Announcer: support for "NJ Biz Beat with Raven Santana" provided by NJMEP, a partner to New Jersey's manufacturing industry focus on productivity, performance, and strategic development.

More on NJMEP.org.

♪ Announcer: this is "NJ Biz Beat with Raven Santana."

Raven: Hello, I'm Raven Santana, thanks for joining me on "NJ Biz Beat."

How and where we work has changed dramatically since the pandemic.

Many large corporations are forcing employees to return to the office while others are embracing the hybrid or remote workflow.

Right now, close to 70% of New Jersey workers are remote according to the Census Bureau.

The rise of remote work is having a major impact on the commercial real estate market.

Office vacancy rates are at 4%, a three-year high, and office space construction is down 11%, 37 million square feet built, the lowest since 2014.

And 60% of companies are purchasing less real estate according to Cbre, a leading commercial real estate firm.

This morning we are exploring changes to the workplace starting with Jeffrey from CBRE.

We talked about emerging trends and construction and what companies are doing to lure workers back to the office.

Jeff, we know CBRE is a global leader when we think about commercial real estate, investment.

You have clients in over 100 different countries.

We know office buildings were hit the hardest during the pandemic.

Tell me a little bit about those challenges you face, how you address that as a company.

Jeff: Certainly, COVID has had an impact in the office sector.

Some of it positive, some of it more negative.

On the positive side, we have seen this overall flight to quality as occupiers are looking for more engaging, more energized, more amenity-rich workspaces for their employees.

This has led to a significant actually uptick in demand within that sector of the marketplace.

The newer office-supply with more amenities.

We are talking about creative and amenities starts with cafés, conference centers.

Things like massage therapy.

Things like physical fitness classes, childcare facilities.

Even some medical services within the office envelope is driving what we are calling this amenity race.

More and more amenities as a means to attract companies to the newer product.

The result here in New Jersey, for example, over 80% of leasing post-COVID has been in these newer office buildings, these amenity-rich offerings.

Companies are really doing this for two reasons.

One, trying to attract people back to the workplace.

Two come as a means to attract new talent, a recruiting tool.

Having a great, energized, collaborative workspace attract people to companies.

Within this sector of the market, within the newer product, highly amended ties to segment of the market, we have seen strong demand, strong leasing, increasing rent, and overall growth.

There is a flipside to this.

The flipside is there is all of the older office product that is losing the demand as companies look to go to the newer, highly-amenitized product.

Even in that portion of the market we are seeing opportunity in the former redevelopment.

Over 15 million square feet of office space, 10% of the old -- total stock is being redeveloped.

Either taken down to the steel and redeveloped or completely knocked down and rebuilt as a different use.

Uses such as multifamily housing.

Creating more housing stock in New Jersey.

Industrial, manufacturing, retail.

Even within the sector experiencing stress, we are seeing opportunity for companies, opportunities for residents in terms of more housing options, and more construction jobs throughout the state.

Raven: When we think about rent and landlords, and you spoke about redevelopment, is there some kind of negotiating factor when it comes to companies really trying to renegotiate with landlords?

Jeff: There is always a balance between tenant and landlord.

It really depends on the demand within a given sector.

Talking about the newer, highly-amenitized product having greater demand, therefore greater pricing for owners.

They can demand a higher rent.

That is why some owners are amenitizing their spaces so they can drive rent.

Raven: We know the commute from your bed, maybe upstairs to a home office is awesome.

A lot better to driving to the city for 45 minutes.

Tell me a little bit about what companies are doing.

You touched on this.

To get more people to come into the office.

Does location have anything to do with it?

Jeff: Location is always a driver.

We did a recent survey of occupiers.

The number one thing that employers are looking for is a good commute.

In New Jersey we have our challenges.

Very busy highways although the commuting is not so bad Monday and Friday.

Tuesday through Thursday, the highways are much busier.

What companies are doing, as a result, but the real estate community is doing is creating an environment that you want to be in.

Not that you have to be in, but want to be in.

All of these amenities, highly engaged workspace, collaboration.

More recently we are seeing companies and owners also pushing toward more private workspaces.

We all got used to having our privacy during COVID, working from home, and they are trying to replicate that in the workplace.

What you are seeing as a way to attract employees back to the workplace are these amenities.

Things like movie theaters.

