Kim Rader
[GREETING] I hope you are well. As we all know, January was a rocky month with unprecedented spikes in COVID-19 case rates that reversed back-to-the-office plans for many across the country. While many of us are now habituated to remote work and various forms of virtual collaboration, questions about new ways of working continue to be top of mind for many employers. According to a CBRE survey of 126 senior-level global real estate executives, 58% of respondents indicated that their real estate portfolio included mostly assigned seating arrangements prior to the pandemic. In comparison, when asked about the future, this number dropped to 18%, with 59% of respondents suggesting instead that their portfolios would be made up of “partial” to “mostly” free-address seating solutions post-pandemic. While there are benefits to free-address models, we must also understand what makes workers feel safe, comfortable and empowered when seats at the office are shared or 1