Talking Property | The Psychology of Place

Featuring Jen Brown & Letitia Hope
Thursday 11 November 2021

JB
Hello and welcome to Talking Property with CBRE. A podcast where our experts, our clients and our industry specialists share their insights on how we work, we live and invest in commercial real estate. 

My name is Jen Brown, I’m a National Director for Property Management at CBRE and I'm your host for today's episode. Today, we're going be talking about the psychology of place and how important it is not just in the workplace of today, but in the workplace of the future, and how building communities place making and creating connections is going to be vital to this workplace of the future. 

My special guest today is Letitia Hope, Partnership Specialist at ISPT.  Thank you very much for joining me today, Letitia. 

LH
Thanks Jen.

JB
We've been working together now for nearly 12 months and one thing I love about working with you is the different perspective that you bring to property. Now, I've witnessed firsthand on lots of occasions how you've enabled others to view property differently and I believe this is because of your really interesting background in that you've done a masters in positive psychology. So I was hoping you could share a little bit about that with me today and also how it informs your role at ISPT. 

LH
Thanks, Jen. Yes, look, I've worked in property for quite some time and with the background as a sociologist so really interested in culture. I've worked in and done qualifications in change, I guess, over the course of my career and working with many organisations on trying to effect and achieve change in all its form and through many different things, whether it's technology change, whether it's location change, whether it's leadership or cultural change, it really came down to the resilience and the well-being of the people to be able to make that change. So that really sparked my interest as to how do we really have an impact on people's well-being and get them into a place that helps them be more able to face these changes more positively, so that led me to positive psychology and really simply if we think about traditional psychology, it's helped people with deficits and being more operational and positive psychology is a field of science that has emerged really in the last 20 years, and it's focused on all the things that help people beyond operational to flourish, to be their best. This is what sort of really informs much of my work in what I do and how we bring that to property in very different ways. Thinking about positive psychology, it really has informed our new positioning for commercial around places that enrich, excite and energise people. 

JB
It's fascinating because people don't often associate positive psychology with real estate. So I'd love to hear from you what you think the link is between these two and what it is that you'd like to bring to the property industry from your background of positive psychology. 

LH
So we what we do is for people. So people are at the heart of everything we do in place in space and through experience. But the science of wellbeing through positive psychology and what it offers is a basis to shape organisational culture, shape meaningful work, develop capabilities, policies and practises, and psychologically safe and sustainable workplaces and experiences. So it brings a new lens that we can really inform a better experience, and we know everyone has got this flight to quality and the workplace has got to be better than it ever has been before. So it brings a great new lens that we can use an evidence based methodology and practise to be able to apply that to what we're doing in place, be it the physical or through our emotional connection with our communities through experience. 

JB
And for years now, workplaces have been shifting towards activity base and agile working. So I'm keen to hear from you. Letitia, what behaviours do you expect to change in regards to these two areas, especially as we're heading back into the office? 

LH
Well, there's probably a few things that I'll link together. They're one of the things that we've seen in the last, you know, in the Australian context is, as we've seen the desertion of cities due to COVID, there's been a real correlation in the increased need for mental health support services. So we know that our workplaces provide part of a bigger system to support people in being their best. And then if we start to think about activity-based working and what that was all about, it was around people finding the places and spaces to do their best work. But what's happened over time is often, organisations grow, his spaces get overtaken for just, you know, standard work and what we're seeing now. What we're really focused on is what we're calling ISPT ‘Lifestyle working’. So people are going to be really much more deeply integrating what they've found that helps them be their best, what their new priorities and expectations and values are and we know that this has changed for people through COVID. So it's really affected what people want, what people see as important and that means where they work, where they live and what they want to do with their spare time and their passions. And very much.

LH
There's been we've heard about, you know, much, especially last year in 2020 you know, it's going to be three days in the office, you know, in the workplace, two days at home or vice versa. What we're really thinking about. It's going to be this ultimate combination of the two and coming together in a complementary way so that people can, during this time they've discovered what is it that helps them be their best. Where are they? They're best. When are they at their best and they can bring that to life in the workplace, and this does mean it will translate to workplaces having different spaces. We know and we've heard from CEOs that there's four key reasons they want people to be back in the workplace, and that is around talent attraction and retention, culture, amplification, innovation, regeneration and also to connect with their customer base. But what this means is people might come in and have very different needs for space. So, dropping into more social settings where we can quickly collaborate on things dropping into somewhere where you can have, you know, we know that the partnering ecosystems that we all work within now are really borderless. So, we're working in different time zones were working in different locations, so great technology to enable that to happen seamlessly. So what we're really focused on is what are the things that people need to help them come into the workplace and, for everything, inconvenient really disappear and help them when they choose that the workplace is the best place for them to be, for whatever it is they might come in for. They've got all of that amenity right at their fingertips and they've got a whole bunch of choice so that it is really hyper personalised for them.

