BEFORE YOU HIRE YOUR NEXT EMPLOYEE, FIX WHERE THEY WORK.
Then, after making all that investment, they ask the new employee to spend three or four days a week working somewhere they don't particularly want to be.
That is a strange way to protect an investment in talent.
In 2026, the office is no longer simply where employees are told to report. It is part of the employee value proposition.
And before you hire your next employee, it may be worth asking a more uncomfortable question:
Is the problem really your talent—or is it where you're asking your talent to work?
THE SALARY IS ONLY PART OF WHAT AN EMPLOYEE EXPERIENCES
Hiring is expensive because employees are expensive.
According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, private-industry employers in the Miami–Fort Lauderdale region were paying an average of $37.84 per employee hour in total compensation in March 2026, compared with $28.34 a decade earlier.
Wages and salaries represented $27.71 of that hourly cost, while benefits added another $10.13.
That means when a business hires another professional, it isn't simply adding a salary.
It is deploying capital.
And capital should be placed in an environment where it has the best opportunity to perform.
That is why the physical workplace deserves to be discussed alongside compensation, technology, recruiting and management.
The World Economic Forum's Future of Jobs Report shows how rapidly the skills employers require are changing, while its analysis of the skills expected to grow in importance places capabilities such as creative thinking, resilience, flexibility, leadership and talent management alongside rapidly advancing technological skills.
Companies are competing for increasingly sophisticated people.
But sophisticated people also evaluate sophisticated workplaces.
IF COMING TO THE OFFICE FEELS LIKE PUNISHMENT, YOUR RETURN-TO-OFFICE STRATEGY HAS ALREADY FAILED.
The return-to-office argument has matured.
The question is no longer simply:
Should employees come back?
The better question is:
What are you bringing them back to?
CBRE's 2026 Americas Office Occupier Sentiment Survey found that 89% of employers now require at least three days of office attendance per week, up from 78% in 2025.
But employers still aren't consistently getting the attendance they want.
Average attendance was 2.9 days compared with an employer target of 3.2 days.
Why?
The answer isn't necessarily employee laziness or resistance.
CBRE found that the largest factor limiting attendance was inconvenient location, cited by 62% of respondents, while 53% cited a lack of amenities.
Think about that.
Companies can spend thousands recruiting someone and then create unnecessary friction every morning before that person has even opened a laptop.
JLL's latest workplace research makes a similar argument: getting employees physically back into offices does not automatically create productivity, engagement or better performance.
Presence isn't the objective.
Performance is.
YOU DON'T HAVE AN EMPLOYEE EXPERIENCE IF YOU ONLY THINK ABOUT THE EMPLOYEE AFTER THEY ARRIVE.
The workday doesn't begin at the desk.
It begins when someone leaves home.
That distinction matters enormously in a market like Miami.
Academic research published in Organization Science has examined how lengthy commutes can affect job satisfaction and turnover, while a newly published 2026 study in Social Indicators Research found that longer commuting durations were associated with lower job satisfaction.
Other research examining commuting stress, burnout and turnover intention reinforces a simple management lesson:
Location is an HR decision.
Not merely a real-estate decision.
When selecting an office, employers should be asking questions that sound surprisingly similar to the questions employees ask:
How difficult is the morning commute?
Can I get there without depending exclusively on a car?
Can I get lunch nearby?
Can I meet a client without crossing half of Miami?
Can I step outside?
Can I run an errand?
Can I get coffee with a colleague?
Can I leave the office and still feel connected to the city?
These are not superficial considerations anymore.
They are components of the workday.
LOCATION IS PART OF COMPENSATION—EVEN IF IT NEVER APPEARS ON A PAYCHECK.
Imagine two employers offering essentially the same job.
Same salary.
Same title.
Similar benefits.
Similar career trajectory.
Employer A requires the employee to commute to an isolated office where almost every activity requires another drive.
Employer B operates from a connected business district with restaurants, transportation, professional services and other companies nearby.
Those jobs aren't identical.
One consumes more of the employee's life.
The other gives some of it back.
Research on hybrid work published in Nature demonstrated just how important that equation can become. In a randomized trial involving 1,612 employees, hybrid working improved job satisfaction and reduced quit rates by approximately one-third without evidence of damage to performance.
Interestingly, the reduction in attrition was particularly meaningful among employees with longer commutes.
That should get the attention of every CEO contemplating an office decision.
You may not be able to eliminate commuting. But you can stop making commuting unnecessarily difficult.
THE BEST OFFICE MAY NOT BE THE ONE WITH THE MOST EXPENSIVE ZIP CODE.
Miami businesses have historically treated prestige and location as nearly interchangeable.
But those are different things.
An office can have a famous address and still create a terrible daily experience.
