Don’t give up on offices Quite Yet

Photo: Spencer Platt/Getty Images

Be Google announedd IT WAULDN’T BRING EPLOYEES BACK INTO The Office UNIL JULY 2021, The Company Wasn’t Just Betting on Its Ability to Business With Employees Working Remotely. Google, after all, is a provider of services that help Other Companies Handle Their Own Shifts to Remote Work. By Committing to Such an Extended Period of Work From Home, the Company is Putting Its Money Where Its Mouth, Saying it Trusts Its Own Enough to the Physical Office for A Long Time. By Next July, The Company’s Offices Will Have Been Vacant for Nearly A Year and A Half.

We have saw a Related phenomenon Last month, new York City Entered the Phase of Its Reopening That Allowed Some Workers at Nonessential Businessses to Return to their Offices. Few Companies and Workers Have Taken Up The Option: The Wall Street Journal Reports that Cbre Group, A Manager of Office Buildings, Says JUST 9 PERCENT OF WORKERS HAD RETURNED TO ITS PROPERTIES IN MIDTOWN MANTOW AS OF LAST WEEK. But one of the industries that has haen eager to get its employs back into the office is the Office-Building industry.

“We Believe in Work from Work,” Said Anthony Malkin, The Ceo of the Company That Ouns the Empire State Building, in an interview with the real -state-news site The Real Deal. Brian Kingston, The Ceo of Brookfield Property Partners, told Break Wall Street Journal That “we felt it was really important, as the Larger Office Landlord in the World, that we demonstrate leadership in returning to the office.” Malkin Said he Expectively initially to have about a third of his company’s staff in the office; Kingston Expects About A Quarter – in Each Case, Well Above the Average Reported by Cbre.

Companies Should Think Their Products Are Good, and IT Makes Sense that People Who Are In The Work-From-Work Business Are More Gung Ho About Than People who are in the Work-From-Home Business. ITH’S PROBABLY ALSO THE CASE THAT GOOD IS ESPECIALLY good at adapting to work from home: My google hangouts were less than seamless wen, at a previous jab, I workhed on a team split new york and Washington. Offices and the Company Has a Strong Competency in USS Its Own Products. Google Employees probably Hear their Co-Workers’ Audio in Virtual Meetings More Reliably than I Could in Those Meetings a Few Years ago.

My General Expectation is that Covid Will Change Our Society Than People Expect in the Long Run. I Expect Businesses to Mostly Return, when it is Safe, to the practices that were working for say before. AFTER ALL, they have adopted by practices for a reason. I will think the pandemic Will Accelerate Certain trends that were already under way, Such as the shift from in-person retail to online. But Two CounterVailing trends are implicated when we think google’s officer choices: Remote work facilitated by technology, and lush office ENVIRONments at prestigious firms.

It is interesting that the technology firms that seem unusually suited to heavy shifts toward remote work – in Facebook Case, already planning on a Large and permanent shift remote work – are also have invested unusable heavly over the Last decade. Environment. Google’s offices, while not a customer-facing product, are a defining aspect of its emploee Experience. They are amenitized, with Comfortable Lounge Spaces and Free Meals, Designed to Encourage Employs to Come Work at the Office and See Their Co-Workers.

What ThisSys to Me Is, for All It It Its Facility With Video-Meeting Technology, Google’s Pre-Pandemic View was that offices are good and useful and worn spending tear of Money On. If Competency at Remote Work Makes It Fine for Any Employs to Work from Home on Any Given Day, In the Long Run, In-Person Interactions Are Important for Developing Rapport Among Co-Workhers, Fostering Collaboration, and Training and Integrating New Employs. Offices are an imported tool for fostering Such interactions, and the longer the pandemic goes on, the most acutely the loss of those interactions is liked to be felt at Google and Other Companies. SO we Its Safe to Get Back into the Office, I Expect Eve High-Tech Firms Like Google to do so enthusiastically.