It's Time to Take Action
In 2020 most companies forced their workers to a fully remote posture. In 2021 companies started encouraging their employees back to the office, most with limited success. In 2022 this strained dialogue about return to office has continued. While some have sought to fully address the new realities of the workplace by developing and committing to an approach that both clearly addresses expectations for employees and supports these expectations with modifications to the physical workplace, many have chosen to communicate “soft” messaging about return to office while not making any changes to the physical office.
Historically, but for large companies having significant multi-market portfolios of leased offices, mid-size companies have not been big buyers of the workplace strategy services we provide. Most of these companies have sought to address their offices by mirroring general sector trends, striving to do about the same as their prime competitors. This collective approach gave a sense of security (false?) around the logic of chosen solutions. “If the average AMLaw 100 occupancy ratio is 400 sf/attorney and we’re at 385, we’re doing great”. But these are different times. Everyone is doing things a little (or a lot) differently. There is no safety in numbers.
It's time for small to medium size companies to recognize the importance of having a specific point of view about the office. Employees want to know their employer has been thoughtful on this subject. They want a transparent plan of action that is connected to the core values of the organization. They need to understand why the strategy serves them and the organization better than the current state (likely an ill-defined hybrid). These days, it’s simply not good enough to say, “…we expect you back in the office 4 days a week beginning January 1st”. It’s also true when leaders begin to think about the role of their offices, they quickly realize their beliefs lack conviction. This is because they’ve not really thought about it. While that’s a scary realization, leaders must embrace the moment. After all, workplace, be it fully in-office, fully remote or something in between, is intended to foster greater success. That’s its purpose.
In our market practice we’re seeing a disturbing trend where occupiers are choosing short term lease extensions of underutilized, dysfunctional spaces. Unless the corporate policy is to return to a workplace approach that is exactly as it was pre-pandemic, these solutions have limited chance of success. In most cases, companies who choose to do these short term extensions actually have a new workplace approach they’re communicating internally, they’ve just not taken the time to translate the approach to physical space(s). This is even worse since the physical space is seemingly disconnected from the new strategy. To be fair, for companies who faced lease expirations in 2020, or perhaps early 2021, this was a reasonable approach. The message to employees was, “…we still believe in the importance of the office, but we recognize the fluidity and scale of change in how we and others are using the office and we want to formulate a new, thoughtful approach that is custom designed to help each of you do your best work and by extension, make our organization thrive. For this reason, we’ve elected to do a short term extension of the existing lease while we develop our new approach”. Now however, over 2 years in, this approach sends a strong signal that leadership has failed to be thoughtful on this important subject. Make no mistake, how companies address their offices at this pivotal time will have material implications on their ability to retain and attract talent. It’s time to take action.