When the coronavirus pandemic shut down the world, not only did it send a sea of employees from their office cubicles and boardrooms to their home dining tables and bedrooms, but it gave birth to a valid question: Will we ever physically go back to work again?
Current Events
As COVID-19 spread across America like wildfire in the early weeks of March 2020, employers were immediately forced to send their workforce home. However, there was still work to be done. Soon, lavish business trips to exotic destinations were replaced by teleconference calls, and office team meetings were conducted via Zoom.
Somehow, someway, working from home worked — and corporations began looking at the possibility of never going ‘back to work’ again.
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In March, tens of millions of American workers—mostly in white-collar industries such as tech, finance, and media—were thrust into a sudden, chaotic experiment in working from home. Months later, the experiment isn’t close to ending. For many, the test run is looking more like the long run. – The Atlantic
The concept of “going to the office” stems from an age prior to the modern and digital technologies of today. If a salesperson needed to close a business deal, they needed to fly to the location and handle the deal in person. If a sales team needed to come up with a new marketing campaign, it needed to meet in person at the office.
Ironically, COVID proved that this 1950s concept of physically going to work was no longer a necessity.
Corporations spent billions of dollars to build their own office space or rent space in urban city skyscrapers. They spent millions on employee amenities such as restaurant-style cafeterias, workout gyms, and childcare. They spent hundreds of thousands on business trips or reimbursements for employees to drive or commute to the workplace — only to discover via COVID that none of it was truly necessary.
Folks, the concept of physically going back to work may be permanently dead. Over the past several months, technology has proven that we can get the job done while sitting in an office skyscraper or on our home toilet. Now, corporations have begun abandoning workspace altogether.
In July, Google announced that its 200,000+ employees will continue to work from home until at least next summer. Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg said he expects half of his workforce to be remote within the decade. Twitter told their staff they can stay home permanently.
In New York City, once filled-to-capacity office buildings are empty. In San Francisco, landlords are lowering rents for office space to break-even levels. Across America, corporations are canceling their leases or offering to rent or sell newly-constructed office buildings they’ve now deemed they no longer need.
The domino effect has caused employees to flee high rent and high tax cities such as New York and San Franciso and live anywhere they want on the cheap — prompting a record vacancy in apartment buildings and condos. Tropical destinations such as Aruba have capitalized on the work-from-anywhere movement and offered temporary residency and affordable accommodations for anyone wanting to travel to the island to work in the sun and fun.
However, it’s not all fun and games.
According to The Atlantic, if business travel falls off by 10% or more, that will mean fewer jobs for airline, hotel, and restaurant employees.
“Business travel drives a lot of leisure and hospitality spending,” said economist David Autor, who co-chair’s the MIT Task Force on the Work of the Future. “Business travelers pay full freight at luxury hotels on weeknights. Their companies pay for business-class seats on airplanes. They use corporate credit cards for limos and lavish meals.”
Businesses centered around a traditional 9-5 workday could suffer too.
“Most of us occupy 2 spaces, a home, and a workplace that we travel back and forth between throughout the workweek,” Autor said. If more people work from home, this will mean fewer weekday lunches at restaurants, fewer happy hours, fewer midtown shoppers, as well as less work for office buildings’ cleaning, security, and maintenance services.
Additionally, commuter bus and train offerings which were pulled back in March will likely never return to the old. New York City, which ran a 24-hour subway service for decades began shutting down from 1-5 am in March for cleanings. Reports are that this new schedule is likely permanent.
COVID-19 has shut down Broadway theater until mid to late 2021. Many sporting events, festivals, and concerts are a no-go. So, it’s valid to ask: Will America ever go back to work — to the office, that is? Don’t count on it!
COVID-19 has shut down Broadway theater until mid to late 2021. Many sporting events, festivals, and concerts are a no-go. So, it’s valid to ask: Will America ever go back to work — to the office, that is? Don’t count on it! […]- DJ
I agree with DJ…..but only in part because I think it depends on the line of work you’re in. There are definitely large segments of American white collar “office” jobs that can be handled quite well and more cost efficiently from home.
But there are also fields of (office) work which are still better handled in a more central location and a face-to-face environment. Telemed visits notwithstanding, the medical field and mental health field of work come quickly to mind.
Still – as DJ expressed (and it cannot be denied)- for a sizeable chunk of working Americans “COVID proved that this 1950s concept of physically going to work was no longer a necessity.”