jobs report...
There is an interesting and demographically important trend toward solo living. Today 35.7 million Americans live alone representing 28% of US households. That is up from 13% in 1960 and 23% in 1980,...
Last week I took a one-day round-trip flight between New York and Los Angeles. At some point during my journey, I pondered how much oil the plane was consuming. Unfortunately I took the bait, and...
Over the past 10 years we have been barraged by news of the millennial generation who are charting a new course with different values impacting housing, retailing, the workplace, social mores, and a...
Tuesday morning the Wall Street Journal ran a front page article reporting that small firms are hiring employees at the lowest rate in eight years, and it’s not because they aren’t hiring....
The push to bring more women directors into US boardrooms is front and center. There are more women appointed to board seats than ever, yet the overall percentage of female directors is barely...
Airbnb Inc. has put the hotel business on its ear. The company currently lists 4.92 million rooms compared with Marriott, the largest hotel company globally, who trumpets its 1.29 million room. For...
The Wall Street Journal yesterday published a section on “The Case Against Retirement”. It’s a must read because it outlines two primary statistics against hanging up your spurs. The first is...
Goldman Sachs has taken on a progressive tone over the last few months since its new CEO David Solomon took the reins. One of his first edicts was to relax its dress code, allowing bankers to swap...
New York and other high income tax states are scampering to find new sources of revenue on the heels of the federal tax reform act that eliminated tax deductions for state and local income taxes. The...
When companies hire new employees, each has its own methodology for assessing the potential of candidates, both new hires and internal promotions. A recent survey published by the Wall Street Journal,...
I read an interesting article about how US retirees are becoming expats to secure a significantly lower cost of living, including healthcare, without compromising the quality of service. The Wall...
Last fall I attended a high school reunion, but before the event I dusted-off our yearbook to do a refresh on my classmates as it has been years (I’ll never tell how many) since I saw many of them...
Last week the Wall Street Journal published a sober column focusing on long-tenured company executives who are finding that they have a hard time “jumping-ship” to pursue the lure of something...
Technology continues to advance at warp speed, disrupting every industry. Even such juggernauts as Amazon, Microsoft, Google and Apple are wrestling the impact of disruptive impact on their business...
After well over a year of evaluating 200 bids for Amazon’s new headquarters, and after much intrigue and hoopla the company zeroed-in on a split headquarters between Crystal City in Washington DC,...
When the President signed into law the new tax reform act at the end of 2017, the elimination of the state and local tax deduction set in motion what was likely to be an exodus from the high-tax...
One of the most stressful time for high school students and their parents is deciding what colleges to apply to and navigating the application process itself. Aside from the process that one can...
US airlines are providing important clues to the course of the economy. Fourth-quarter earnings reporting by the biggies, Delta and United, were positive. Better yet, United reported that large...
A long list of major metros and second-tier cities vied for Amazon to select them for its second headquarters. A few weeks ago the long awaited announcement came giving the nod to Crystal City in...
Last week Herb Kelleher, the co-founder of Southwest Airlines, passed away, ushering-in a steady stream of memorials and upbeat obituaries for a man who the New York Times credited with a “quirky”...
Recruiting top executives has always been a challenge, but more recently with a booming economy, executives are more often than not well positioned in their current firm, so extracting them has become...
Yesterday the Wall Street Journal published its Management Top 250 company rankings and reported that Apple took the top spot followed by Amazon and Microsoft. The scorecard was developed by using the...
Last week my family took a pass on the traditional Thanksgiving meal for the opportunity to spend a week in Rome. The City is always glorious with some of the most amazing historical sights and a...
The turn of events at GE highlights the tenuous role of the CEO. John Flannery, the recently deposed CEO of GE, spent 25 years working his way through the ranks within striking distance of the top...
Corporations are increasingly focused on bringing military brass into leadership roles and into the Boardroom. The reasons are clear; generals are trained to anticipate unforeseen risk, build...
Over the last two weeks the news about Amazon’s second HQ has reached a fever pitch. The Seattle-based behemoth said last year it was looking to invest $5 billion in a second headquarters that will...
When I was a little kid, I vividly remember being elated at the arrival of the Sears Holiday Catalog, that five-pound, five-inch thick book of everything. I spent hours studying the Lionel trains,...
Last Friday, the Labor Department reported that the US unemployment rate hit its lowest level in almost 50 years. Just 3.7% of the nation’s population were out of work last month. At the same time,...
Real estate, especially retail malls and shopping centers, has been at the center of most discussions about digital disruption. At the same time, WeWork and its ilk have changed the game for the...
In addition to my managing Korn Ferry’s global real estate practice, I also serve as the managing partner of our New York Office. This role provides me with an opportunity to observe the dramatic...
Amazon.com has made another move on its course of global disruption. Over the past decade, the company has formed creative partnerships with the likes of FedEx, UPS and the U.S. Postal Service to...
