Employees can work effectively from home, and there are many studies that support the idea that employees who work from home are more productive and drive corporate profits. Supervisors can effectively supervise from home. Zoom and the like are amazing, or at least work well enough.
This obviously does not apply to most retail, warehouse or labor jobs, but for millions of office, support, data and other positions, the pandemic could be a game-changer.
So, you’re paying rent, utilities, maybe parking fees, a receptionist maybe, maintenance and upkeep, and myriad other costs so that you can have an office in which your employees can come and work for you where you can see them. You were troubled, and simply did not believe your people would do anything if they worked from home.
Now, you’ve been forced to let them, and low and behold, they’re as productive or more than they were when they schlepped into the office everyday to work in their cubicles.
Riddle me this, are you going to order them all back to the office where your costs will increase and productivity will fall to pre-pandemic levels, OR are you going to allow your lease to run out, save tons of money, and make more on your employees who are more productive working from home? Some will return, but most will not. Profits are made on the edges, high occupancy rates. Rents will fall. Landlords will default on loans. Banks will lose loans.
I feel for the owners of huge office complexes, the banks who have funded them, and the many businesses surrounding them that rely on the thousands who used to work within them, who are never coming back.
Author of five novels available on Amazon, numerous articles and other commentary.