Big ticket transactions result in a 50 per cent increase on the same time last year even though the number of individual sales was the lowest since 2013.

Supplied by CBRE

Australian office sales hit record high in Q3 2019

Australian office sales totalled $17.9 billion in the first three quarters of 2019, the highest level on record and a 50 per cent increase on the corresponding period last year according to new CBRE data.

CBRE’s Q3 Office MarketView report revealed that investor appetite and big-ticket transactions underpinned the bumper sales results given that the total number of individual transactions was the lowest since 2013.

At a glance:

• National office sales hit a record $17.9 billion in the first three quarters of 2019
• NSW records the highest tally of sales in Q3 at $5.5 billion, a 150 per cent increase on the same time last year
• Deals such as GIC’s circa $900 million sale of a 50 per cent interest in Chifley Square and Cromwell’s $525 million acquisition of 400 George Street in Brisbane underpin bumper results

CBRE’s Head of Capital Markets – Office, Flint Davidson, said GIC’s circa $900 million sale of a 50 per cent interest in Chifley Square to two wholesale funds managed by Charter Hall Group and Cromwell’s $525 million acquisition of 400 George Street in Brisbane were indicative of the size of assets being traded.

“There has been plenty of coverage of the foreign demand for Australian office assets, which continues unabated, however it is the domestic capital from private investors through to REITs that have been aggressively pursuing and acquiring assets in Australia this year,” Davidson said.

CBRE’s Q3 Office MarketView report shows that NSW recorded the highest tally of sales in Q3 at $5.5 billion – up 150 per cent increase on Q3, 2018. This boosted total NSW office sales for the first three quarters to $9.8 billion – already $2 billion above 2018.

“The number of deals recorded in NSW is broadly similar to 2018 but the average price paid at $173 million is the highest on record,” Davidson said.

“In Victoria, $3.4 billion in transactions took place in the first three quarters of the year, which was a slight increase on the corresponding period in 2018.

“In contrast, transaction volumes increased by 25 per cent in Queensland, with $2.7 billion in assets traded across 25 transactions as investors continue to look for better yielding assets compared to Sydney and Melbourne.”

Perth transactions were broadly in line with 2018 – primarily due to limited stock availability.

“Investors are keen to take advantage of the high yield spread to Sydney and Melbourne but are being hampered by a lack of quality stock on the market,” Davidson said.

On the yield front, CBRE’s MarketView report shows that Sydney and Perth recorded the biggest compression in prime yields in Q3 to average 4.6 per cent and 6.3 per cent respectively.

Yields have also continued to compress in Melbourne to 4.8 per cent – the lowest point on record.

CBRE’s Head of Capital Markets Research Ben Martin-Henry said that following the RBA’s decision to deliver three 25bps rate cuts since the federal election, the cost of borrowing had becoming increasingly cheap for investors who were now benefitting from rates of sub 2.75 per cent.

“This situation is expected to continue due to an inverted yield curve, meaning that the cost of debt in the long term is expected to be lower than in the short term,” he said.

“This is likely to lead to lead to further compression in property yields as the demand for bonds increases.”

Click here to read the full report: Australia Office MarketView Q3 2019

Source: https://www.commo.com.au/

As life expectancy lengthens and labour markets shift, our working lives have become more complicated. The old expectations about how we work have become unsustainable – not least the expectation that we religiously travel to and from a fixed location five times a week during rush hour, with all the knock-on effects that this has for carbon emissions.

Illustration: Andrew Dyson

Flexible work has the potential to solve many issues that see people fall out of the workforce. For employees, this means being better able to fit their jobs around other responsibilities, such as looking after children or elderly relatives. For businesses, this means retaining staff and saving the tens of thousands of dollars it costs to replace them.

Yet many remain stuck in positions with rigid working hours. One of the sticking points for employers seems to be that flexible work is equated with the one or two formats that they are familiar with – most often, letting staff work from home or work part-time. So a whole battery of ways in which flexible work could be used to align with the needs of a diverse workforce gets overlooked.

Flexible work demands a shift away from seeing productivity in terms of being present for fixed working hours. CREDIT:LOUIE DOUVIS

Recent research mapping the various combinations of flexible work found more than 300 possible ways in which jobs could be organised flexibly. This includes job shares, compressed hours, term-time working, flexi-hours and tapered working. There is considerable scope to draw upon this host of working practices.

