Control. They call it office culture because it’s a cult. They control the way you think and make it easy for you to be manipulated and keep you under their thumb. They can’t make you think they give anahit if they can’t bribe you with bullshit like snacks and pizza and a gym. They can’t slowly take away your benefits because “hey look we gave you standing desks”. Office culture needs to die.
They really aren’t losing money because:
a) WFH has been saving them money (i.e. lowered heating, water, electricity, stationary, toilet paper, food, janitorial, window cleaning, etc.).
b) Their WFH staff are more productive than their office staff.
Just let those leases expire when they do, and these companies will really be saving a ton of money from not having to lease large office space.
I don’t get the desire to cling onto some outdated, unproductive, sad way of doing things.
Ataraxia@lemm.ee 10 months ago
jj4211@lemmy.world 10 months ago
b) Their WFH staff are more productive than their office staff.
This probably varies place to place, person to person. However, over the course of, say, 10 years, productivity would likely drop in a 100% WFH scenario. People retire and the new hires never really find their groove without the in person experience.
Just let those leases expire when they do
Some of these leases are absurdly long, like decades long. Some own the buildings rather than lease, so they’d need to sell, but who would be buying?
I do see significant reduction in office space and more aggressive ‘hot desking’ to size a lower occupancy rate due to increased WFH. Before pandemic, our office planned to 80% occupancy, based on measuring generally 60% occupancy (between sick days, vacations, meetings, and travel, a lot of people aren’t at their desks). I would not be surprised for them to size for, say, 50% occupancy if opportunities to exit lease for some of the buildings comes up.
The_v@lemmy.world 10 months ago
Most of the empty office spaces are in the traditional downtown highrise locations. These locations traditionally have had low vacancy rates of 5-10%. Post pandemic the rates have risen sharply with over 30% vacancy in some markets.
When you move away from these downtown locations the vacancy rates are in the 8-15% range. Still higher that pre-pandemic but still sustainable and profitable for landlords.
Personally I predict a rise for smaller office spaces intermixed with residential locations. The traditional demand for the expensive downtown highrise office will permanently be reduced. Most of that space will need to be converted to residential in the future.
Pickle_Jr@lemmy.dbzer0.com 10 months ago
The companies losing money are the huge companies who don’t lease from what I’ve seen.
A company in my city JUST finished a $250-million expansion onto their HQ right as COVID hit. That same land area is in a central location and was even being highly considered for high density housing before the company bought the land. The parking lot for the new building never gets more than half full. Fuck 'em.
Showroom7561@lemmy.ca 10 months ago
haha. Too bad for them. Just like how regular folks were/still are getting screwed by stuff over the last few years, it’s hard for me to have any sympathy for a company that even has $250 million for an expansion.