JB
And you know, it's great points because the hybrid model is here to stay and I guess what COVID has taught us is that there is now a quality in flexibility because pre-covid people working flexibly was reserved mainly for working. Parents or business leaders had travelled a lot and what we've seen in the last 18 months is that everyone can work flexibly. So what are you seeing in this space? Especially as we adjust to the new COVID norm in the workplace? 

LH
I think when we talk about lifestyle working and that sort of integration and blending flexible will be. This ultimate flexibility is that I pop in for a few hours or is it I pop in for half a day? Is it that, you know, start working on the weekends? So this sort of discovery time that we've had to find out when we're out best it's enabled people to work out what is the flexibility that is best for them that helps them thrive. That puts them in the best setting in spaces and headspace to do their best work and that's what organisations that we're talking to are very interested in and keenly interested in. So flexible and you know, the negotiations that we once upon a time have to have around this will be my one day that I'm working from home or elsewhere is really out the window and flexible is now really truly flexible and people are this and I say this time and time again, people are deliciously messy, variable. But that means that the flexibility that we might need right now or for the next few months is going to be very different. 

If we think about I guess covid as a kind of this tsunami that we've had through 2020 and 2021 this incredible upheaval and we've been forced to do things to keep ourselves safe. But if we then think about the movement through these biggest swells, if we've moved in and out of lockdowns and some of these swells have been really disruptive, but we will continue to see ripple effects play out, I think, for many years, following COVID. If we put that into an example of, you know, the great resignation and the change that we're seeing with people through organisation, it comes back to that values reassessment, that purpose, reassessment and making different choices for themselves. What we also are seeing on the flip side of this great resignation is the inability for organisations to be able to keep those people. So we've seen more turnover in a 12 month period, so not being able to hold those people who have joined. So what I mean by these longer term ripples is what's right for somebody right now you know, a relocation to somewhere new or a change to an organisation, you know, flight, almost as we say flight to quality in the property world, but sort of a flight to a more purpose driven organisation, for example or maybe it's a fully virtual organisation that might work for people right now. But as people's lives change, needs can change, so working completely, you know, face to face or working in a hybrid world or working, you know, the choice to sort of be working fully virtually our needs and desires change. So something that suits people in their life now may not in the future, and this is what we're going to see. These ripples play out. I think it's not going to take the sort of 6 to 12 months that some are predicting. It will take much longer for these ripples to play out and real rhythms and patterns to be understood.

JB
And touching on physical and mental wellbeing in the workplace. Pre COVID This was gaining momentum and certainly ISPT have been pioneers in this space for years now, offering bespoke studios with free classes to their communities and you talk about ISPT workplaces as being exciting, enriching and energising. So what I wanted to ask you is, is this how we're going to bring people back now? Or is this what we need to do? I guess 

LH
100%. So our biggest and fiercest competitor is home and many of our customers partners that we work with, that's a competitor that's really not costing them anything. So they're looking to us to help them bring their people together. But what we see is this real shift that we understand that it's going to be a complimentary kind of home and hub and that these things need to work together. So really being focused and what we're focused on is what are the things that we can offer people that they can't get at home and that is a complete change, potentially to what we were doing before. We've had community experiences, teams that have been fiercely focused on well-being and, for example, the classes and the wellness centres that we offer but many people have integrated that into their at home experience and they don't want to let go without at home. So we really need to then rethink, well, what is it that they're not getting at home that we can offer when they come into place and much of this helps ignite our cities at a bigger systems level, so integrating with culture and creative arts so that that is an experience that can be blended. 

JB
So for a while now, we've realised in order to connect community, we need to make sure it's convenient and also that we are using technology. Recently, we launched ISPT’s EPIC at Spring Place in Melbourne using CBRE’s Host technology.

So what that's enabled us to do is to better understand the communities there and also what their needs are and really define those and also provide solutions for them. They effectively have a remote control in their hand for the building to access all of those amenities. So what I really wanted to ask you Letitia is what role do you think technology plays to connect people with place?

LH
Technology is absolutely critical for us to connect people, place and partnership. The EPIC app which Host is really provided for us gives us a way that we can have direct two way lines of communication to our community and it's so important for ISPT that we interact and support our community no matter where they are. So as part of this way of complementary between home and work, we are able to connect with people, really directly understand what they're using, what's resonating for them so that they can still be accessing wellbeing classes or art tutorials or speaker’s series and they can be having some of this connected experience with their colleagues and neighbours within the precinct all of the time. 

JB
Thank you very much for joining me today, Letitia. As always, it's been a pleasure to talk to you. I've really enjoyed getting to know more about positive psychology and also hearing from you around building communities and connections and how important that is going to be to the future of work. So, one thing I'm really optimistic about is looking forward to seeing what ISPT is going to do in their workspaces to energise, excite and enrich the communities there. So thanks again for joining me. if you've enjoyed these podcasts today, then please go to www.cbre.com.au/talking-property to hear more. 

Thank you.

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