An office can look impressive in a leasing brochure while being inconvenient for employees, expensive for the company and unnecessarily difficult for clients.
That's why office strategy should be evaluated using more than rent per square foot.
The CBRE Q2 2026 Miami Office Report reported positive net absorption, lower vacancy and rising rents across Miami's office market.
JLL's Q2 2026 Miami market research likewise reflects a market in which companies are making increasingly deliberate location decisions.
And Cushman & Wakefield's Miami MarketBeat shows the continuing demand for quality office environments even as companies become more selective about what space deserves their commitment.
According to Colliers' Q2 2026 Miami-Dade office analysis, Class A asking rents reached $73.37 per square foot, with overall asking rents reaching a record $65.50.
Meanwhile, CBRE's national Q2 office report found that demand for high-quality office space continues to lead the broader recovery.
The market is telling companies something:
Quality still matters.
But quality doesn't simply mean marble in the lobby.
It means how well the location and workplace actually function.
YOUR EMPLOYEES NEED PRIVACY MORE THAN THEY NEED ANOTHER PING-PONG TABLE.
For years, companies tried to make offices attractive by adding visible amenities.
Game rooms.
Coffee bars.
Open lounges.
Bright furniture.
Collaborative tables.
But sometimes the most valuable amenity in an office is considerably simpler:
A door.
Gensler's Global Workplace Survey 2026 found that two-thirds of office workers surveyed were effectively "hacking" their workplaces to compensate for shortcomings in the physical environment.
Employees were improvising solutions for ergonomics, temperature and visual privacy, while noise and meeting-space availability remained persistent problems.
Gensler's analysis of what is and isn't working in today's workplace points toward something employers sometimes forget:
People don't perform one kind of work all day.
Sometimes they collaborate.
Sometimes they make confidential calls.
Sometimes they meet clients.
Sometimes they need to think.
And sometimes they simply need everyone else to stop talking.
Research available through the National Library of Medicine has demonstrated that irrelevant speech in open-plan environments can interfere with cognitive tasks involving information search and memory.
Another study examining cognitive performance across different office environments found significantly better performance when employees moved from active open areas into quiet zones or individual rooms.
Research examining acoustics during relocation from private offices into open-plan offices found increased distraction, reduced privacy and greater concentration difficulties after the move.
Additional research involving more than 1,000 workers in shared and open-plan offices found irrelevant speech was associated with greater annoyance and poorer perceived performance and well-being in open environments.
And laboratory research on speech intelligibility and cognitive performance has shown why conversations occurring around employees can become more than a minor annoyance.
This matters particularly for attorneys, accountants, consultants, financial professionals, healthcare businesses and executives.
Privacy isn't luxury.
For many businesses, privacy is infrastructure.
YOUR EMPLOYEE SHOULDN'T NEED HEADPHONES TO SURVIVE YOUR OFFICE.
There is something ironic about bringing people back to an office for collaboration and then watching everyone put on noise-canceling headphones so they can concentrate.
The modern employee is already fighting for attention.
According to the Microsoft 2025 Work Trend Index, employees were being interrupted by meetings, emails or notifications approximately every two minutes during the traditional workday.
Microsoft's broader research into focus and the modern workday found that 68% of people surveyed said they didn't have enough uninterrupted focus time.
And Microsoft's subsequent examination of the "infinite workday" found work increasingly spilling into early mornings and evenings.
Employers cannot control every notification.
But they can control whether the physical workplace adds another layer of distraction.
THE OFFICE SHOULD MAKE WORK EASIER, NOT SIMPLY MAKE WORK VISIBLE.
That is an important distinction.
Managers can see employees in an office.
That doesn't mean employees are performing better because they are there.
JLL's research into the future of office design emphasizes the increasingly important relationship between workplace design, employee performance, social connection and talent attraction.
CBRE's Global Workplace & Occupancy Insights similarly shows how companies are moving beyond simply counting desks and toward creating workplaces employees actually have reasons to use.
Even basic physical conditions matter.
The Occupational Safety and Health Administration's workstation guidance emphasizes safe and comfortable workstation design, while OSHA's guidance on the workstation environment addresses lighting, glare, ventilation and other environmental factors affecting employee comfort.
The CDC Workplace Health Model also recognizes the workplace as an important environment for employee health, productivity, recruitment, retention and morale.
Its guidance on building effective workplace health programs specifically includes the physical work environment among the factors organizations should evaluate.
In other words:
The workplace is not a container for employees.
It is one of the systems affecting how they work.
IN MIAMI, WHERE YOU PUT THE OFFICE CHANGES WHO CAN REALISTICALLY WORK FOR YOU.
This is where the conversation becomes local.
