Employers push for staff to return to the office after working from home as commercial property values plunge

www.abc.net.au Why more employers are forcing staff back to the office after working from home

Some bosses are tying bonuses to getting people back into the office. But with "work from home" the most searched-for term on job websites, the push-and-pull is a source of contention.

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Let them plunge. Fuck these useless megaplexes of pointless concrete ruining cities and entire areas.
- I went to a networking event for work recently, and a commercial real estate broker went into a frantic rant about how fucked building owners are if occupancy doesn't pick back up, and I have to say it was the most poignant explanation of why companies are so indignant about it.
  Honestly, of all the possible explanations for the desire for RTO, none of them felt like enough justification against the very real benefit to workers WFH provides. But this one guy having an existential meltdown in front of me felt like a glimpse into a world of entitlement this class of building owners feel.
  I work as an architect, so my job is fucked if the real estate market crashes, but I fucking hope it burns.

"But corporates who are seeing maybe an average of one to two days a week in the office, they are really wanting to drive higher occupancy rates, because they see the benefits of collaboration, innovation. That kind of comes from people face-to-face in the office".
The other element — mentioned by everyone from CEOs and executives to human resources leaders and academics — is about the mentorship and training of younger staff.
"That," Mr Broderick notes, "is really hard to replicate from home”
Is anyone actually swallowing this tripe?
- The more it’s jammed down my throat the sweeter that succulent nectar of conditioning gets!
  Mmm mmmm!!
- Bet he works from home though.
  
  Yeah I read a story on Reddit from one employee of a giant company that had a "all hands on deck" mandatory meeting about working from the office....and the mega CEO was in a videocall instead of being in person for this meeting
- Yeah upper management at our work is. That's pretty much verbatim what they said during a recent meeting to "encourage" staff to come in 3 days a week.
- I don't think they're wrong that it's easier to train people in-person, it's just not worth the cost of going back into the office
- As a junior member at my work, this is actually a legitimate reason. Being in person is a way better environment to learn in. And work in to some degree (for me).
  Still, I don't think it's worth going back to the office as a mandatory thing. It's too inflexible for people with families, or if you don't live that close to the city.

If you have management that tries to push for a return, give them this article from Microsoft and request a discussion of its many points.
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/worklab/work-trend-index/hybrid-work-is-just-work
WFH, particularly in 2020-2021, was the opportunity for managers to learn how to effectively manage remotely, using metrics and good planning practices. Those who failed to do so should be the ones questioned as to why they should remain as managers.
- There's two reasons for a push to return to office work.
  1: as the title of the thread, real estate prices. A lot of companies have long ass leases they can't get out for sometimes decades. Or they outright own the properties and said property is virtually worthless if no needs to come to work on location.
  2: antisocial and narcissistic personality disorders and tendencies in that direction fill a very high percentage of management, especially higher management. These people need people to physically lord over to feel powerful and stroke their fragile egos.
  They don't give a flying shit what the numbers say. They don't care work from home is better for workers or productivity, as they don't give a shit about workers or productivity to begin with.
  
  Issue 1 is, for the vast majority of companies that lease their offices, an entirely invalid reason. It’s the sunk cost fallacy in its most pure form. You’ve already paid for that lease. If paying but not using it ends up being better, that’s what you should do—and even better, plan your downsizing next time your lease is up for renewal. Paying for something but not using it isn’t an issue for a rational business decision-maker.
  But issue 2 is very much a problem that’s difficult to overcome.
- Their problem is not that they can't manage remote work. It's that remote work is so effective that they don't need the buildings that they have invested too much money in.
  
  @cosmicrookie @morry040 It's also telling how many of these same managers have never had any problems with outsourcing their manufacturing roles overseas.
  Or outsourcing contact centres to India.
  Or outsourcing business processes to Manila.
  Or outsourcing IT work to a Silicon Valley cloud platform provider.
  You can't get too much more remote than being in another country.

Had a manager go on about all the collab and help he got when starting out at the company and how important the connections are etc.
Someone else pointed out that if you can’t get help using MS teams then you have a problem. Plus it’s 2023 - no need to stuck to old ways of work.
When I’m in the office, I’m wearing headphones to try and block the noise from the random hot desking people from random parts of the business all talking loudly on teams calls. The business has multiple physical locations in various states hence the teams calls. There’s no chatting or “water cooler” talk.
I cannot work in these conditions nor do I want to spend 2 hours each way commuting to waste my day like this. It’s my personal hell.
- All the rubbish they quote about collaboration is based on no real evidence either, or at best "studies" by corporate linked institutes with an agenda.
  They make up all sorts of reasons why they want us back in the office but the reality is pretty obvious - it's simply not necessary for many employees to be in the office at all.
- I feel this. I'm a software developer and my desk is placed right next to our validation team, and their benches are producing whirs, bings, and chimes pretty much all day. Its like I have my very own programming torture space to go to.