Come to the office, you can do your business, maybe catch a movie, get a massage, take gym classes.

It is all about this amenities race that is going on.

Raven: Do you feel these returned to office initiatives are actually driving people back?

Jeff: Yes, we are seeing a steady increase in the number of people returning to the office.

One of the challenges we see in this arena is that companies sometimes don't have a clear communication in terms of their expectations of what they are trying to accomplish with people coming back.

Lots of companies have said three days a week, and they are, pushing this.

Raven: Jeff, thanks for joining me.

Appreciate it.

Jeff: Thank you for having me.

Raven: You may have heard the phrase live, work, play.

It's a hot topic in the world of business as many companies focus on work-life balance and workplace environment.

One of the state's most known workplace hubs is Bill hubs in Hopedale, a campus not only home to office space for lease but also filled with restaurants, gyms, spas, and other amenities for those working there.

I visited Bill works and spoke to Ralph Zucker, the man who envisioned and created the campus, about why this works for the next generation of workers.

Ralph, we are sitting in what was once the old Bell Labs, some of the greatest inventions happened here.

But now it is repurposed.

I feel like this is a downtown, in the middle of a downtown area except it is climate controlled and there is free parking.

Ralph: We call it a Metro burb.

Metropolis in a suburbia.

A small planet in a great location with its own gravitational pull.

We suck people in from miles around.

It has really become the place to be for so many people.

We are proud of it.

Raven: Tell me about what goes on here.

Ralph: Think of Main Street in a great downtown.

People come down here to walk, walk their children, dogs, walk themselves.

They come here to work.

We have 1.2 million square feet of office, which is 97% leased.

We have everything from co-working, where people take a desk for one hour, to hundreds of thousands of square feet occupied by large companies.

I think we have six or seven Fortune 500 companies.

Research goes on over here.

We have a laboratory, everything that you can imagine, from banking to legal to insurance, all kinds of offices.

A lot of tech taking place over here.

It is a place where people just come to lead their daily lives, like any great downtown.

Raven: Tell me a little bit about why this modern landscape works better than the conventional one?

Ralph: I will contrast what you call this modern landscape, which is an amazing edifice, designed by an amazing architect, one of the last buildings that he did, specifically to bring people together.

The entire concept was to create a space where there was going to be serendipitous encounters.

Scientists from Bell Labs and Western electric were not just in their private cubicles, but would be able to cross pollinate, ideate, communicate, really inspire each other.

This is a purposely designed space for human interaction.

That is why it works so well.

Compared to a suburban office park, where you have a parking lot, and it is not designed for human scale environments.

It is designed for efficiency.

Raven: Tell us about what some of the leases look like.

What are some of the options?

Four people watching and interested, does it have to be six months, a year?

Ralph: We start with:, our own -- co-lab, our own brand of cooperative working spaces.

A lot of the day-to-day is taken care of you.

It is right off of this pedestrian street.

Then we go to what we call ready to wear offices where we have prebuilt, predesigned, pre-furnished smaller suites.

700 square feet up to about 3000 square feet.

We make those easy to occupy and just as easy to leave.

Like leasing a car.

It is not a lifetime commitment.

You could take it for a year, three years, five years.

We typically have a waiting list of people that want to come in anyway.

The entire lease is a four-page document.

Easier than even renting a car.

Then you go to something we call campus.

Campus is in addition to our let's call it our ecosystem.

Post-COVID, for companies that have not found there putting, do we need an office?

Are people going to come back to work or not?

They want to be in a great environment.

Campus is prebuilt.

72,000 square feet of office space, divided into sections, and prefinished it.

I think we only have one section left.

Those are about 6500 square feet.

You could take one slice, 2, 3.

That was our offering post-COVID.

Then we have the typical building, 10,000 square-foot space, purposely designed, all the way up to 350,000 square feet.

And you know something that we are very proud of here?

You can be occupying a desk for a month for $350 a month, or you could be a huge corporation spending millions of dollars a year.

You both have equal access to our ecosystem.

To the block, all the energy happening around us, the conference space, auditorium.

You need to bring a party or bring clients here.

It is available for everyone.

Raven: What are some of the perks and benefits when you do rent space here?

Ralph: The ultimate perk, as you look around, having life here.

That being said, there are approximately 10 or 11 places.

You want sushi, Mexican, you want to bring your kids to daycare, you want to work out at an incredible health facility.