Increasingly, real estate executives are faced with signing a non-compete agreement when they join a new employer. The original idea behind non-competes made a lot of business sense. Companies do not...
There is a crisis brewing on the talent front. A recent study conducted by Korn Ferry found that there is a growing shortage of highly skilled workers on a global level. This dearth will ultimately...
On Monday, PepsiCo leader Indra Nooyi announced that she is stepping down from her role as CEO of the company after 12 years at the helm. During her tenure, Nooyi transformed the PepsiCo from a sugary...
Over the weekend the TSA’s cover was blown by the Boston Globe when it reported that ordinary citizens are being followed onto flights and observed by armed undercover US Marshalls as part of the...
You’ve probably heard rumblings about Amazon’s potential entrée into the prescription drug business for the better part of this past year. Yet the latest move by the e-commerce giant has turned...
Underlying the dramatic changes on the national political front are seismic demographic shifts that will continue to impact not only the political scene, but also social and business issues. One of...
With July 4th falling on Wednesday this year, many executives took off the entire week, or at least the two days before or after the holiday. However, in today’s world of the Internet, smart phones...
The Gig Economy is a business environment in which temporary positions are common and organizations contract with independent workers for short-term engagements. For years, economists and pundits have...
For decades, the US has been the bastion of innovation and more recently, technological creativity that has fueled startup ventures. On closer examination, it’s interesting to find that a...
Howard Schultz announced this week that he will be stepping down as the executive chairman of Starbucks, the company he founded in 1971 with one store in Seattle’s Pike Place, and now has more than...
Our home offices are in the MetLife Building, the 50-year-old iconic skyscraper in New York City. The asset is managed in a first-class fashion by the premier real estate firm of Tishman Speyer...
Wall Street M&A and mega-deals are back—billions and billions of dollars’ worth of them. Happy Days are here again! In the fray is Mondelez, with its $6.7-billion revenue line of products like...
Whenever I’m attending a meeting, I’m very conscious about making sure to provide eye contact with all the individuals present. However, I am amazed and, frankly, a bit self-conscious when...
In 2016, New York and Massachusetts enacted laws banning employers operating within their states from compelling job seekers to disclose their salary history. Since then, dozens of cities and states...
Last week, we had an overdose of Mark Zuckerberg after he spent almost 20 hours testifying before the House and Senate blaming “malicious actors” who took advantage of search tools on its...
Marking a giant leap forward for recruiting in the industry, Globest.com has launched its new Career Center, powered by SelectLeaders. Designed with an eye on both CRE’s present and future talent...
As markets recovered over the past few years, we have been hiring young professionals with sterling educational credentials and high potential. They are smart as a whip and understand, and reinforce,...
First it was books, then it was everything. Amazon is amazing; there’s nothing you cannot find online through the site. And a few years ago Amazon moved further into our homes with its Alexa...
Last week we commented on Blackstone’s C-Suite move that positioned Jonathan Gray as the likely successor to CEO Stephen Schwarzman. Well yesterday another intriguing high-stakes CEO succession...
Last week, Blackstone announced that real estate executive Jonathan Gray solidified his role as heir apparent to CEO Stephen Schwarzman. Gray, who runs the firm’s $115-billion real estate business,...
What separates mid-career professionals who rise to the top of their game in a business environment? Is it the “primary” skills that include intellect, education and good-old hard work? Not...
Yesterday Hudson’s Bay Co., the owner of Saks Fifth Avenue and Lord & Taylor, named CVS executive Helena Foulkes as its first female CEO after serving as executive vice president of pharmacy giant...
As 2018 unfolds, top executives are worried about cybersecurity, disruptive technologies, and stiffer competition for talent, especially among some of the biggest names in the public company arena...
I am always careful to stay clear of politics as the Executive Watch is best when it is apolitical. However, this week I noticed a report that a Gallup poll found that 42% of Americans now identify as...
I know of no executive who enjoys business travel. In the most recent move to make your next flight more miserable, you will be chagrined to learn that most of the major airlines are gradually...
Once upon a time, families yearned for a house on the golf course with its heavily fertilized and perfectly manicured grass, asphalt paths for golf carts, and the big club house where a tough day out...
The new tax legislation is being trumpeted (no pun intended) as the new era of tax reform. I am afraid that I beg to differ. It is, yet again, another piece of legislation that is being put together...
Over the last few weeks we have witnessed the federal legislative process at its worst. The tax “reform” bill is nothing more than an ill-conceived, and ill-advised attempt to accomplish something...
The phrase “cash on the barrel head” means immediate payment, or “spot cash.” Well, employers are now providing Cash on the Barrel Head with payday apps that give employees instant access to...
Fashion trends have evolved from suits and ties at baseball games and fine woolen suits in the board room, to frankly not so classy casual wear to the point where most audiences at Broadway shows look...
Every CEO has the willies fretting over whether there will be a cyber breach on their watch, knowing full well that their head will roll if it happens. Just ask Equifax’s ex-CEO Richard Smith, who...
