Office real estate industry trying to strike a balance between the needs and wants of workers and employers amid changing environment

The chairman and CEO of Dream Office REIT says the office real estate industry is still attempting to strike a balance between the wants and needs of workers and their employers post pandemic as companies look to cut costs.

 

 

Michael J. Cooper told BNN Bloomberg in a Monday interview that most of Canada’s downtown workers have returned to the office for at least part of the week, largely dispelling fears that employees would continue to work from home full time as many did during the pandemic.

 

“We’re now seeing almost 80 per cent of the people that used to be downtown (working) downtown on peak days. I think that’s what’s going to drive the use of office space, so I think that it’s not as big a factor as people may have thought before,” he said.

 

“What we look at is what are the peak-day needs for office space…because I think companies want their people in on the same days, they want people to work together for training and for collaboration, so that’s really what the driver is for office space.”

On non-peak days, however, many Canadian professionals still work from home, Cooper said, in a hybrid work arrangement offered by many companies.

 

“I think prior to COVID-19, if you had kids, and a husband and wife worked, it was really hard to keep things together, so I think companies sort of accepted that people need more flexibility to have a proper work-life balance,” he explained.

 

Cooper said the main factor that is now impacting office occupancy rates is coming from companies themselves, as many businesses search for ways to cut costs in a challenging economic environment.

 

“Companies are trying to reduce their overall costs… you hear about big layoffs, you hear about quiet layoffs, and I think what we’re seeing is companies trying to figure out how they can have less employees and how they can have less office space,” he said.

 

“This is almost five years since we thought we knew what office buildings would be used for, we thought we knew how many would leave, how many come, and every year, we’re trying to figure out: ‘What’s the equilibrium now?’ Five years is a fairly long time.”

 

 

 

 

This article was first reported by BNN Bloomberg