A Great Resignation

If senior leaders of companies do force staff to come back to the office full time or something close to full time, it has the potential to go pretty wrong, pretty fast. 

“We’re seeing from the data a disconnect emerging between employees and executives,” Future Forum Vice President Sheela Subramanian said. Future Forum, a consortium of companies including Slack, regularly surveys thousands of workers about their attitude toward work, including remote work versus the office. 

It found that executives are three times more likely to want to come back to the office full time than their employees. It’s impossible to be definitive as to why, but the survey results indicated bosses have always had a level of flexibility their staff doesn’t had access to. 

For every individual, there will be multiple factors to weigh, but Subramanian pointed out that flexibility now ranks as the second-highest concern among workers, after compensation. 

“Call it the Great Resignation, or reset, or whatever you like: People have reassessed the role of work in their lives,” she said.

It is not hard to imagine a world where your tenant, in forcing staff back in full time, alienates workers no longer willing to come to an office just because their employer says they should. The most talented people, those who can find another job most easily, leave, and the rest quickly follow. It takes a few years, but before long, the company goes out of business or is snapped up by a rival, leaving you with an empty office building. 

So now what do you do? 

If you decide now is a good time to sell up, click here.

If you decide to try and re-lease the space to a new tenant or tenants, click here.

If you decide to knock the building down and completely redevelop a new office, click here.

If you decide to convert to another use, click here.

Don't like where you've ended up? Start over!