In the battle of employees versus commercial real estate giants, it seems the underdogs are winning.
One of New York’s biggest office landlords has capitulated to the hybrid working model, declaring Fridays in the office officially “dead forever.”
Steven Roth, chairman of New York–based real estate giant Vornado Realty Trust, has instead turned his attention to making his sites as accessible as possible for commuters to tempt them back, and enjoyable once they get there.
Despite having forked out $1.2 billion overhauling two of its offices in Manhattan’s Penn Station area, Roth said he was well aware that not only are Fridays in the office over, but Mondays are also touch and go.
Roth told the Wall Street Journal he believes staff will commute into major hubs in the middle of the week as long as their journeys are easy—so has put increased focus on a “one-seat commute.”
His plan is for employees to not to set foot on the subway to get to their offices: They can either walk given the proximity to a major transport hub, or enter the buildings via underground entrances that link directly to the transport network.
And Roth’s billion-dollar gamble is backed up by the data.
According to weekly analysis from Kastle Systems, which provides security for 2,600 buildings across 138 cities in the U.S., office occupancy levels across the top 10 cities in the country sits at 49.8%.
In the New York and San Francisco metropolitan areas, this percentage is headed upwards over the past week or so, sitting at a 50% and 45% occupancy rate, respectively.
Likewise Kastle found that offices were by far the busiest on Tuesdays, followed by Wednesdays and Thursdays.
Although the number of workers at their desks has fallen for every day of the week since February 2020, the most recent data for May 2023 shows the number of people commuting in—particularly on Tuesdays and Wednesdays—has increased by up to 10% compared with the same month last year.
What employers are saying
While Vornado—worth $3.35 billion—is hoping to tempt talent back with restaurants, libraries, pickleball courts, gyms, and bars, bosses of the resistant workforce have taken a more direct approach.
Google, which initially offered a more lenient return-to-work plan with a desk-sharing policy, recently went all in on its in-office mandate.
The Alphabet-owned company told staff earlier this month they have to be in the office three days a week, or risk their attendance acting against them in performance reviews.
Google’s chief people officer, Fiona Cicconi, told the company’s huge workforce that remote work would now only be allowed “by exception only,” with a spokesman telling Fortune, “Our hybrid approach is designed to incorporate the best of being together in person with the benefits of working from home for part of the week.”
The reasoning for returning to the office is clear—not only does it justify the billions spent by companies on office space, but can also reportedly be beneficial for individuals’ careers and foster better teamwork.
This month Meta joined the likes of Apple, Disney, and Amazon by asking staff to come back to the office three days a week, but promised to “continuously [refine] our model to foster the collaboration, relationships, and culture necessary for employees to do their best work.”
Such flexibility—which has also been lauded as promoting equality and increasing productivity and cash flow—may be necessary, with staff seemingly determined to keep hold of some of the freedoms they enjoyed during the pandemic.
According to a McKinsey & Co. study of more than 5,000 workers in 2021, over 60% of U.S. employees said they’d like to work at least three days from home—and many would quit if that option wasn’t available.
Workers who decide to quit over hybrid work models are also likely to find a raft of potential employers who have embraced a more relaxed model, with the most recent survey from the International Foundation of Employee Benefit Plans finding that 74% of companies now have a hybrid work model.
