Corporate tenants and employees are demanding greater perks from their offices including childcare, on-site cafes, wellness initiatives and gym access, a survey has found.

In its Australian Office Occupier Survey released last month, real-estate services firm CBRE said the provision of ‘perks’ has emerged as a differentiator for corporate tenants as employees now have higher expectations of their workplace.

Whilst ‘core requirements’ such as quality indoor environments, proximity to amenities, accessibility to public transport, on-site parking and floor plate efficiency remained the most important drivers of occupancy decisions, the survey found that most tenants are satisfied with existing provision of these features.

To differentiate their assets, therefore, landlords need to go beyond these and to offer additional features and amenity.

Indeed, since its previous occupier survey in 2016, CBRE found that.

• All up, 47 percent of occupiers considered the provision of ‘perks’ to be important when choosing a building for their head office – an increase of nine percent compared with the previous survey.
• 45 percent of tenants believed proximity to childcare was important when choosing a head office building – up by 23 percent from the 2016 survey.
• 56 percent indicated that wellness initiatives and ratings were important when choosing a head office – up 16 percent compared with the previous survey.
• 57 percent consider on-site cafes to be important (up 12 percent); and
• 42 percent consider on-site gyms or access to nearby gyms to be important (up 9 percent).

In its report, CBRE says the focus on perks is being driven by two factors.

As mentioned above, satisfaction with existing provision of core features means landlords are unable to rely on these features alone to achieve differentiation.

Almost two-thirds of occupiers surveyed were satisfied with their indoor environment quality whilst more than seven in ten were happy with their proximity to external amenity.

By contrast, more than half were dissatisfied with their current landlord’s provision of wellness initiatives and ratings; childcare proximity; a coworking operator within the building; a concierge offering access to personal services, programs/events; and a concierge offering which is enabled by an app.

Simultaneously, workers increasingly expect offices to support their lifestyle, values and quality of life as well as delivering functional spaces in which to perform duties.

“The survey revealed increased importance in perks such as wellness initiatives (on-site gyms, exercise classes, healthy food options) and concierge offerings that provide access to personal services, events and programs,” CBRE said.

“It is these personal services, events and programs that we expect to emerge as the true differentiator that will elevate landlords through the proactive curation of events and experiences that meet the needs of a building’s community beyond simply offering a place to work.”

The survey also found that notions of flexible work are expanding and that landlords can extend their value to tenants by providing data insights to help inform workplace strategies.

On the first point, CBRE encourages landlords to go beyond signing leases with coworking providers and to understand the types of flexibility their tenants want and how this can be provided.

On the latter, it said landlords can position themselves as an integral partner in their occupiers’ workplace strategy by providing data insights to support their tenants in tracking and improving productivity and space optimisation.