JLL Perspectives podcast: Building community in the workplace

Hi everyone. If you're listening, this is the JLL Flex for Thought series. It's a sub series of the JLL perspectives podcast. I'm your host Tashi Dorjee, the head of flex of JLL for Australasia and really excited to bring you this series because we're going to be talking to a number of experts across a variety of disciplines, not just office. And we're going to unpack what the future of Work and Flex looks like. So let's get started. Can I show my grandpa who just turned 101 years old? Wow. Yeah. And so it's really fun when showing him my son Logan, who was born only four months ago, the fact that there's a century in between them, there's something beautiful about it that's incredible when they're talking to one another. That is incredible. That's so cool. What a great story. It also, 100, 100 years. Yeah. Between your son and him for that's. And it also for generations it technically in one space that's it's very wild. It was it felt something was weird in that room. In a good way. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, I felt something, when they met and, you know, I'm definitely biased with my son going. Oh, he's very aware and very smart, but he was just locked on to my grandpa Maurice. He was like some there's, like, some sort of reincarnation stuff going there with, with loved ones that are lost within our family. But it was beautiful. When I find that if you're if you, a little bit aware. Yeah. Those first meetings, I truly felt that my daughter knew., my parents were and and my wife's mum were, were like safe really. Like. Yeah, they were her people. Yeah. Yeah. I swear she knew her. Yeah, I believe in that stuff. You know, it was it was intrinsic was really love. Which is kind of like, the theme to what we're going to be talking about today. Kind of.

Right. Like people, the human element of everything. And before you even get into that, like, just to let everyone listening know, Oscar, to me, is the most authentic person you'll meet. Because before I even, you know, got my business off the ground to space and got to start this career over at JLL. When I first started my business to space was a brand that turned restaurants to co-working space.

But we were new. No one really knew us. But man, you met us. You took the time. You loved what we were doing because it was community focused around giving people a place to work and, we piggybacked off the Young Henrys buy a brand at the start because you were sponsoring our events. You were providing us beers and ciders and all that kind of stuff.

So I owe a lot to you, man. I think you were a lot to do with my story. Well, that's that's a really kind thing to say, I think. What are the other parts of why I loved to space is the great opportunity of that generation of rethinking existing assets and, to space. You know, if you look at hospitality as being an industry that owes rent seven days a week, but only actually makes money out of certain portion of it, you know, the that there is all of this space there.

The there are these kitchens, there are all of these tables and chairs and, you know, the internet and all this sort of stuff that's sitting there being under utilized. And, you know, you think about the last five years of Covid and economic times, you know, how many people in the hospitality industry would be looking very seriously at how, you know, what, we do want more people to come in and engage with our space and turn into customers, you know, hey, a new revenue stream.

So I think there's also a really nice circular economic sort of thought in it. So the world doesn't really need more stuff. What if we all just worked out ways to use our existing stuff better? Yeah. You know, use use existing stuff more. Uber is a great example. Yeah. You know what I mean. Yeah. Which is which is where the idea was born.

It was born from a love of sustainability because I did rainforest protection before that. And and I feel like Young Henrys has a really important. And your story in your approach to storytelling, brand community, has a lot of stuff we can learn from to apply to even commercial real estate assets and precincts, because working with a lot of landlords and developments, we're all trying to figure out how do we best activate and build community, even within the lobbies or the public spaces of a commercial building, because they're now, you know, positioned with the obstacle of how do we get people into the office if they have now the option to stay at home

and work? How do we make sure there's an experience or something waiting for them there? And I feel like you've always had a great approach to community. So, you know, what's something really great that you think works for you or, you know, whether it's organic or, you know, you know, manmade kind of thing when it comes to community from a Young Henrys perspective that we maybe can take his inspiration.

Absolutely. So community is a legitimate transfer of things between like minded people. So community is all about people. You can have an online community if someone is watching you on Instagram, for example, via your online community. What is the thread there? It is like mindedness. There is something that either you are doing that they see as a part of themselves or that they're interested in.

