CBRE Lab aims to transform offices into more human-focused, empowering and delightful places to work

CBRE has hired future-of-work expert Annie Dean to lead a newly formed CBRE x Industrious Building Experience Lab. The lab aims to transform offices and other commercial settings – the buildings that power the global economy – into more human-focused, empowering and delightful places to work.

Dean also will serve as Global Chief Strategy Officer for CBRE’s Building Operations & Experience business segment. The role will allow the lab to not only serve as an intellectual and creative centre for the future of work, but also enable insights and products developed in the lab to be implemented in partnership across the CBRE platform, the largest portfolio of real estate and facilities in the world, totalling nearly 8 billion sq. ft.

The lab’s focus on applied innovation resulting in real-world products, rather than abstract research, will be further bolstered by its close collaboration with CBRE’s flexible workplace provider, Industrious, led by Anna Levine, and CBRE’s workplace strategy consulting practice, led by Lenny Beaudoin, enabling the lab’s insights to rapidly benefit CBRE clients.

“How we work has fundamentally changed,” Dean said. “Businesses collaborate through technology, which has never been more true in the age of AI. When everything is virtual, the real world matters more than ever. And as a result, the world is ready for a different kind of workplace experience.

“We need to turn workplace functions from a cost-center, shared-services mentality into a strategic business unit that delivers ROI and shifts from space utilization into a user-centred mentality and processes that look like product development cycles. Data is at the centre of this opportunity.”

Though a majority of companies (61 per cent) now report their office attendance rates have reached a steady state, another 38 per cent still expect attendance to increase further, according to CBRE’s new 2025 Americas Office Occupier Sentiment Survey of 184 office-using companies.

The survey also found that their employees’ workplace experience is a top consideration for companies when deciding whether to relocate to new offices or to stay put by renewing their leases.

“CBRE runs more workplaces than anyone else on earth,” said Jamie Hodari, Chief Executive Officer of CBRE’s Building Operations & Experience segment. “That’s a privilege, but it’s also a responsibility. Increasingly, our clients want to make their workplaces welcoming, empowering, human-centered places, and if we can help them pull that off, that will make work more rewarding for tens of millions of people.