I have posted this on Reddit (askeconomics) a while back but got no good replies. Copying it here because I don’t want to send traffic to Reddit.
What do you think?
I see a big push to take employees back to the office. I personally don’t mind either working remote or in the office, but I think big companies tend to think rationally in terms of cost/benefit and I haven’t seen a convincing explanation yet of why they are so keen to have everyone back.
If remote work was just as productive as in-person, a remote-only company could use it to be more efficient than their work-in-office competitors, so I assume there’s no conclusive evidence that this is the case. But I haven’t seen conclusive evidence of the contrary either, and I think employers would have good reason to trumpet any findings at least internally to their employees (“we’ve seen KPI so-and-so drop with everyone working from home” or “project X was severely delayed by lack of in-person coordination” wouldn’t make everyone happy to return in presence, but at least it would make a good argument for a manager to explain to their team)
Instead, all I keep hearing is inspirational wish-wash like “we value the power of working together”. Which is fine, but why are we valuing it more than the cost of office space?
On the side of employees, I often see arguments like “these companies made a big investment in offices and now they don’t want to look stupid by leaving them empty”. But all these large companies have spent billions to acquire smaller companies/products and dropped them without a second thought. I can’t believe the same companies would now be so sentimentally attached to office buildings if it made any economic sense to close them.
Is retail near office buildings worth considering in the context of this post? That it’s worth having people return to the offices partially because the employees give business to the nearby restaurants, etc.?
This is true. I just had trouble picturing the CEO of a big company going “I’ll force everyone back to the office! WFH is sooo convenient but I can’t do this to Mr Joe’s hamburger joint around the corner”.
However as someone else pointed out, if WFH becomes the norm, a lot of business might be impacted and fail, generating turbulence in the economy. This I can picture getting a CEO’s attention
It’s simpler in my mind: corps get local tax incentives for their footprint. EG they run a calculation on how their foot traffic impacts the local economy and take a tax break based on the “value” of “their” employees to the local businesses.
If they go to wfh/ hybrid, their foot traffic drops and the tax bill goes up.
That’s a side affect, but those retail stores could also move out to where the houses are with some legal changes.
It would be a nice suprise but I doubt corporate really cares about Jane and Joe’s coffee shop, or the local Hugo Boss
I can see the points on it, but I also know that I am prone to ordering delivery from my local shops or going to the mom and pop restaurant around the corner. The only ones who will really be hurt by a mostly WFH society (at least in this vein of thought) are big corporations who have heavily centered their efforts around the offices. Starbucks will have problems justifying having 4 shops in one block in NYC with 1/10th the foot traffic. I would rather buy from local small businesses and actually support my economy than funnel more money into some gaping dragon’s maw. I have been WFH for 7 years now and pray I never have to go back to working anywhere else.