So there is this like mindedness. Why do people live in Bondi? Why do people live in Newtown? Why do people live in Surry Hills? You can list out the top ten reasons why people would choose each of those suburbs, and I bet most the people that live in those suburbs, the top five would actually correlate. Again, it's humans like mindedness.

Yeah. That's why you see these different, groupings, cultural groupings, different things in different places. So. To, to foster community, you have to understand the community. And you actually have to be a part of it. Right. And one of the values of Young Henrys is for your community to support you. You first must do something for your community.

There are many empty shops on most high streets at the moment, and that is, you know, that that is testament to you know, economics is a testament to, people moving to online and all that sort of stuff. But when you have a look at the shops that are still there, the shops that have been there for ten years, 15 years, 20 years, they've probably picked the area, they know the area, they know their customers.

And there is a reason that their customers are walking through that door instead of just buying online. You know, a shop is a really good example where you walk into a nice option. I can I think I can buy that stuff online. I've, I don't know, I walk into the ace of shop because you get greeted, you are asked what you're looking for, do you need help?

And the amount of training on every single product and the different sense within them and how they made, it is this beautiful experience where you come out actually going. I got exactly what I wanted that I wouldn't have been able to do that by myself online. Yeah. You know, and that is so you think about that.

That's a good example of a business scaling, but keeping the people at the center of it, they're smart people, well-trained, and they reflect the communities where those shops are. You know, you take it into a workplace sense. How do you how do you create a space or a feeling that, that makes your people want to come to work?

Well, it's I can't tell you that. And you can't make that decision for other people. It's actually, you've got to understand what it is. The the cohort of people that work in that business. Like what? What do you care about, you know, is it is it free yogurt lunch. Lunchtime. Yeah. Is it apples? You know, on the table.

Is it a coffee machine? Is it, you know, is it flexible? Flexible hours? Is it, you know, like, what are those different things and different businesses, would obviously attract different types of people. And so, you know, like what we want to work at Young Henrys, there's something about, the way that we approach things that definitely aligns with a lot of our people's cultural, you know, vision.

Yeah. I guess how they see the world, you know, they're being upset at our work, which is, which is always of a benefit to, to people. But also. The offering, the offering needs to be cohesive with the experience. Yeah. You can't put bitmaps in your work and then have this strict, regimented, non collaborative thing, like, like working conditions and then expect everyone to chill out and relax and create community.

Yeah. Having to be together afterwards. Yeah. You know there has to be a continuum because it feels like there's that disconnect right now in office. Yes. You know the low hanging fruit is let's put some of these cool amenities in there. But we expect a certain switch to be flicked at Thursdays or Fridays at 4 or 5 p.m. only.

And other than that, the workplace is designed for you. Come in here and you do your out. So what's, even if it's flipping the design of the space, do you have a, an idea of how you can make that continuum a bit smoother? You know, I think that you probably need to consult the people more. I think that's a really important thing.

If you give if you give your people the opportunity and the equity to give their opinion, they'll give it to you. Yeah. You know, we we make mistakes too. We don't get everything right. And there is a pretty comfortable feedback loop with you. Is this where okay. Yeah we'll take a learning from that. We'll take a, you know, and I think also one of the things that we've had to really work on is, you know, is work life balance.

You know, like really being a lot more conscious about, hey, there is alcohol around, but what are you doing? That's not alcohol related? What are you doing health and fitness wise. Making sure that you're having days off. You know, like yeah, it's interesting that we've we've finally got the the converse. Yeah yeah yeah. All right. Hey. Oh you guys you're hanging out being mates too much.

What about. What about you go for a run or something. That's a that's a good problem to have. It is a good problem. It is a good problem to have. But, but the I guess going back to your question, people, people are relatively simple and they sort of want an equal experience. You know, it, it's not just a free beer.

At the end of the day, maybe it's free coffee in the morning, and maybe it is a more flexible lunchtime or, you know, so that you are then bringing people into a space. And if they have had a say in the, that is on the wall and the food that is in the fridge and, you know, there is and there is something that happens in the morning.

