EverSmart: A vision of the post-pandemic world
By Michael Moran
The world is eager to “Return-to-Work.” But that’s not the same as a “return to normal.”
That’s where EverSmart comes in.
EverSmart is Microshare’s goal for all of its clients – a destination at the end of a journey that transforms the safety, efficiency, costs and sustainability of facility operations while improving the health and wellness of the workers, tenants and other people within them.
EverSmart solutions combine Microshare’s proven ability to deploy data-driven IoT solutions at scale with the hard-won lessons of COVID-19. Now the world yearns for greater density, more face-to-face collaboration and the comradeship that comes from working on a team. Even where companies have decided to move to hybrid working environment, those returning to offices, factories, labs and other facilities yearn for visible signs that their return to work is also a return to a safer, more responsive space.
“We can’t just say, ‘Welcome back’ and expect people to pick up right where they left off,” Don Gilpin, the President and COO of International Facilities Management Association (IFMA), told me last month on the Microshare podcast, Manifest Density. “Workspaces, just like restaurants and convention halls and hotels and other space, need to have evolved, and that evolution has to be ever-present and obvious to those inside.”
Return to normal? Don’t you believe it! Microshare believes that the pandemic, tragic as it has been, has created a new awareness among those charged with operating buildings of all kinds about the importance of knowing exactly what is going on inside of them. This no longer ends at HVAC, security operations and the building’s plumbing and electrical. Spurred by actors previously tangential to such issues, facilities managers now want data that monitors the performance and safety of their facilities and the health and well-being of those within.
EverSmart brings those metrics to life, creating data feeds where none existed before. From air quality to leak detection, density and energy use to humidity and C02 accumulation, light and decibel levels, all with an eye toward creating visibility about the safety, wellness and efficiency of your facilities and increasing the wellness and peace-of-mind to the people within.
“We can’t just say, ‘Welcome back’ and expect people to pick up right where they left off. Workspaces, just like restaurants and convention halls and hotels and other space, need to have evolved, and that evolution has to be ever-present and obvious to those inside.”
– Don Gilpin, the President and COO of International Facilities Management Association (IFMA)
The future: Why not be EverSmart?
In a sense, EverSmart is a state of mind. With solutions designed to move your facilities from the crisis period into a smarter, safer more efficient and responsive “new normal,” EverSmart seeks to lock in the lessons of the COVID-19 period. The human and economic toll of COVID-19 has expanded demand for these capabilities beyond the usual suspects to the rank-and-file in every industry. What’s more, concern for the environmental conditions inside buildings, factories and other facilities now extends well beyond operational staff and into the C-Suite to include:
- Human Resources directors hoping to lure people back to work and retain their most valuable employees;
- General Counsels concerned about liability and labor right issues;
- Chief Sustainability, Impact, Wellness and Transformation officers looking for new ways to boost productivity and employee satisfaction;
- A new, post-COVID generation of CEOs who, prodded by millennial workers and activist investors, are taking public stances on issues of politics, human rights and racial justice, labor conditions and anything touched by the burgeoning Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) movement.
Will some companies “return to normal,” in effect consigning what the world learned during the global pandemic to the status of a footnote or speedbump? Of course. But in the competitive labor market of the early 21st century, will they attract the best talent, retain high-performers or produce products, brands and services that a post-millennial consumer wants to associate themselves with?
Recent studies suggest the answer is a resounding “no.”
Studies of employee preferences and buying habits bear this out. Boomers and even Gen Xers – those 38 to 53 today – are pretty values neutral. But millennials, now the largest segment of the US and European workforce, want employers who not only pontificate about “duty-of-care,’’ but also demonstrate it in the working conditions on offer.[i]
Resonate, a consumer research firm, reports their buying habits are similar. The top factor in deciding where to shop is based on a brand’s reputation.
“They’re 32% more likely to prefer companies that reduce energy use, 30% more likely to prefer ones that donate to charity, 22% more likely to prefer ones that reduce packaging and 20% more likely to prefer companies that listen to the public. Millennials are highly willing to participate in a brand’s societal program and pay more based on a specific issue. They’re 40% more likely to research companies to find out about their contribution to green initiatives and 27% more likely to criticize companies that aren’t “green” enough.”[ii]
Don’t care about such things, you say? That’s your right. Just understand that it means that your potential worker pool and your customer base are – literally – dying.
Demand from workers, investors, C-suite: What else do you need?
These trends have important implications for those managing facilities and the people within them. We’re happy to go into the details of the technology, but really, this is about outcomes. From our perspective, we have designed EverSmart to bring three very specific outcomes to building operations – outcomes being driven by demands from the constituent mentioned above, with regulators looming not far behind. They are:
- Occupant wellness and safety
- Productivity, cost savings and compliance
- Resilience and sustainability
The “why” in this conversation is partly informed by megatrends:
- a rebalancing of the labor-management relationship toward labor, driven by tighter labor markets and the realization that remote work, in many cases, gets the job done just fine;
- a new COVID-driven awareness that what you don’t see in indoor space can hurt you;
- a global, growing demand for sustainability that is being embraced by markets, governments and the generations that represent the future of your workforce and your customer base: Millennials and Gen Z.
“The real issue may not be when to reopen your office, but how to address the persistent health, safety and confidence issues of your workforce, which are impeding your organization’s recovery,” wrote the global consultancy, PwC, in a 2020 report on the new realities facing employers. [iii]
For owners, operators, managers and tenants of large commercial real estate portfolios, surviving and thriving in this new environment will require flexibility, the foresight to cast off old ways of thinking, and a willingness to deploy state-of-the-art technology to create smarter, cleaner, safer, more responsive indoor spaces. The EverSmart journey ends with a more resilient workforce and more sustainable real estate assets. At the same time, these very same data solutions bring cost savings and efficiencies, and that means doing things better, doing things cheaper, doing things more efficiently.
EverSmart: Microshare can get you there.
Michael Moran is Chief Markets Officer and Director of Risk & Sustainability at Microshare.
- [i] PwC, Recovery starts with safety and confidence, January 2021
https://www.pwc.com/us/en/library/covid-19/recovery-starts-with-safety-and-confidence.html
[ii] Consumer Activism by Generation, Digital Commerce 360, July 7, 2020, https://www.digitalcommerce360.com/2020/07/27/what-ecommerce-brands-need-to-know-about-consumer-activism-by-generation/
[iii] Ibid ii