Perhaps they could refit the properties to HOUSE people.
- It can and should be done, but it’s quite a lot of work to do. This article concentrates on the natural light issue, which is a big one. But there are also ways that plumbing and fire protection are different in commercial buildings and residential. And there are probably other concerns besides that.
  In some cases it may work out easier to demolish the building and put up an entirely fresh apartment building.
- And real housing, not Musks "bunkbeds at the office" interpretation.
  
  Are you saying this isn't the future you want?

Not mine. My company likes money more than control so we're getting a smaller space for our servers & meetings.
They don't give a shit about our landlord's money problems.

The free market is showing assholes! Fuck your capital!

Senior managers ran teams across regions and timezones for years now. How can the same managers say it doesn't work?

Wait wait..... investments carry risk? No, that can't be, push that shit downhill.
- Just do it the US way:
  Socialize the businesses, capitalize the masses.

Fuck that. I'm happy people's lives are finally getting a bit more chill. And I bet no efficiency has to be sacrificed, just tradition.
And let's face it, suit and tie and glass facades aren't exactly valuable culture. I wonder if you could even keep one of those buildings standing for longer than 20 years for posterior, because they're not designed to last.

"Everyone back to the office!"

I don’t know why people keep claiming that companies are asking people to come back so their property will increase in value. The value of your property has nothing to do with how many people you put in the building, it’s how many people a BUYER wants to put in the building.
The reason people are asking employees to come back is because of sunk cost fallacies (we bought this shit and should use it), or the fact that some leaders just don’t know how to work remotely well.
- it’s how many people a BUYER wants to put in the building
  and that number gets higher if you work to perpetuate a culture that requires people to work in an office
  
  Too many damn companies lease. I would argue that the bulk of tech office space in a place like San Francisco is leased. Hell, even Salesforce is a tenant in Saleforce tower.
  Sure, a handful of giants own their properties, but I would argue that a lot of the people asking to “return to the office” wouldn’t benefit from increased real estate prices. It drive up their leases when / if they renew.
- Having fewer people in your building also cuts down on cost of electricity, water, etc. It's cheaper, surely?
- You're just making stuff up. Commercial property values are dropping for a reason which is exactly why big corps are trying to reverse the trend of remote work. No will buy these buildings if everyone works remotely.
  More importantly than that, these corps are getting a lot of pressure from local governments to bring people back because our stupid ass zoning laws in the US mean a lot of these areas are vacant, which is bad for the businesses around them.
  
  I’m not making stuff up. I’m someone that is involved in these decisions at work.
  In the case of my gig, San Francisco would like the industry back, and our landlord would like tenants back, but there isn’t much they can do to encourage or “pressure” us.
  SF is trying to lure folks back by cracking down on the crime and homelessness that has filled the void. And landlords are experimenting with even fancier office amenities.
  At the end of the day, that stuff is a blip on the radar compared to the prominence of the sunk cost fallacy, micromanagers wanting to micromanage, or product / design teams wanting all their partners freely available at any waking moment.
- Selling your building makes investors think you're doing bad.

This is the best summary I could come up with:
Everything is colliding for employees, bosses and the owners of commercial properties as the "work from home" trend cements itself as a standard part of most office workers' lives.
"Things like this don't usually change so quickly in the labour market," notes Matt Cowgill, senior economist for jobs website Seek.
ANZ staff face a cut to their annual bonuses if they don't spend at least 50 per cent of their scheduled working hours in the office, according to a report in the Australian Financial Review.
Origin Energy reportedly demands all employees based in an office spend at least 40 per cent of their time there and has started linking attendance to performance reviews and bonuses.
The bank warned that bonuses — which are a substantial proportion of some salary packages in the financial services field — could be docked if workers failed to turn up at the office for least three days a week.
More luxurious meeting rooms, better "end-of-trip" facilities for bike riders and walkers and nicer kitchens are just some of the elements rental agents say clients want.
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