C&W CEO Brett White Expects the Number of Teleworkers to Double
But more jobs will be created to backfill the lost office space, he also says.
Coming into the pandemic, 5% of the workforce toiled from home. Coming out of the pandemic, Brett White, Cushman & Wakefield’s CEO and executive chairman, thinks that number could double.
An additional 30% of office workers were allowed to work from home one or two days a week. Speaking on CNBC’s ‘Squawk on the Street,’ White thinks that number will jump 50% to 60% after the pandemic. Additionally, 3 million workers lost their jobs in March and April and only 1.8 million have been rehired.
White says the work-from-home group, which does not constitute a large number of people, and the agile workforce group, which is a significant number, are the “downdrafts” on office sustainability and occupancy.
Even with people working from home more days a week, White says companies won’t just eliminate office space. People will still need space during the days they do come into the office. Overall, he could see companies with these agile workforces reduce their footprint by 10%, 15% or even 30%.
“A lot of employers should and will think of creative ways to use their space more efficiently,” White says. “And that’s going to be a drag on occupancy.”
But counteracting that will be an increase in office employment, he says. “That rise in office employment mitigates fully over the next three years, that work-from-home piece and the agile working piece.”
White says every company sees office rent as a fixed cost that they want to reduce. “We’re always trying to find ways to be more efficient with the space,” White says. “We also have to have environments that our employees want to work in and we won’t be able to attract people to our companies and retain them because their work environments are attractive.”
The cities where these employees are working could change. But White thinks that will depend on the industry a company is in.
“If you’re in tech and you have engineers that can work anywhere and they want to move from the peninsula in San Francisco to Boise, that’s probably fine,” White says. “By the way, you may reduce their compensation a little bit.”
But for services firms, the equation may be different. “When you think about big services companies, they tend to be located in larger cities,” White says.