Fun office events are a great way to improve team cohesion and general workplace wellbeing, all while building a sense of belonging amongst employees. These events can also be an opportunity to develop interpersonal skills and further instill your company’s values, particularly when they align with your overall ethos. A great example of this would be a wellness brand opting to take employees through a guided meditation or in-office yoga session.

Despite the recent rise of remote and hybrid work schedules, there is still a lot of importance placed on engaging staff through team building and promoting happy and inclusive work cultures. However, it’s important to note that best practices have shifted somewhat in recent times – away from standard corporate event ideas like Friday night work drinks or team lunches and towards more inclusive, diverse activities. 

So, to inspire a packed calendar of enjoyable and engaging office events for your teams in the new year, we’ve curated a list of fun office events that stray away from tired and low-effort happy hours. 

Hopefully, a few of these ideas can make an appearance in your office’s social calendar and, after their success, be recurring events that your employees will continue to look forward to during their many years of tenure. Looking for some fun corporate event ideas for your office to implement? 

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Sustainability practices and green buildings are more popular than ever, making a strong LEED rating extremely desirable to both building owners and prospective occupants. In this blog post, we’ll take a closer look at what the LEED certification system is, why it matters, and some of the benefits you can expect from going through the certification process. 

What is LEED Certification and What Does It Stand For?

If you’re unfamiliar with the term, LEED certification is a stamp of approval from the United States Green Building Council (USGBC) that signifies that a building or renovation project meets their high standards for environmentally friendly and sustainable construction. The acronym LEED stands for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design. To receive LEED certification, a building must score points in several different categories, including water usage, indoor air quality, energy efficiency, reduction of waste, and material selection. In addition, the building must also meet a minimum threshold for overall energy efficiency. While the standards for LEED certification are relatively high, the benefits of certification are significant. Buildings with LEED certification often enjoy lower operating costs, higher rents, and increased market value. As a result, the number of LEED-certified buildings has grown rapidly in recent years, as more and more developers seek to cash in on the green building boom.

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Dealing with a fixed-term lease agreement and looking to move offices or downsize? The topic of commercial lease transfer can be confusing to navigate, particularly when you are unsure of your rights and obligations under the lease.

If you’re renting a commercial property, you signed a contract at the beginning of your tenancy called a lease agreement, which contains all the details of your rights and obligations while occupying and conducting business operations at the commercial property. Your agent is required by law to give you a copy of the lease agreement if you don’t already have one.

The following article will serve as a full guide to commercial lease assignment, providing business owners with an overview of the legal considerations and elements required for an assignment of lease.

What is a Commercial Lease Assignment?

Also known as a lease transfer, a commercial lease assignment involves a tenant transferring all of their interests and rights in a lease to a new party. This new tenant will take on the responsibilities of the existing lease, including rent and any other obligations, leaving the original tenant free to exit the agreement.

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Even though Florida’s office sector held strong during the pandemic, some investors are now feeling cautious as a result of geopolitical tensions, inflation, reduced spending, and rising interest rates. Despite the cooling sentiment, vacancy rates for commercial spaces are continuing to decrease across the State, especially in the office market. Fuelling Florida’s continued market positive is an overall increase in jobs, combined with low unemployment rates and generally favorable business conditions.

Market Highlights

Asking rates in Miami Beach have increased significantly, with some offices costing more than $120 sq/ft. On average, however, actual rental prices for this premium market are much lower, at roughly $70 sq/ft.

Additionally, the vacancy rate for Miami Beach is relatively low at 12.7%, just behind Brickell and Wynwood. Consequently, there has been a recent uptick in development activity driven by those looking to take advantage of the favorable conditions. Some notable projects include 1177 Kane Concourse (101,000 sq/ft) and Terminal Island Office Project (161,000 sq/ft), slated for delivery in 2024.

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Median Salary vs. Average Salary: How Much are Office Workers Really Paid?

Given the renewed relevancy of the office as a working environment, we believe it is a prudent time to examine how much the average American office worker earns, by age. 

Median and average salary figures are both commonly used when exploring fair compensation in the workplace. Average salary data is determined by adding together all salaries earned by a particular group and dividing this figure by the number of people in the group, whilst median salary data is derived by arranging salaries from low to high and selecting the midpoint. A lot of people refer to these terms interchangeably, however, most prefer to compare salaries against the median wage – as it isn’t as impacted by the dramatic ends of the spectrum.

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The adoption of new and exciting technologies has accelerated at a previously unforeseen pace in recent years, with the impact of the rapid changes that ensued now being felt across a number of industries. In the case of the real estate industry, the proliferation of proptech (property technology) has proven to be a significant factor changing businesses around the globe. In this article, we’ll take a deep dive into proptech and assess both its current and future impact on the commercial real estate market. It should also be noted that proptech encompasses both commercial and residential real estate technology, however, for the purposes of brevity we will only be exploring the commercial proptech sector. 

What is Proptech?

Proptech, also known as retech (real estate tech), essentially relates to the use of data and technology to help individuals and businesses manage, buy, sell, lease, and research real estate. The concept is not new, since the real estate sector has been using tech software for a number of years to store data, arrange virtual viewings, and help connect buyers and sellers. However, proptech capabilities have massively increased in recent years due to the development of newer and more refined technologies, such as artificial intelligence, Big Data, blockchain, cloud computing, and the Internet of Things.

Recently, we’ve seen unprecedented acceleration in the proptech field, largely fueled by new consumer expectations and the rapidly changing digital landscape. Moving into 2023, lingering uncertainty and persistent market shifts are tipped to continue spurring proptech’s advancement.

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Ensuring that employees feel valued and recognized has never been more important for business leaders than it is in the current world of work. Employers looking to build an environment in which employees are fully engaged and fulfilled with their work have been striving to find new and exciting ways to show their appreciation, with the ultimate aim of bolstering company culture and retaining top talent. The upheaval to the modern business landscape, brought on by COVID-19 and the long-running lockdowns that accompanied it, have resulted in an unprecedented sea change. Despite the majority of the world returning to some semblance of normality, the ripple effects are still being felt, with marked shifts in employee priorities, perceptions of management, and workplace desires. 

These shifts have been especially noticeable in the changed power dynamic between workers and businesses. Employees are now less likely to put up with mistreatment or less-than-ideal working situations. Instead, they have become more open to jumping ship for better working arrangements, rather than persist with jobs that infringe too much on their wellbeing.

Workplace trends such as improved flexibility in the workplace, including allowances for hybrid schedules and other non-traditional working models, the provision of additional benefits, and the renovation of workspaces to be more human-centric, have all become widely accepted as core to employee experience. The businesses who have arrived late to the party are now scrambling to catch up to competitors who reaped the benefits of quickly adopting some, if not all, of these trends.  

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