What Workplace Strategy Data from JLL and CBRE Is Telling Facility Teams
Facility managers have always dealt with pressure from above. But the data coming out of JLL and CBRE right now shows something different. The pressure has changed shape. It is no longer just about cutting costs. It is about making smarter decisions faster, and the research makes clear that most teams are not quite there yet.
Here is what the numbers actually say, and what facility leaders should be doing about it.
The occupancy gap no one is talking about
CBRE's 2026 Global Workplace and Occupancy Insights put average global office utilization at 54%. JLL confirms the same figure. The target most employers set? 79%.
That 25-point gap is not a hybrid work problem. It is a facility planning problem. Buildings are being cleaned, maintained, and staffed as if they are full when they are not. That means labor is being deployed against a footprint that does not reflect actual use. Janitorial schedules, preventive maintenance rounds, HVAC cycles; all of it is tied to square footage assumptions that stopped being accurate years ago.
The fix is not to cut services. It is to recalibrate. Occupancy data needs to feed directly into service delivery models. The facilities teams doing this well are the ones being taken seriously in budget conversations.
Cost pressure is real, but the response matters
JLL's Global State of Facilities Management Report 2025 found that 84% of FM leaders rank budget constraints and rising operational costs as their primary concern. That figure has been consistent for three years.
What is changing is how organizations are responding. The old playbook was straight cost-cutting. The new one looks different. 58% of organizations are consolidating vendors to gain volume leverage. 52% are prioritizing providers with direct self-delivery capabilities. 37% are actively partnering with service providers to find joint cost savings.
That last number matters for how you think about vendor relationships. The transactional model, where you bid out services, take the lowest number, and manage the contract, is being replaced by a more collaborative one. Facilities teams that treat their service providers as strategic partners are finding more room to maneuver than those still running the old way.
AI is moving out of the pilot phase
28% of organizations have already embedded AI into their FM operations, according to JLL. The focus areas are practical: predictive maintenance, automated work order management, and asset lifecycle analytics.
This is not theoretical anymore. Teams using AI-assisted maintenance are catching equipment failures before they cause downtime. Work order systems with automation are reducing response times and administrative overhead. Asset tracking tools are giving capital planning teams better data than they have ever had.
The bottleneck is not technology. It is data quality. JLL found that 54% of organizations cite compatibility issues with legacy systems, and 41% struggle with fragmented, low-quality data. The teams moving fastest on AI are the ones that cleaned up their data infrastructure first.
If your building management systems, CMMS, and access control platforms are still operating as silos, that is the first thing to fix.
FM is a talent problem now
JLL's research highlights something that does not get enough attention: 39% of facility managers in the U.S. are over the age of 55. That is well above the 28% average across all U.S. occupations.
A significant portion of institutional knowledge in this industry is walking out the door in the next decade. The organizations handling this well are investing in succession planning, cross-training, and structured knowledge transfer now. The ones that are not will feel it when a key person leaves and takes 15 years of building-specific knowledge with them.
This also connects to the staffing side of workplace strategy. If office utilization is running at 54%, but your team was built for an 80% occupancy model, you have a staffing calibration problem. And if you cannot retain the people you have because the work is poorly organized or the tools are outdated, you are compounding it.
What this means for your operation
The JLL and CBRE data points in one direction: facility management is a strategic function now, whether organizations treat it that way or not. The cost of getting it wrong is showing up in vendor contracts, energy bills, retention numbers, and maintenance backlogs.
Three things worth acting on right now:
- Pull your actual occupancy data for the last 90 days and compare it to your current service delivery model. If they do not match, fix the model.
- If you have not started a vendor consolidation conversation, start it. Volume leverage is real and most teams are leaving money on the table.
- Look at your team's age distribution. If a meaningful share of your senior people are within ten years of retirement, you need a knowledge transfer plan today.
The research is there. The question is whether you use it.
