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“Today we’re leasing greater amounts of space to people than they had before. They want to accommodate their people and get them back quickly,” the company’s CEO Bruce Flatt told an audience at the Bloomberg Invest Global virtual conference.
Remote working had a substantial impact on productivity according to Colliers’ tenants — they estimated employee productivity to have declined by 22 per cent throughout the course of the pandemic.
“You can’t create a productive work culture when everyone is sitting at home,” said Duda, adding that companies such as Shopify Inc. for example, that have allowed employees to work from home indefinitely will eventually have a “rude awakening” when productivity levels diminish.
John Duda
Polling on this subject, however, is divided. A two-year long Stanford University study conducted back in 2018, for example, showed that work-from-home employees worked a true full-shift or more, compared to when they were present in the office simply because of fewer distractions in their midst.
An ongoing research project on remote working by University of Montreal’s School of Industrial Relations showed that while workloads have increased because of telework, staff productivity has risen in tandem.
Michael Cooper, CEO of Dream Office Real Estate Investment Trust, believes that remote working could push certain office buildings that are older and in less central locations to remain vacant in the long run, although he disagrees with the notion that most offices will eventually become obsolete.
“It’s just too early to tell. But I can tell you that our tenants are doing okay, and in fact over the last few years we have diversified and sold 140 buildings, keeping just 32 that we think we won’t have problems going forward,” told the Financial Post in an interview.
Financial Post
• Email: vsubramaniam@nationalpost.com | Twitter: VanmalaS