First and foremost, managers need training in how to manage flexible work. My own research found that line managers are the single biggest block on flexible work uptake. And even where flexible work is supported, too often it is assumed that managers know the unknowable and can just run with new working practices.

But without any investment being made in managers, flexible working arrangements are set up to fail. Alternatively, the buck gets passed onto the flexible worker to make a success of a new arrangement, giving him or her one more task for their workload, and one with a high penalty attached to failure – a stressful experience in itself.

Realistically, achieving this buy-in will also need some nudging, particularly for smaller businesses and sectors where there has been less flexible work. Giving managers access to success stories and practical guidance, backed up by lots of leadership and peer support, is vital.

Managers and employees need to come together to assemble flexible working arrangements that work for everyone, with a real understanding of what is at stake and what is possible. A part of this is the need to get flexible about flexibility – recognising that circumstances change and that work arrangements may need to be tweaked or even reversed over time to ensure that they remain fit for purpose.

Flexible work has been used as a management tool to achieve savings by imposing remote or zero-hours contracts on workforces, with little input from those called on to do their jobs differently. So it’s necessary to give people space to make suggestions and give feedback about flexible work. And it is also about making use of a range of flexible working arrangements.

Flexible work demands a shift away from seeing productivity in terms of being present for fixed working hours. Companies (and managers) need to devise better measures of output: has a project been completed within schedule, did the team work well together, is the report of a high quality? These are much more effective yardsticks of success than whether staff clock in at 9am each day.

Making flexible work available at the point of hire will widen the talent pools available to employers, as people who already work flexibly will be more likely to apply for positions where they won’t lose a valued part of their contract. Employers who ignore this demand will be poorly prepared in the war for talent.

The evidence base for the benefits of well-managed flexible working arrangements is getting more and more compelling. It offers increased retention and productivity, and drops in absenteeism. And it’s not only employers who stand to make business gains from getting good at managing flexible work, employees with a good work-life balance are more motivated and content. Plus, as the latest gender pay gap figures show that older workers are seeing the greatest disparities, flexible work is a key tool in creating more age-friendly and equitable workplaces.

On a societal level, by organising work more thoughtfully we can make inroads into tackling carbon emissions as our car use becomes more efficient. We could see reduced demands on health and social care systems as workforce stress levels fall, and balancing care and work demands become more manageable. But we will only achieve this through good management, a fresh approach to job design, and enthusiasm from all involved.

Jane Parry is a post-doctoral researcher at Solent University. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Source: www.smh.com.au

The C Restaurant

Whenever you visit Perth, make sure you find time to enjoy lunch or dinner at the C Restaurant.
Located centrally and close to the CBD, it offers stunning views of Perth which makes it ideal for a business dinner or social engagement.

C Restaurant is Western Australia’s only revolving restaurant.

The restaurant is situated on the 33rd floor of St. Martins Tower on St Georges Terrace, Perth City.

C Restaurant offers the “wow” factor and is the perfect setting to celebrate those special occasions, entertain business colleagues or simply set the sun to sleep with the one you love.

They source only the freshest ingredients and pride themselves in being among Australia’s best.

A full 360 – degree rotation takes 90 minutes, so plenty of time to enjoy the scenic views along with a choice of menus.

A La Carte Lunch is available 7 days a week with 2 and 3 course menu options available midweek and at weekends. Or if you prefer why not experience the Degustation Menu which is available Sunday to Friday from 6-8pm.

Complement your meal with a chilled glass of wine, cocktail or champagne.

The C Restaurant has a spectacular offering of beverages available to accompany your dining experience.

From the finest champagnes to the best local, national and international wines and spirits, we will please the connoisseur.

To reserve your table visit our site at https://www.crestaurant.com.au/reservations/ or call us on  (+61) 08 9220 8333

Qantas chief executive Alan Joyce says airline passengers will be able to exercise mid-air if non-stop flights from New York to Sydney become a reality.

The Australian airline moved a step closer to realising its ambitions of launching ultra-long-haul travel after the world’s longest commercial flight successfully touched down at Sydney Airport this morning after a flight of just over 19 hours.

Fifty Qantas passengers and crew were fitted with technology devices to test their wellbeing during the flight on the Boeing 787 Dreamliner from New York’s John F Kennedy Airport.

The research will be collected in the hopes of minimising jet lag and helping pilots manage their work and rest patterns.

Mr Joyce said this was the first of three test flights, to ensure flying such long distances could be done safely and comfortably.

“This is a really historic moment for Qantas, a really historic moment for Australian aviation and a really historic moment for world aviation,” Mr Joyce said.

