Let’s just start off by acknowledging that most real estate hot takes this year start by trying to pretend the world is not still in the middle of a pandemic. The reality is that most of the world (but parts are still in pandemic restrictions even today) relaxed or eliminated their COVID-19 restrictions between June and September of this year. Realistically, a 6-month window of perceived “normalcy” is not long enough for most people to return to or redevelop habits that have not been used for more than 2 years. Trying to force issues during this window was always going to be met with pushback and resistance regardless of how well-meaning or well-thought-out they were (even though most met neither of those criteria).
But even setting that aside, most employees globally worked outside the office, at least occasionally, before the pandemic. There was a growing movement of individuals who valued, promoted, and pushed for expanding opportunities to work outside of a formal office. It is entirely plausible that the world would be at this same level of work from home a decade from now regardless, it is just that the pandemic accelerated the process for everyone, all at once. “Needing people in the office” was a downward trend that most could see plainly even if they were not yet fully on board themselves.
Calls for “everyone to be back in the office” come off as so disingenuous in the current environment because it ignores that this was not even the case before the pandemic. It is how certain managers perceived the world to be without the world actually being that way. Pre-pandemic this was not an issue though because it simply was the nature of the world and everyone got on with what they did. It was the “slow-boiled frog” analogy. As long as the change happens slowly enough behind the scenes, it will eventually be accepted. But if the change occurs rapidly enough, it is rejected simply because.
The most important thing individuals responsible for real estate decisions can do today is start by really understanding how their offices were used before the pandemic. If before 2020, 90% of employees were in the office any given day, then great! Have everyone back now. But for most companies, on most days, in most of their offices, that number would have no basis in reality.