Tenant mix can impact foot traffic. The growth of online marketplaces has changed how consumers view brick-and-mortar retail establishments. Commercial retail facilities have had to closely monitor the mix of businesses represented in their retail environment. As a result, many have concluded that having a balance between competing and complementary business within the facility (and in the surrounding area) will attract patrons to their properties.

Tenant strengths and weaknesses affect your long-term success. It’s important to the long-term viability of your retail facility – and the tenant’s own success – to consider retailers’ potential strengths and weaknesses when reviewing your tenant leases. Every retail environment is different, so it may be necessary to identify trends by conducting regular statistical analyses of feedback from customers, as well as gaining input from tenants.

Know the competition in your area. Larger retail shopping centers are less reliant on local competitors, but that doesn’t mean you can disregard them. Retail property owners need to examine the impact of local competition on their tenants. And knowing the competition will help identify future changes to the tenant mix that will improve your center’s long-term prospects.

New insights into learning styles, the use of motivational psychology and the newest tech tools have made corporate training more accessible and learner-centered than ever before. Interested? Look for these and other corporate learning trends in 2018 and beyond:

Mobile learning: Today’s learners can access a wealth of information instantly on their mobile devices. Typical applications include on-the-job training and in-the-field troubleshooting.

Microlearning: Microlearning modules for specific learning objectives are typically three to five minutes in length. They offer short, focused chunks of instruction or positive reinforcement, and are ideal for learners with short attention spans.

Social and peer learning: Training programs often integrate blogs and courses from social media platforms such as LinkedIn. Collaboration tools enable teams to learn, create, and discover together.

Gamification: Online games motivate learners through quests and competitions, and make learning fun by offering incentives, certificates, or badges upon completion of modules or courses.

Adaptive learning: Adaptive learning allows individuals to learn at their own pace, focusing in depth on new knowledge and progressing more quickly through topics they’re familiar with.

Augmented reality: Augmented reality offers an immersive learning experience in which complex subjects can be re-created in a lifelike environment. For example, surgeons may use technologies like Google Glass and Oculus Rift to polish their skills. Or executives may role-play case studies to hone decision-making and leadership skills.

Corporate training is a key tool for employee retention and engagement, and for change management, as well as a way to achieve business goals. It’s a trend to keep up on.

Toxic stress can leave a lifelong imprint on the brain and the body, undermining health and contributing to diabetes, depression, obesity, cardiovascular disease, and even dementia. And it’s almost epidemic in today’s workplace – as much in small businesses as in large corporations.

Consider the following from a recent report by The American Institute of Stress (AIS): “40% of workers reported their job was very or extremely stressful … and 25% view their jobs as the number one stressor in their lives.” As well, says AIS, “Job stress is more strongly associated with health complaints than financial or family problems.”

Finally, job stress costs industry more than $300 billion annually.

Factors contributing to toxic stress include job demands, lack of sleep and exercise, and poor lifestyle habits, such as smoking, overeating, and overworking.

Of course, a certain amount of stress is tolerable, even necessary. And stress affects people differently depending on their life experiences, genetic makeup, and other factors. Regardless, overwhelming stress can have a devastating effect on us all. Here’s why:

To maintain a physiological steady state (known as homeostasis), the body secretes hormones such as cortisol and adrenalin. These help us adapt, but in conditions of toxic stress, hormones can become unbalanced and ultimately alter brain structure and function.

There is an upside, however: we can develop resilience and reduce the impact of toxic stress through lifestyle changes and regular physical activity.

Indeed, physical activity is probably the best way to maintain brain and body health; working out regularly has been shown to help the brain regenerate areas damaged or destabilized by toxic stress.

So step away from the laptop and hit the gym. It’s good for your stress.

Building designs have evolved out of necessity to become more adaptable to the workplace environment. The result has been new developments in design, and new ways those designs can impact office culture and productivity.

The current trend is moving away from free-form open concept designs and toward combining the benefits of both traditional and open spaces. The result: “hybrid” workplaces.

Birth of the open concept: The collaborative open concept office space that we know today was first developed in Germany in the 1950s, but it became popular in North America in the 1990s when the tech sector took off.

In those days, the thinking was that open space workplaces would allow for greater communication and collaboration among employees – something tech companies required, given the nature of their business. Open concept offices allowed for the flexible use of work space, which could be easily divided with low partition walls or cubicles.

Openness may actually reduce productivity: More recently, however, research has shown that the level of collaboration doesn’t necessarily improve with a more open office environment. An early study conducted by Jungsoo Kim and Richard de Dear from the University of Sydney indicated that with openness came a sense of frenetic activity and a myriad of distractions, which ultimately lessened employees’ productivity.

The study considered issues such as noise, air quality, temperature, and personal interactions between employees and found that those in closed office environments reported the highest level of satisfaction. The biggest complaint of workers in open concept environments? Sound privacy – the invasion of irrelevant conversation noise from others in their area.

Design challenges with open concept spaces: Another major drawback to the open concept layout is the challenge of equipping each workstation with the required power supply. The lack of walls meant that multiple conduits and bulkheads were necessary to bring power to workstations. Unless the design was very well thought out, the conduits and bulkheads could disrupt employee traffic flow and, ultimately, productivity.

Note, however, that the research didn’t diminish the value of open concept space when designing an office environment, but rather pointed out that the design should blend the benefits of both traditional offices and open spaces.

Achieving the right balance: Today’s hybrid office spaces offer a balance between collaborative small meeting spaces and individual work areas. Also part of this trend: unassigned work desks, appropriate for many employees who spend most of their time working outside the office and only “drop in” for meetings.

Most employers today realize that innovative working environments can be a way to attract sought-after employee talent. Millennials, in particular, consider flexibility in their work environment not just a benefit, but a necessity. Hybrid spaces will give them – and you – an edge.

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How many questions were in the original Trivial Pursuit game?

We don’t often stop to think about our learning styles. But if we’re not using the right learning style for us, we may feel demoralized and unsuccessful. As Keating suggests, discovering the optimal learning style for you can help in that climb up the corporate ladder.

Playing Office Politics without Selling Your Soul
By Robert B. Kaiser, Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic, and Derek Lusk

HBR.org

Many of us try to steer clear of office politics, but in reality, they’re simply unavoidable. The best way to deal with them? Stop complaining and play along. It’s crucial if you want to become a major workplace player. But, say these researchers, there are good politics and bad politics; the good ones can enhance not only your influence, but your organization’s as well.

Consumed by Anxiety? Give It a Day or Two
By Oliver Burkeman

TheGuardian.com

When you’re anxious, it can feel like the end of the world. But that’s most likely because you focus too narrowly on the present. Remember previous crises? Those problems that seemed insurmountable at the time? The world didn’t end. Says Burkeman: “Most of what troubles us turns out to be tolerable, or even wonderful, or just never happens at all.” Whew!

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