Five or six different fitness offerings.

Raven: I saw a spa.

Ralph: We have a small spa, as well.

You can do oxygen therapy.

Fitness factory.

All of that.

You could go to the dentist, the hair salon.

Soon we will have doggy daycare.

All of these things that happen over here, it is an amazing benefit.

You don't have to separate your life from your work.

There are always going to be places like this that more and more people see, they will want to copy, emulate.

The only thing I would caution is, it is easy to do from the ground up.

We could not have done this if we have not found this amazing edifice.

MD, devoid of life, and we built it.

Raven: Hard work pays off and definitely having a vision.

Ralph, thanks for joining me.

Ralph: Thank you for your interest and thanks for having us.

Raven: Bell Labs was designed with the modern worker in mind, giving them the benefits of living in a major city without living in one.

I spoke to the designer about what inspires her when she designs office spaces and what her design offers to workers of all ages.

>> Designing for the present and future was a part of my inspiration, how to bring people to a big 2 million square-foot building, how to make it fun and interesting, inspiring.

It is by design.

The café area was the first area I design for the building.

You can imagine this was an empty building when I started the project.

To bring life, how to bring life?

I added that simple but beautiful café area.

Raven: Dell works is home to a Friday of companies from financial consultants to beverage distributors.

We wanted to get a sense of why these companies chose workplace is like Bella works over leasing traditional office spaces.

I spoke to David and Christine West, founders of the Fortis Agency.

We spoke about how the unconventional office space actually brings in new business.

David: We have people that just want to hang out at our office.

Other advisors work from home, they come here to hang out.

We will brainstorm, go through case studies together.

We actually end up getting business by just having this facility.

Christine: I credit so much success to just being here, other advisors seeing what we are doing.

We don't accrued actively but a lot of advisors have joined us because they see the space we are in, the culture that Bell Works has in general.

It's very attractive.

Raven: Even as many companies try to get new ways to get employees back to work, others are leaning into the remote lifestyle.

New Jersey ranks in the top 10 in the number of remote workers in the country, and it is home to a number of countries who are staying remote.

I spoke to Keith Spencer from flex jobs, a website dedicated to finding remote and hybrid work.

We spoke about New Jersey's remote landscape and what it means for the future of the workplace.

As we navigate through this ever evolving world of post-pandemic work in 2023, we know there are still a lot of people who want to work from home.

Your company is doing just that.

Tell me more about how flex jobs works.

Keith: Flex jobs is a company that is dedicated to helping jobseekers find remote and lexical work options.

We source and vet job posting that are then posted on our website for jobseekers who are particularly interested in remote and hybrid work options.

We also provide jobseekers with a wide range of job-search support through different, informative, educational resources, which is part of my role as a career expert at Flex Jobs.

Raven: Tell me about how many and what type of jobs you connect people with.

Keith: How many, that really fluctuates.

The job market tends to fluctuate pretty rapidly.

You can regularly find tens of thousands of roles on our site with a wide range of industries, experience levels.

Some of the most popular titles on Flex Jobs include accountant, project manager, customer service, administrative assistant, project manager, writers.

There is a wide range of experience levels and seniority levels, as well.

One of the main things that we do at Flex Jobs, as you may or may not be familiar with, jobs for scams are a big concern.

We vet 100% of the postings on our site.

Raven: Tell me about what types of trends you are noticing with companies when it comes to remote-hybrid work.

Keith: The demand for remote-hybrid work has been extremely high since the pandemic.

We just released today in fact our remote work and return to office poll survey which showed about 63% of jobseekers value remote work over salary even, for example.

That was an interesting finding.

Remote work tends to be more important than salary to a lot of jobseekers.

In terms of hiring trends, the job market has fluctuated quite a bit recently.

However, as a percentage of overall job postings, remote work remains strong.

We actually also fairly recently listed our top 100 companies that are offering hybrid options.

We saw 50 companies join that list.

That is a clear indicator to us that the organizations that are offering remote and hybrid options are starting to expand.

Even with some of the return to office mandates that we have seen, a lot of these companies are adopting an RTO model that is hybrid in nature.

Raven: What are the top three flexible remote job titles in 2023?

Keith: I mention some of the most, that we are seeing.

It runs a wide range.

Customer service, customer success.

