Return to Office: Forget culture and productivity, it’s all about avoiding a real estate value drop

Description

Since the start of Covid in 2020, the way many of us work has changed dramatically. While certain people love the fact that they are able to work from the comfort of their homes, others don’t. So perhaps, in an ideal world, employees get to choose where they want to work as much as possible.

Interestingly, we’ve seen quite a few large organizations starting to push their employees back into the office. Some of the reasons cited for this are the fact that people are more productive and creative when in an office and that it sparks more innovation.

Some say, however, that the real reasons companies want people back in the office have more to do with the significant economic consequences of commercial real estate being empty and dropping in value: McKinsey Global Institute estimates that pandemic shifts could erase as much as $1.3 trillion of real estate value in big cities around the world by 2030. These people believe that the return to office push is really about avoiding a commercial real estate apocalypse.