A new survey points to the significant cost savings being realized by hybrid workplaces — more than $10K per employee — suggesting that during a downturn, economic pressure may push more firms to downsize their already shrinking real estate footprints. 

A new survey released by Robin, a flexible workspace software platform, asked 247 business owners and facilities managers about their hybrid plans, opinions and strategies.

The results suggest significant cost savings can be found with a hybrid setup. Of the firms that responded to the survey, 83%, went hybrid as a cost-saving measure and 73% said they would shift to hybrid as a cost-saving measure before resorting to other actions such as layoffs.

There’s some ugly reality settling in for the office real estate market, if researchers from the NYU Stern School of Business and the Columbia University Graduate School of Business are correct.

In their recent paper, Work From Home and the Office Real Estate Apocalypse, Arpit Gupta, Vrinda Mittal, and Stijn Van Nieuwerburgh argue that the work-from-home shift since the pandemic has caused significant changes in “lease revenues, office occupancy, lease renewal rates, lease durations, and market rents.”

As the age of hybrid work sets in, companies are banking on the idea that better offices attract better employees, and that’s certainly getting reflected in office leasing activity. A recent report from CBRE revealed that since 2021, top-tier office buildings’ effective rents have increased while those of lower-quality assets have decreased.

Offices in Middle America are seeing employees return much to the relief of landlords, but central cities are still struggling to recover.

While returning to the office remains a point of contention for many regions in the country, in other areas, it’s already been settled.

Cities with populations under 300,000 saw their days of work from home fall to 27% this spring from the 42% seen in October 2020. Similarly, the 10 largest cities in the U.S. saw their number of remote work days fall to 38% from the 50% during the same time frame.

You might not think much about acoustics in your day-to-day life, but when you’re at a concert, the acoustics are at the forefront of your mind. You want

Lobbies may not be where all the work gets done in an office property, but it’s the first thing people see when they enter a building. They serve a purpose as a reception area for guests and tenants, to guide people on their way and on their way out. They have always been a part of a building’s functioning, but this important component of an office property is getting a lot of attention at the moment as landlords and tenants look to bring tenants back to the office. As remote and hybrid work trends have taken hold, it has pushed office owners and developers to supercharge building features and amenities to compete for workers’ attendance. An “onslaught” of renovation work is taking place at buildings across the country, including lobby areas, according to the American Institute of Architects.

Remote workers aren’t only working from at-home offices. They’re also working from pools, beaches and cruise ships — which managers say is fine, as long as their performance doesn’t take a hit.

Steelcase announced it has been included on the 2022 Forbes List for Best Employers for Women, ranking 13 out of 400 organizations recognized. The Best Employers for Women have been identified in an independent survey of 50,000 U.S. employees working for companies employing at least 1,000 people within the U.S.

Founded in 2001, Office Interiors is a commercial office furniture dealership providing comprehensive solutions to clients in the Mid-South and across the U.S.