So you have instant lunch time. Something happens in the afternoon. You are then building a whole experience, which makes the whole day pleasurable. Whereas at the moment your example is we expect 40 hours of this and then completely change what why do what a heaps of Christmas parties go off the rails? Because people are letting off steam.

Yeah, because it is so vastly different to how people, you know, co-exist generally. Yeah. Whereas, you know, if you get that right, it's a continuation of the conversation. What you're saying makes complete sense, because we just spoke with Charlotte Stratton, who's the head of office at asset management at Lendlease. And she was talking about the future assets for her, ones that enable, you know, functionality to where lifestyle and work can be blended.

Right. It's no longer sit here and work, kind of, especially when you think about generation Z and the younger generation, they really want to be able to work, but then very quickly go do something else, or socialize, or hang with friends or go to an event afterwards. Where can they change? Where can they shower? All that kind of stuff, makes so much sense.

And unfortunately. But also fortunately, because it's changing a lot of the developments that I've been a part of in the past, when they try and speak to the tenant community or the people of the building, let's say you've got like, you know, 40,000 people in the building or whatever, they're not necessarily speaking or they're not going through the diligence to get to know the people properly.

They might speak to a head of property or a head of like a decision maker that represents the people, which from an office or a corporate perspective, might not be representative of what they actually want. And even if they had good intentions, it would be impossible to represent what all of those people want because there's no one size fits all amenity or experience or approach.

So it's it really feels like to your point, it's like, I love what you said, where it's like, if you want something from the community, it's kind of give to the community first. It's like it's like a slogan, serve the people. Yeah, absolutely. But I think the even on mass, even a very large company can get it right.

And because whether you are selling soap or beer or property, if you understand what your product is, what your market is, and why people are your customers and why they would want to work for you, you actually have got enough data sets there to understand the type of lifestyle that someone is probably wanting to live. Yeah, right. You know, someone that goes to work for Google is going to be looking for a different lifestyle, or someone that comes to work for Young Henrys.

Yeah. You know, so, so I think that it that is absolutely the ability, you know, a company as big as Google. Yeah. They get that transfer, right. Yeah. They're bigger than most companies. So I think that there is there needs to be a shift in how a larger entity could engage with this people because really, like every business, is a sum of its human parts.

It's almost like to your point, it's it's less 100% trying to guess what everyone wants and giving it to them, but giving them the tools to kind of and the vehicles to, to find their people or their experiences or what they like within a building context or a pricing context. Right. Because a lot of these asset managers with budget, they've trying to figure out, oh, do we do we put on yoga, we put on salsa dancing, do we put on chess classes?

What do we do? And there's an element of courage in guessing because they just see what works and draw from that data. But then there's also an element which is really important today in office design where it's like, how do we build and design spaces so that people don't necessarily come in and sit down like an industrial worker back in the day where you kind of have to sit down in a spot to make stuff, but you've got this agile workspace where you come like, for me, I love coming down, sitting near the coffee machine, hearing the coffees in the morning, buzzing.

I pretty much work at the cafe, you know, a little ode and a nod to my my first business two space and restaurants. Even though I've been at JLL for five years in a corporate environment, you'll see me always sitting at the work cafe. I'm not. I'm not ever at a monitor to the point where people joke. It's like, oh, it's Tasha's office, right?

And and I sometimes get, jokes from clients. I usually sit there so that when we come in, you can speak to us. So like, no, it's words because I love the space. But, I've got a really interesting for me. I'm very interested. I love the work that you're doing where you've partnered with the universities to, to really investigate how Lgi can get involved in the sustainable kind of development of beer and everything like that.

Before you even explain that, what what made you as someone who represents, you know, a really cool brand, decide, hey, this is something that we really, really want to get involved. And do you know, is there any part of your company or brand value that really made sense beyond just doing something really cool? Frankly? Yes. I think in part lunacy.

