Kastle

Despite the rise in occupancy rates, office values remain depressed compared to before the pandemic, according to the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER). It found there has been a 39% decline in office building values since 2020 — and a large percentage of pre-pandemic leases will come up for renewal in the next few years. That could force some companies to more closely evaluate their office needs.

The COVID pandemic served as something of an unintentional experiment that revealed a host of uncomfortable workplace truths — namely, that most employees always preferred remote work and at-home knowledge workers were just as, if not more, productive. Another realization: working in the office, by default, isn’t as rewarding some people as it is for others, according to Phil Kirschner, an associate partner in McKinsey & Co.’s real estate and people and organizational performance practices.

Not everyone, for example, feels the same level of inclusion and equality in an office setting. “Diverse populations of almost any measure — whether skin color, sexual orientation, physical disability — are affected by in-office requirements, and there’s a higher desire for workplace flexibility either when taking a job or the likelihood to leave a job if you’re not offered it,” Kirschner said in an earlier interview with Computerworld.