While major banks like JPMorgan Chase and HSBC have tightened enforcement of return-to-office (RTO) mandates, other firms are applying a far more flexible approach. London-based Standard Chartered, for example, allows managers and individual teams to decide how often employees should come into the office. In July, CEO Bill Winters told Bloomberg Television:
We work with adults. The adults can have an adult conversation with other adults and decide how they’re going to best manage their team.
The contrasting strategies reflect ongoing disagreements about the value of in-office work. Many corporations argue that physical presence boosts collaboration, innovation, and even revenue. But research continues to show that strict RTO mandates can damage morale and hurt retention.
“There are some markets where there’s effectively peer pressure to come in more often, and there’s other markets where there’s less of that,” Winters said. “People come into the office because they want to come into the office.”
Office space trends shift again
When COVID-19 forced companies into remote work, many assumed the commercial real estate sector would face long-term decline. Even now, US office vacancy remains high—CNBC reports a vacancy rate of 18.9 percent, close to the 30-year record of 19 percent.
Despite this, commercial real estate firm CBRE found signs of renewed office expansion. Among surveyed companies, 67 percent said they plan to expand or maintain their current office footprint over the next three years—up from 64 percent the previous year. Meanwhile, 33 percent expect to reduce space. That number jumps significantly among companies with more than 10,000 employees: 60 percent of these large firms plan to downsize, with 79 percent citing increased hybrid work as the reason.
“Employers are much more focused now than they were pre-pandemic on quality of workplace experience, the efficiency of seat sharing, and the vibrancy of the districts in which they’re located,” Julie Whelan, CBRE’s global head of occupier research, told CNBC.
Although tariffs and economic uncertainty continue to complicate long-term real estate planning, Whelan noted that many companies are ready to make decisions about office footprints “even if there’s a little bit of economic uncertainty right now.”