SAN FRANCISCO—The future of office demand is a hot topic around the country as COVID-19 required companies to engage in the largest work-from-home experiment in history. After a three-month mandatory hiatus, these firms and employees have largely successfully adjusted to working from home, but new surveys point toward workers looking to get back to normal routines instead of working from home permanently.

In fact, a survey by Gensler found only 12% of workers want to work from home full time and 70% say they want to spend most of their week in the office. Meetings, socializing and impromptu face-to-face interactions with colleagues were ranked as the top reasons people wanted to head back into the office.

JLL's new "The Future of Office Demand" report also finds the physical office will maintain its importance for facilitating innovation and collaboration, and ultimately employee health, well-being and productivity. By studying historical trends of previous global economic downturns such as the 1990s recession, dot-com crash and 2008 global financial crisis, JLL points to how the corporate real estate market recovered as the economy was rebuilt.