White-collar workers temporarily enjoyed unprecedented power during the pandemic to decide where and how they worked.
commercial real estate values are one rationale but I don’t really buy that unless you own the property. Lots of companies that don’t own their property are doing it.
One big rationale behind forcing return to office is that it causes soft layoffs from all of the people who do not want to return to in person working. It’s a great way to downsize without announcing layoffs and taking a share price hit.
Fredselfish@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Plus they have a ton invested in commercial real-estate and office buildings. They literally losing money and makes me happy.
Showroom7561@lemmy.ca 1 year ago
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I don’t get the desire to cling onto some outdated, unproductive, sad way of doing things.
Pickle_Jr@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 year 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.
Ataraxia@lemm.ee 1 year ago
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.
jj4211@lemmy.world 1 year ago
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.
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.
penguin@sh.itjust.works 1 year ago
No this isn’t right. It’s cheaper to have an empty building than a full one so companies who own their buildings would still make more money letting their employees work from home.
Also, even if it was true, no company is going to try to solve a problem like that. Companies are selfish. They’d rather everyone else go back to work to boost the value of commercial real estate while they continue to work from home to increase their profits everywhere.
The only reason companies are forcing people back is because upper management simply prefers that work environment. They like to sit in their corner office, surrounded by their peons. A sense of power.
Or, they have the kind of personality where they thrive surrounded by people and can’t understand how anyone could be productive at home, data be damned.
It has nothing to do with real estate.
Pickle_Jr@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 year ago
I 100% agree there are people in management who just like to have a sense of power over people, but there are big corporations losing money over real-estate.
For starters, if you’re a firm who owns a lot of rental office space, you’re losing money on the businesses not renewing their license (which I’m not saying this is a bad thing).
Then, you have the huge corporate business who have a huge amount of office space which they own. 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.
Tischkante@discuss.tchncs.de 1 year ago
They try to rent those spaces where I live and its hilariously not working.