"Targeted Remote" with CBRE Sr. Director Chris Volney

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CBRE is the largest commercial real estate advisory firm in the world, and today’s Guest, Chris Volney, is the Senior Director of their Americas Consulting group focused on labor analytics. Almost everything has changed since the pandemic, including CBRE’s consultation process, the analytics they’ve been asked to provide their clients, and indeed their hiring procedures. After sharing his background and how he ended up in his current role, Chris details the service that CBRE offers and how they’ve been able to adjust, post the global pandemic, to directly attend to their client’s changing needs. Our guest speaks to some of the commonalities that exist between his clients and how he advises them on choosing their desired work system. The after-effects of the pandemic have led to more and more business hiring outside of their local markets and Chris describes some of the administrative challenges that occur, before explaining why he thinks that a targeted hiring approach is still better in the long run. If your company is fully remote then you may struggle to retain your employees, Chris explains why that is and why you need to always understand each particular market’s rules and regulations, and why your internal processes need to be set in stone first.

Key Points From This Episode:

• A warm welcome to Chris Volney and defining what CBRE does as a company.
• How consultations have changed since the pandemic.
• Why Chris and his company have done more, in recent times, to service clients on their level.
• Chris’ background and how he ended up at CBRE.
• A closer look at the service him and his company provides.
• The inputs that govern how he interacts with his clients to get them what they want.
• Commonalities among his clients that are more apparent since COVID.
• How his clients decide whether to be in office, remote, or hybrid.
• The administrative challenges of the remote hiring process.
• Why a targeted remote hiring approach is still better than a broad one.
• How it could be difficult to retain employees in a fully remote system.
• Understanding the various rules and regulations when hiring outside of your local area.
• Different markets that surprised Chris with their great opportunities for hires.
• The internal processes that need to be figured out before hiring away from your local market.
• Chris’ advice to all companies that are looking to streamline their approach to hiring.

Tweetables:

“Our tagline is, ‘We’re helping clients to solve for place before space.’ So, before they get to any type of real estate decision, we’re making sure that they’re placed in the right markets from a talent and operations perspective” — @cvolneycbre [0:01:42]

“Before [the pandemic], every project was almost the same in that it ended in a real estate transaction. We were picking one market to hire and scale in. Now, a lot of companies said, ‘Wow, we’re free from geography now. Let’s go hire anywhere, everywhere, geography doesn’t matter.’” — @cvolneycbre [0:10:10]

“Geography still matters. Even if you’re not going and leasing an office space, where you hire really does matter. It can create different risks or opportunities for your business.” — @cvolneycbre [0:22:43]

Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode:

Chris Volney on Twitter

Chris Volney on LinkedIn

CBRE

CBRE Market Reports

Talk Talent to Me

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