And because you did stuff on the roof and everything before that, there was this like breadcrumb was leading up to this amazing, innovative approach. So sustainability in a business context, our view is that at every step of the way, if you're making a decision, bring sustainable thought in at the point of every decision, right. So especially when you're talking about, a, you know, like we have a manufacturing business, you know, so everywhere where you can make a commercial decision and, an investment decision, if you bring sustainability as a lens into that, there is a misnomer that that means it will cost more.

It often doesn't. And the paybacks are often greater. You know, so once you start doing that as well, every business has a customer set. Every business spends money on a form of marketing. You know, we found out pretty early that every time we did something sustainable, we would get this great resonance from our most important people, which is our team and then our customers, both our wholesale B2B customers, but also our end consumers.

It's like, oh, I heard that you went community on solar. That's amazing. I went to a dinner party the other day and I told all my friends at the dinner party, you got to drink Young Henrys because they're solar powered now, less. Do you know how much money people would spend for that sort of advocacy? Yeah. And so by doing actual actions, we realized that, okay, there's different ways of creating value.

Yeah. You can give someone, cheaper prices. You can do a super cool ad campaign with some, you know, attractive looking people and make it look really desirable. Or you could do a valuable action with someone, say, okay, I'm going to buy Young Henrys or I already I'm already young Henry's customer, but I'm going to stick around longer because they just did that thing and that makes me stick with them.

You know, marketing is just about trying to get a elicit a human response to a product. Yeah. Before you even jump in that stuff, because I really want to listen to it. I just got to say, even speaking with some of the other guests on this series, like Charlotte again, they've got something called, Eco concierge, I believe.

Okay. Within their assets and precincts, which helps all their tenants, whatever journey, whatever part of their company journey or supply journey they are on, help them take action on sustainability or where they can do stuff to reduce their carbon footprint or whatever, and similar resonance, like people love it. It's, excuse excuses the wrong word, but it's a reason to engage with your customer, in this case, large tenants.

But then also we talked about something, the power of the collective, which is a way I feel like I should connect you to where she feels like similar. And there's an element, I feel like there's an element of loyalty to a Lendlease asset. If the vision for some of those buildings is rather than put tenants in there, they're potentially, alienated from one another or compete and not necessarily from an intellectual property perspective.

But how cool would it be if they all pitch in and they support some form of activation that means a lot to them, or, you know, or not for profit or a charity that they all believe in want to get behind. So it's kind of like that similar level of advocacy is is kind of bleeding into even property.

And that's why I think this conversation with you is so important, because at the end of the day, for the first time in almost like decades and decades, when it comes to office, it's not as a property owner. It's not like, sign this lease, we'll forget about you will talk to you in 710 years when that expires and renew it.

It's now. People don't need leases unless they're people come to the office. Right. So for the first time, even within a commercial real estate perspective, the powers in the hands of the people, because if they don't come to the office, then the company won't sign the lease. And then the office asset is not worth $100 million. It's worth nothing, which is what's already happening in the US.

So there's this connection now where it's like and not size the wrong representation of it, but it's like we really need to understand what the people want. And we know it's different for every company. We know it's different for every area. But now we need help translating that into, you know, a traditionally very basic kind of product office, you know, and that's translated into ground floor offerings, amenities.

But now it's kind of filtering up into the floors, like how does the workplace design or layout even look like for these different companies to, to make people want to come in? And then how do these landlords do things to the building to help them, help them get their people in? But so please tell me about the, the, the innovative approach that you've got going with the unis, because I think that's really cool, man.

he world will be rethought by: 2050

Yeah, that's a given. You know, some of them may be incremental. Some of them will be completely revolutionized. We could push back on that and sit back and say, not too hard, too hard. Or you could say, well, hang on a second. If we lean into this, there might be some opportunities. So it was in the spirit of that that one of our co-founders, Richard, met one of the professors from UTS, Professor Ralph.

He is part of the climate. He's the head of the climate change cluster, and they are deeply researching the positive effects that microalgae can have in industrial uses. So they're having these conversation and he's talking about microalgae. And Richie goes, well, hang on a second. That's really interesting. They basically worked out that brewer's yeast is a micro organism that lives in a liquid environment.