“So we need to show that this can be done safely, it can be done with the rest that we have for the crews.”

Mr Joyce, who was on the flight, said there would likely be four classes on the aircraft, including a special area for economy passengers to exercise.

“We were doing that on the aircraft coming in, passengers loved it,” he said, adding that the flight did not feel as long as 19 hours.

“I feel refreshed, feel great and, talking to all of the passengers, that was the commentary that came to me.”

Testing of passengers and crew began about one week before the flight and included checks for melatonin levels and measuring brainwave activity via wearable electroencephalograms, Qantas captain Sean Golding said.

“I’m also wearing a light meter, so those tests are conducted over a period of about three weeks, so we are not only looking at what is occurring before the flight, during the flight and the effects of those flights afterwards,” he said.

Mr Golding, who led the four pilots on board, said he considered the 16,200-kilometre flight a success as it was in the air for 19 hours and 16 minutes and landed with “a comfortable” 70 minutes of fuel, even with a stronger-than-predicted headwind.

Qantas is considering introducing the New York to Sydney service flying on the Boeing 787-9 from as early as 2022.

A second trial flight will go from New York to Sydney while the last will arrive in Sydney from London.

The Australian and International Pilots Association (AIPA) will help analyse data from the test flights but said “significant caution” was needed before embarking on any commercial versions of the flights.

AIPA president Mark Sedgwick said pilots’ main concerns were about getting enough quality rest while flying such long hours.

“Qantas is proposing to fly some of the longest routes in the world and what we need is a scientific long-term study into the impacts on crew so we can make sure ULR [ultra long-range] flying is as safe as the airline can make it,” he said.

The Sydney Business Chamber’s executive director, Katherine O’Regan, said, if adopted, the new route would be revolutionary for business.

“It will help drive closer ties with companies headquartered in New York and spread Sydney’s reputation as the place to do business, reducing flight time by hours and maximising time on the ground for travellers to our country,” she said.

Source: By Bellinda Kontominas – www.abc.net.au

Have you witnessed a colleague who is displaying an increasingly negative attitude at work and who regularly talks about quitting their job?

Or what about the colleague who complains of physical ailments, such as headaches, stomach pains or backaches? Or perhaps the co-worker who is easily irritated and blames others for their own mistakes, and who appears to be pulling away from their colleagues.

Chances are, these colleagues are suffering from a debilitating condition doing the rounds of our workplaces.

Professor Gary Martin

It’s called burnout. While many bosses continue to wonder if the burnout phenomenon is real rather than just an excuse used by workers to dodge extra work, there is growing evidence that says the condition is very real — and an increasing number of workers are cracking under the pressure of heavy workloads.

Experts believe one in four employees regularly experiences burnout, with close to half of all workers feeling it sometimes.

Even the World Health Organisation (WHO) has homed in on the condition by describing it as a work-based syndrome caused by chronic stress.

WHO says burnout’s broad characteristics include feelings of depleted energy levels, increased disengagement from one’s job and colleagues, and declining professional effectiveness.

It is widely accepted that burnout takes the top spot among workplace productivity killers and costs businesses billions of dollars each year. Yet many bosses do little to respond to the epidemic.

They talk up the need for workers to take care of themselves, but they then applaud those who work 12-hour days, extend their working spree well into the weekend and front up during holidays — even though it is well known that workaholism is the enemy of self-care and will escalate the already troubling high levels of burnout.

Some bosses have even created an informal expectation that workers must be switched on 24/7. This means the boundaries between work and play are blurred to the point that some feel guilty any time they are not working, or at the very least find it near impossible to disengage from work.

With more workers cracking under pressure, it’s time for workers to step up and embrace the notion of self-care and to rely less on their bosses to ensure they do not fall victim to burnout.

It is widely accepted that burnout takes the top spot among workplace productivity killers and costs businesses billions of dollars each year. Yet many bosses do little to respond to the epidemic.

This has to start by you developing an effective professional support network that can provide the right “bolstering” when you need it.

This will include scheduling regular time for self-care activities.

At a minimum, your self-care routine should include getting more sleep, making extra time available to prepare healthy meals, engaging in regular exercise, and taking breaks during the day.

And if you are really keen, purchase a book or two on self-care — you’ll be surprised at the changes you might introduce as result of the read.

Professor Gary Martin is chief executive at the Australian Institute of Management WA

Source: Gary Martin PerthNow – www.perthnow.com