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One issue is that company leaders, developers, brokers, and media folks all tend to be people people, problem-solvers, and optimists. They can't believe a lot of the workforce wants to work from home, and that any indication otherwise will change in short order. In the company-leader case they also think their directives and charisma will win in the end.
Maybe preferences will change back as workers see more downsides to WFM, or maybe a recession will give employers the leverage to push things. Nothing in certain.
One plus for office space is that hybrid appears to be the main outcome, and hybrid workers tend to come in at the same times, Tuesday-Thursday. Couple that with wider desk spacing (sometimes) and more amenities in the Covid+ era and many need similar amounts of space. But others don't of course.
One issue is that company leaders, developers, brokers, and media folks all tend to be people people, problem-solvers, and optimists. They can't believe a lot of the workforce wants to work from home, and that any indication otherwise will change in short order. In the company-leader case they also think their directives and charisma will win in the end.
Maybe preferences will change back as workers see more downsides to WFM, or maybe a recession will give employers the leverage to push things. Nothing in certain.
One plus for office space is that hybrid appears to be the main outcome, and hybrid workers tend to come in at the same times, Tuesday-Thursday. Couple that with wider desk spacing (sometimes) and more amenities in the Covid+ era and many need similar amounts of space. But others don't of course.
There really are a few downsides to exclusive WFH, says this media person.
Your point about the attitudes of people in the fields above is well-taken, but any business beyond a sole proprietorship is indeed a collective enterprise where people must rely on others to achieve goals or carry out its mission. We are inherently social creatures, even the introverts, and the organizational culture takes a slight hit when all the interaction takes place via Zoom or Microsoft Teams.
It's also a little harder to onboard new employees because they don't get a chance to interact with their colleagues in person at the outset.
Productivity doesn't suffer because those same co-workers can get in the way when you need to focus on a task, and that, I think, is one reason so many people who work with numbers, words and ideas like working from home, though. The way we handle the organizational-cohesion stuff is through periodic in-person happy hours (we are media people, remember). Besides, we've been WFH exclusively since the pandemic lockdowns started, and will continue to be for some time to come, for we just vacated our Independence Square offices this past Friday — we couldn't afford to continue our lease and are not actively looking for new space.
Overall, the benefits of WFH, at least in our case, outweigh the costs. Our utility bills go up, but so does our job satisfaction.
I think it depends on who owns the building. If I'm the corporate bean counter and I own the building, I'm going to insist that every butt is sitting in the building every day because that asset declines in value if it sits mostly empty. If I'm a bean counter and my leased office building is hitting the end of the lease, I'm going to insist that the departments justify on-site employees because it's expensive to lease office space.
I think it depends on who owns the building. If I'm the corporate bean counter and I own the building, I'm going to insist that every butt is sitting in the building every day because that asset declines in value if it sits mostly empty. If I'm a bean counter and my leased office building is hitting the end of the lease, I'm going to insist that the departments justify on-site employees because it's expensive to lease office space.
Comcast owns both of those skyscrapers it occupies AFAIK (though ISTR Liberty Property Trust built the second one, so I may be wrong, but it was built to Comcast's specifications), and it opted for a hybrid model — three days in the office, two at home.
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