We are seeing a lot for administrative roles.

Project managers, things like that.

It really runs a wide variety.

Raven: Keith, what is some advice when it comes to securing a flexible job that you have for viewers watching?

Keith: If you are someone who is interested in remote or hybrid work, there are definitely some things that you can do to help maximize your chances of getting that type of work.

First and foremost, you want to highlight remote experience that you may have had.

That could include, maybe you worked remotely temporarily during the pandemic.

Maybe you work with this tribute it teams across -- distributed teams across time zone so you are constantly hopping on zoom calls with clients.

Perhaps you took online coursework.

You could also leverage that as remote coursework.

Also emphasizing your familiarity with remote communication and collaboration tools, which are essential in the remote environment.

That is a really good idea.

Also emphasizing transferable skills, the type of skills that kind of transcend all different industries.

Things like communication, problem-solving, adaptability.

Those are really important in remote work.

Also highlighting your accomplishment and achievements to show that you are not just capable of doing that work that you are trying to apply for, but you can do it successfully, regardless of environment.

Raven: All of these things are pointing to the fact that commuting to work could become a thing of the past.

Do you think eventually remote work is the future?

Keith: You know, I think remote work is here to stay.

It is not for everybody.

In fact, with our poll survey I mentioned earlier, we did see quite a few people that like a hybrid option as well.

Some people do favor in person.

What is more exciting to me is that we have options.

Remote work can be beneficial for your mental health, physical health, can be more inclusive.

The fact that we have these options is really exciting.

We believe that remote work is here to stay.

What it will look like in the future is hard to tell.

Raven: Keith Spencer, career expert at Flex Jobs, thanks for joining me on Biz Beat.

Keith: Thanks for having me.

Nice to speak with you.

Raven: Before we go, look at the top business headlines from the week.

Leaders in the energy sector met at Rowan University discussed New Jersey's energy future.

One of the most talked about topics was the emergence of hydrogen as a fuel of the future.

Advocates say a multibillion dollar investment from the Biden Administration will turn South Jersey and the Philadelphia area into a leader of hydrogen production, bringing up to $750 billion to the area over nine years.

But some advocates say hydrogen is not as clean as other sources like wind or solar.

>> For a lot of the 20th century, this was one of the biggest places to make things again.

One of my goals through all of this is having cleaner fuels that reduce our emissions, but also in a way that makes this region more competitive economically so we can manufacture things again.

>> It is impossible to burn all of this stuff without having to pollutants.

When you have heavy metals, that is not clean.

There is no way any of this magical hydrogen and methane can be produced or burned over communities.

Raven: Governor Murphy vetoes the Turnpike Authority budget and the toll hikes coming with it.

This week, state Democrats pressured the governor to block the planned goal hikes for the Garden State Parkway and Turnpike drivers would have faced a 3% spike in toll starting January 1.

Under a plan approved this week by Turnpike Authority commissioners.

The panel union sleeve voted in favor of a more than $2.6 billion budget for the next year and commissioners said they needed to raise tolls to help pay for it.

They cited the need for more maintenance and engineering staff work on a massive Turnpike widening project, along with inflation and global supply chain pressures.

New Jersey's chapter of the National motorist Association also opposed the increase, calling out the authority for three consecutive years of toll hikes.

New Jersey is taking on social media giant meta.

Attorney General Matt plaque in announced a sweeping lawsuit with 41 other states, suing the parent company of Facebook and Instagram.

They accuse the company of using features that get young kids and teenagers addicted to the platforms.

The lawsuit cites frequent notifications and infinite newsfeeds that keep users on social media longer, and repeatedly coming back.

The AG also claims the platforms are contributing to the youth mental health crisis by fueling poor self-esteem and depression rates.

The complaint also claims Meta routinely collects data on kids under the age of 16 without parental consent, violating consumer protections.

That does it for this week.

Remember to subscribe to our NJ Spotlight News YouTube channel to get alerted when we post new episodes and clips.

Next week, we explore New Jersey's role in the international business community after Governor Murphy's economic trip to East Asia.

Thanks for watching.

I'm Raven Santana.

We will see you next weekend.

Announcer: support for "NJ Biz Beat with Raven Santana" is provided by NJMEP.

A partner to New Jersey's manufacturing industry focus on productivity, performance, and strategic development.

More on NJMEP.org.

♪