It eats sugar, creates alcohol and releases CO2. Microalgae is a micro organism that lives in a liquid environment that eats CO2, uses that to procreate, creating more algae and releasing oxygen. So there are these yin and yang microorganisms. So these very simple idea of, oh, hang on, as a brewer, we buy CO2. We then because you need to use CO2 to actually move beer around and to carbonate beer.

We release CO2 through fermentation and we also have a lot of grain. We might be from malted barley grains. Once we've made the B, we have all of this grain. We have about ten tonnes a week going out to farms. Yeah. So we're thinking, could we put some microalgae into our brewery as a way of capturing our CO2 and turning it into oxygen?

So we've been funding this with, the University of Technology Sydney for seven years. We now have done feedlot trials. We have got a, a commercial prototype operating in the brewery. Basically, we now have the worldwide IP for a system that uses CO2 from a food production business. Yeah. To grow microalgae for other uses. We're researching microalgae as a feed supplement for ruminant animals, cows and lambs to reduce methane emissions.

Yeah, and we have just got another grant from, the state government to. Cool. Yeah. When we're, hopefully by the end of this next financial year, we will have a micro algal strain that, at a very low percentage of a cows diet, can give around a 50% reduction in their methane emissions. Wow. That's that's a lot because.

Yeah. Yeah. And so if you think about this. The effects of that system for us, we stop buying CO2. We stop releasing CO2. Our business becomes an oxygen creator. And then we're already sending spent grain out to farms. We would then have another waste product which is microalgae biomass. Yeah. That we could send along with that grain to a farm to help them decarbonize.

Yeah. Wow. So, like this amazing circular and ohmic thing. What I love about it is the we make be from grain, which comes from agriculture. Yeah. Then yeah, it goes back. Yeah. And also microalgae is this really simple little organism that al Brewer's yeast alive, you know, for months at a time. Microalgae is so much easier. So it's this really simple thing.

It's an addition to our industrial process. Yeah. And we're now looking at well how does this concept take it away from the brewery. How does that work in a tofu factory, a from butcher factory, a winery, a distillery, a malting facility? Yeah, basically. Microalgae is fascinating. Did you know that half of the world's oxygen comes from algae and seaweed?

. I didn't I didn't know it's: 5050

And this is not a mycorrhizae versus tree issue. We need both of them. Yeah, yeah. But we've got these two bioreactors in the brewery. But there's this one. Yeah. They're about, you know, six foot tall. So it's about 600l of water. Yeah. We can get them to biomass, which is like a critical mass within a month. Yeah.

And they will do the same amount of carbon sequestration and create the equivalent amount of oxygen as a hectare of Australian. Yeah. Wow. H and also when you think about it from a land and a surface area perspective output wise, you don't need that same amount of land which we're running out of more and more. Also our breweries in the middle of Newtown.

Yeah, we're highly urban area. Yeah, yeah. And we are creating more oxygen and decarbonizing at a rate higher than if we knocked the whole Young Henrys Brewery over. So this is cool, man, because like, you're like, there's so many layers and so many stories behind your brand. And I feel like, so what, what buildings are trying to do like new buildings especially, they're trying to create a story behind the building.

So it's it's it's an element of storytelling and hospitality to try and get people to come to it. Right. And there's a term that's being thrown around a while now, like the hotel ification of a building. So to your point, the reason why you go to an ice shop, they're trying to take, borrow from, you know, five star hotels and make the entrance of a building like that. So you're greeted, even if it's the concierge or the cafe. People remember your name, your order, special days that are to you. Like they're making an effort. But branding and storytelling is a big part of it, to the point where owners, even when they work with the leasing agents appointed to their like, we can't just call it address, blah.

You know, what's what are we what's the brand? What's the story behind it? How can we do that? And I feel like what I'm learning even through this, you know, really interesting discussion behind Young Henrys. It's not even though it's super strong, the community element of it. You've got all these different layers of, you know, authentic, you know, what's the word quests that you've going on?