Working from home may not be the cat’s-meow that it is chalked-up to be. The Wall Street Journal reported that according to a recent study by VitalSmarts, a corporate training firm, indicated that...
The world is abuzz over new technologies such as driverless cars, drones, and a host of other technology that promises to transform the way we live and how we do business. Yesterday I learned in a...
With the leverage of real-time digital platforms and moment-to-moment connectivity to market moves and customer trends, the era of the Revenue Guru, or otherwise known as the Chief Revenue Officer, is...
Research firm Equilar recently released a report that stirred-up the investment community by virtue of its report that CEOs who serve on two outside boards earn median income of $13.6 million while...
Today GE announced that CEO Jeff Immelt is stepping down sooner than his expected departure in December, likely due to investor pressure, even with only three months to go. Jeff has been at the helm...
We thought that real estate is in the Jurassic Park when it comes to diversity, especially the shortage of women in the professional and executive real estate ranks. Well, this morning I was rather...
The Wall Street Journal reported that the consulting firm of Aon Hewitt published the results of a survey that businesses are planning to keep budgets for raises relatively flat in 2018, while...
Last week we got the news that everyone feared. Equifax, the consumer credit reporting agency that collects and aggregates information on over 800 million individual consumers and more than 88 million...
After World War Two, suburbia and single-family home ownership exploded onto the scene, setting the stage for the American Dream. For the seventy-five years since then, home ownership has been an...
Uber is unquestionably among the most brilliant adoptions of Internet and App technology in the new economy. It changed the landscape of transit in almost every city. Thanks to Uber, New York City...
We reported here a few months ago that IBM decided to recall employees from their home office, shutting down the work-from-home policy that the company had established as long ago as 1980. It is now...
Notwithstanding jitters over Amazon’s acquisition of Whole Foods among grocery stores, investors are still chomping at the bit for grocery-anchored strip centers while they flee traditional retail...
In the early 90s, when the music stopped and the real estate markets collapsed, I was CFO of a Washington DC’s largest owner/developer. I was charged with establishing new banking relationships to...
As if it wasn’t hot enough with the heat-wave slamming the US, the Financial Times began a series of articles over the weekend trumpeting that for the hedge funds that slapped down bets against the...
US employment growth continues to churn ahead, last month producing 222,000 jobs, continuing the 81-month stretch of job growth since October 2010. This phenomenal track record has resulted in the...
The pace of office-space leasing slowed in the second quarter, mostly because of sluggish activity in the country’s top five markets, according to new figures from data firm Reis Inc. That being...
It is no surprise that Baby Boomers are working beyond 65, creating less upward mobility for the next generation who are chomping at the bit to take on leadership roles. Well, for those situated...
Yesterday, Jeff Immelt, the 16-year CEO of GE was given his walking papers as the conglomerate has underperformed during his entire tenure. An insider, John Flannery, a 30 year GE veteran, will take...
Google reported yesterday that chief executive Sundar Pichai’s pay package doubled to $200 million last year, making him the highest paid executive at parent company Alphabet Inc. This is on the...
The demise of retailers is rapidly accelerating. The Wall Street Journal on Saturday reported that since the first of January, 2,880 retail locations have been shuttered amid a new wave of...
The great recession is becoming a distant memory, but its effect continue to be profound. Leaner organizations, tighter budgets, higher bars for new recruits, and the list goes on. However, executive...
There is a lot of hype surrounding the emergence of the millennial generation as a major factor in the workforce. In 2015 millennials comprised 34% of the workforce compared to 29% for the boomers,...
How can I resist commenting on United Airlines extraordinarily serious faux pas on Sunday?Airline officials had a passenger forcibly removed from an oversold flight, dragging him down the aisle and...
The Baby-Boomer generation is working longer and skipping over the historical retirement age of 65. The question is, why and how. On the why front, it turns out that it’s not necessarily about the...
We have commented over the past few months about the accelerating trend toward online retailing and its significant impact on the mall sector, especially in “B” locations. Champions of brick and...
Yahoo announced that CEO Marissa Mayer will enjoy a $23 million golden parachute after the sale of its core assets to Verizon. This payday does not include nearly 2.9 million stock options valued at...
The recent outbreak of the Zika virus spreading across South America and into the US has created serious concerns about exposure, especially among women who may be pregnant. Not only is this very bad...
Our column prides itself on not becoming a bully pulpit, ranting political rhetoric or taking stands on the political scene—of course except for a jab or two at the pork barrel in Washington that...
After the “great recession” common wisdom was that college graduates were going to be relegated to flipping hamburgers in coffee shops because jobs were just not available and the future looked...
According to conventional definition, an activist shareholder is one using an equity stake in a corporation to put public pressure on its management. The goals of activist shareholders range from...
It is truly incredible that the Powerball Lottery tomorrow evening will likely approach $1.5 billion, which testifies to the long odds of winning the prize. The exceptional prize level also testifies...