Miami is not one business district.
It is a collection of employment centers connected by highways, arterial roads, transit lines and neighborhoods.
That means moving an office even a relatively short distance can materially change the potential employee commute.
Coral Gables is particularly interesting because it combines a substantial professional business community with proximity to Coconut Grove, South Miami and the broader Miami-Dade market.
The City of Coral Gables Economic Development Department reports that more than 10,000 businesses operate in Coral Gables and highlights its commercial inventory, infrastructure, walkable downtown and quality of life.
The city's economic overview describes Coral Gables as a domestic and international business destination supported by convenient access and a diversified economy.
Its business-development resources also emphasize workforce, demographics, universities, businesses and talent as interconnected components of location strategy.
And that is precisely how employers should think.
Don't select an office first and solve the people problem later.
Select an office with the people problem already in mind.
THE CORAL GABLES–COCONUT GROVE CROSSROADS IS BECOMING A TALENT STRATEGY.
This is one reason the area around Douglas Road deserves attention from growing businesses.
The location sits between two of South Florida's most recognizable communities while providing access to the larger Miami employment market.
Walkability and transportation are increasingly relevant parts of that equation. Walk Score's data for an area near Douglas Road Station gives the location a Walk Score of 87 and identifies Metrorail and multiple bus and trolley connections nearby.
That matters because the best employee commute isn't necessarily the shortest distance on a map.
It is the commute with the most options.
Car.
Rail.
Trolley.
Walking.
Cycling.
Ride-share.
A location with multiple ways to arrive gives employers something extremely valuable:
access to a larger practical talent pool.
The City of Coral Gables' economic development strategy has also identified connectivity, commercial districts and economic-development enhancement areas as part of the city's future.
This isn't merely an urban-planning issue.
For an employer, connectivity can become competitive advantage.
DON'T BUILD YOUR COMPANY AROUND A LEASE.
There is another problem.
Companies often make a five- or ten-year real-estate decision based on today's employee count.
Then the business changes.
The team grows.
The team shrinks.
A department becomes hybrid.
A new executive needs privacy.
Three employees relocate.
A client requires a project room.
A company enters another market.
Suddenly, the office that looked perfect on signing day becomes an operational constraint.
That is one reason flexibility has become a larger part of corporate real-estate strategy.
CBRE's 2026 occupier research shows companies simultaneously trying to improve employee experience while optimizing space utilization and efficiency.
Those goals do not have to conflict.
The answer isn't necessarily more office.
It may be better office.
BEFORE YOU ADD ANOTHER PERSON, AUDIT THE PLACE YOU'RE PUTTING THEM.
Before approving the next hire, walk through your workplace as though tomorrow were your first day.
Not as the founder.
Not as the CEO.
Not as the person whose name is on the lease.
As the employee you're trying to recruit.
Ask yourself:
Is getting here unnecessarily difficult?
Is parking a daily battle?
Is transit realistic?
Can I close a door and concentrate?
Can I make a confidential call?
Is there somewhere professional to meet a client?
Can my team collaborate without disturbing everyone else?
Can I walk somewhere for lunch?
Does the surrounding neighborhood feel alive?
Would I be comfortable bringing an important client here?
Does this office communicate that the company is growing—or surviving?
And the biggest question:
If I had two identical job offers, would this workplace make me choose this company?
If the answer is no, another recruiter may not be your first priority.
HIRE THE PERSON. BUT FIX THE PLATFORM FIRST.
Miami businesses are operating in an increasingly competitive environment for both talent and quality office space.
CBRE's Miami research shows an office market increasingly defined by demand for better-quality environments, while recent JLL reporting on South Florida office expansion describes companies explicitly connecting their workplace decisions with growth and investment in talent.
That relationship will become increasingly difficult to ignore.
You can offer employees better software.
Better benefits.
Better titles.
Better salaries.
Better coffee.
But every working day, the physical environment still asks a simple question:
Did your company make it easier for me to do great work today?
At MY MIAMI OFFICE, we believe the modern office should do exactly that.
Private offices. Professional meeting environments. Flexible space. Business-ready infrastructure. Strategic locations. And offices that allow growing companies to focus their capital on their businesses instead of unnecessary buildouts and underused square footage.
Because your next employee doesn't just need somewhere to sit.
They need somewhere to perform.
And before you hire the next great person for your company, make sure you have created a workplace worthy of them.
BEFORE YOU HIRE YOUR NEXT EMPLOYEE, FIX WHERE THEY WORK.
MY MIAMI OFFICECoral Gables • Coconut Grove • Waterford District • Doral
Your next great hire deserves a better place to work.
305 456 2496
My Miami Office:
3150 SW 38th Ave Suite 550,
Miami, FL 33146
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