SAN FRANCISCO (KCBS RADIO) – As the COVID-19 pandemic continues to fade into memory, a new report indicates that in-person work is on the upswing, especially at Fortune 100 companies.
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“So, these are based on numbers from JLL, which is a big international commercial real estate outfit,” Bloomberg reporter Heather Landy told KCBS Radio’s Holly Quan this week. “And they’re reporting that more and more of the largest companies in America are moving to fully in office work policies and that hybrid or remote work is just becoming less common as an option.”
Landy – who joined Quan for the daily “KCBS Bloomberg Tech and Business Report” – was referring to Jones Lang LaSalle. Bloomberg quoted figures from the company in a recent report on the in-person work trend. It said that Hybrid schedules were available at just 41% of the 100 largest U.S. companies by revenue.
When stay-at-home orders were issued due to the pandemic in 2020, it spurred a new wave of remote and hybrid options for the U.S. workforce and, of course, an increase in Zoom meetings. While some business leaders have supported a return to in-person work, including Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, these options also allow employees greater flexibility and reduce the need for office space.
“The demand for really high quality or premium office space is definitely on the rise and that’s being reflected in the rents that we’re seeing for premium properties, sort of the trophy buildings and big cities, New York, San Francisco, Miami and so forth,” said Landy.
She also noted that some companies that have called for their workers to come back in have dealt with spatial challenges.
“We have heard of isolated instances where companies that have been recalling office workers have then had to scramble because [they] realized that they haven’t had enough desks,” Landy told Quan.
As for how employees are responding to the new in-person work trend, she said “it’s a mixed bag.”
Exactly two years ago, Audacy reported that anxiety was on the rise as more people began returning to work following the height of the pandemic – particularly around public speaking. Around a month later, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy told people it probably wouldn’t “work out” for people who didn’t want to return to in-person work.
While in-person work might be in vogue for the Fortune 100, Landy also noted that hybrid options are still out there.
“If you think about sort of outside the Fortune 100, the largest 100 companies… the bulk of our economy is made up of companies much smaller than that. You know, in those companies, hybrid work is still very much in the mix,” she said.
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