For almost five years, real estate stakeholders have been wondering when the “new normal” would arrive and what it would look like. With inflation cooling, interest rates following a downward trend and capital markets thawing, 2025 may give them their first full year of normalcy this decade. We asked three members of the FM:Systems leadership team to share their predictions of how this period of relative stability will manifest in the way organizations manage and optimize their workplaces over the next year. Here’s what they had to say:
Moving Beyond Reactive Attendance: Tailored Office Policies in 2025
Ever since advances in technology made remote working possible, business leaders have been divided about the merits and drawbacks of allowing employees to work from home. Some argue that having employees in the office full time increases productivity, encourages collaboration and strengthens company culture. Others feel that offering a hybrid work model is important to retaining and attracting talent. The pandemic took this decision out of the hands of business leaders, and its aftereffects forced many of them to continue facilitating remote working even when they wanted employees back in the office. In 2025, the work model dust is expected to finally settle, allowing leaders to set office attendance policies that align with their business goals and culture.
Early results from our upcoming 2025 Inside the Workplace report indicate a split: many organizations plan to opt for a blanket, company-wide attendance policy that applies to all employees and locations, while an equal number of respondents to the survey favor establishing department-specific guidelines based on location, role and responsibilities. The latter, more nuanced approach, may be the way to go.
“For a team of coders who normally interact virtually anyway, there may be no benefit in taking a hard line on return-to-office, and it could do more harm than good,” said Jennifer Heath, Director of Product Marketing at FM:Systems. “On the other hand, you could make the case that being physically collocated is essential for teams focused on building relationships, like sales and marketing.”
While universal company policies may be attractive to organizations concerned about the cost and effort needed to monitor and enforce work models that are tailored to sites, teams or individuals, the potential downsides may end up costing these businesses more in the long run. FM:Systems workplace management solutions can simplify the implementation of policies that are optimized for a subset of employees, while helping ensure that they also support the goals of the organization as a whole.
Cutting Energy Consumption and Emissions: Driving 2025 Sustainability Goals
Decreasing energy consumption has long been a priority for organizations looking to reduce costs and their carbon footprint. For instance, saving money was the driving force behind the widespread adoption of LED lighting, but that change also improved energy efficiency in buildings. Now, the proliferation of environmental reporting and building performance laws – aimed at reducing the built environment’s contribution to climate change – is adding another cost component to energy consumption and compelling organizations to go deeper in their efforts to lower energy usage. In 2025, organizations will continue to make strides to identify, track and control all sources of energy consumption in their facilities.
According to the 2025 FM:Systems Inside the Workplace report, sustainability is a higher priority for organizations than it was a year ago, and more businesses are establishing sustainability goals. But companies that use their electric bill as the sole driver behind these initiatives will miss opportunities to make more substantial gains.
“Power companies will tell you how many kilowatt hours you’re using over time, and reducing that number even a little is admirable. But it’s like lowering the fever without treating the cold,” said Stephen Pyatt, Director of Strategy at FM:Systems. “To really address the issue, you need to understand what’s contributing to usage, and that might include things like heating unoccupied rooms or failing to properly maintain a piece of equipment.”
FM:Systems workplace management solutions, like smart meters and occupancy and environmental sensors, collect data on all of the variables that affect energy consumption. Building analytics tools like FMS:Insights then allow organizations to quantify those impacts and translate that data into action.
Embracing AI and Automation: Unlocking Predictive Analytics in the Workplace
Every real estate organization produces a torrent of data, but most are only just beginning to leverage this plentiful resource. Maximizing the value of data is a phenomenally complex task; it’s the difference between reading the “amount due” off an electric bill and being able to compare real-time energy usage against data streams for occupancy, temperature, moisture, vibration and weather. Fortunately, the need to harness the power of all this information is coinciding with the emergence of technology that can help organizations do it more effectively and efficiently. In 2025, businesses will continue embracing artificial intelligence (AI) to uncover valuable insights and automation to help stakeholders action them.
More than three quarters of business leader respondents to the 2025 FM:Systems Inside the Workplace survey are planning to deploy generative AI (GenAI) to assist with the operation and maintenance of workplaces over the next year, while 46% plan to implement automation. When it comes to the latter, most respondents hope to automate tracking of employee attendance, visitor traffic and utilization.
“Importantly, organizations are adopting this technology to help them not only understand what’s already occurred, but what’s likely to happen in the future,” said Brian Haines, Chief Strategy Officer at FM:Systems. “Leveraging data sources to run predictive analytics will allow organizations to stay ahead of the curve and prevent excess spend, drive employee engagement, and encourage innovation.”
With the help of GenAI, FM:Systems workplace sensors and analytics tools can take on even more complex tasks while, at the same time, making it easier for users to access, visualize and learn from the resulting insights. Meanwhile, increasingly-sophisticated automation options can enable systems to act without the need for human intervention, reducing costs, emissions and inefficiency.
Conclusion
After years of volatility and uncertainty, 2025 is looking like the year organizations will finally be able to take advantage of calmer seas to make repairs and chart a new course dictated by business goals rather than external factors. Integral to those initiatives will be workplace management solutions, helping organizations meet current and future demands for cost savings, increased efficiency, optimized spaces, and progress toward sustainability targets.