You know, whether it's the algae, it's sustainability, it's understanding you people. That's it's like onions to the young Henry's brand that I feel like assets need to borrow from, because right now it's very two dimensional. What's the brand? Why is it cool? What's the formula? Okay, let's look within a five kilometer radius around it. Let's borrow from here and here.

Whereas there needs to be a bit more of a and it takes time, maybe a bit more thoughtfulness applied to what that story is to really have people connect with it. Right? I, I think the businesses are already doing a lot of these activities without thinking about it. If your business is on Facebook, you are already liking things.

You your business has friends, your business shares certain things that it is in line with it. Yeah, it has a tone of voice. If you put music behind it, your business has a soundtrack. Your business already probably has a dress sense. You know, like there are so many human things in that, in how a business would approach a market in a modern context.

You then can go this extra layer and you find out if you have got a bunch of people within your business and you find out what they actually believe in, you will find some champions for change. Everything that we do, Young Henrys, there has to be a champion for we won't create a ginger beer if can be.

Our old Queensland State manager hadn't been yelling at us for two years. Say we need a ginger beer. We love ginger beer like you know. And I love you ginger beer. I've got a few at home. It's our biggest seller in, in Queensland now. You know, but he was an advocate for that. You know, we have a lot of advocacy within our business for sustainable.

And so then you go, okay, we know how we're going to do it because you people are going to be the champions of that. Great. Let's let's go into that. I don't know what it costs to build a building. Yeah, but, I could take a guess. Yeah. And I think that the application of algal bioreactors on a rooftop space is going to be fractional.

But the impact that that building could have in sequestering the carbon from the atmosphere around that building could be a mess. I think that's a great. Let me connect you with some developments that are happening because they're looking no joke, because right now they're looking for ideas on how to take unused space and make it different, tell a story.

And even on this, like, you know, podcasts, you've kind of really articulately kind of shown the advice, advocacy and the story behind even your algae approach and how that started seven years ago when you approached the professor, the co-founder, and all that kind of stuff. Let me connect you because because right now a rooftop in a building is like, oh, let's make it a, you know, a rooftop garden or let's, let's, just make it an event space that gets booked every now and then, but it's still not really utilized, whereas something like that would be so cool.

And, and you've got to give it a purpose and. Oh yeah. Yeah, give it a purpose. You have the ability to, to do something impact fall outside of the scope of just your, your direct cohort of people. You know, like you could actually be like, hey, we're going to do this and be mopping up CO2 from the atmosphere for two city blocks.

Yeah, yeah. Like what a story I'm going to I'm going to connect you with Connor who's the head of sustainability at JLL. I would love his he. Yeah I reckon you guys would have a I probably shouldn't have gone on the algae tangent because he's going to want to talk to you about that big time. But that's really cool man, because, thank you for sharing that with me. I didn't realize it was a seven year journey to till getting it today. It sounds like a lot of cool stuff's coming out of it and talking about the the opportunity. Yeah. Where we're at this point in time, we own this IP and we're about to spin it out. And it's a into a business that actually sells this IP to other businesses.

And it's so cool, you know, like so we're still a couple of years away from actually, you know, revenue. But we've got a list of people interested. We've got, you know, nice. It's it's let me know when you've got the Young Henrys algae design. Yeah. I'm sure you've got in the works. I'll be one of the first to wear it, I love it.

We've had just had a couple of different iterations. My friend, I could speak to you for hours, but we've got to cut it here. But I really appreciate your time. And I actually think a lot of people is going to resonate with this, this particular episode. Because when you talk about your values, what you believe in, and you're sharing how that could be shared even on a very basic level to some of these other disciplines and industries like commercial real estate, you know, really it really resonates, man, because it's coming from, you know, it's it's an authentic belief and it's and you're doing it. So thank you so much. I really appreciate that. Oh, thank you very much. Very kind words. It's, lovely to see you as always. Yeah. You too Oscar. All right. Well, thanks, everyone for listening. And we'll speak to again soon.