Kforce to Sell Its Tampa HQ As It Scales Back Office Footprint

While there is a lot of talk about workers heading back to the office, one company is scaling back its real estate presence because of flexible work schedules.

Professional staffing services provider Kforce has agreed to sell its corporate headquarters in the Tampa Bay area. Upon anticipated closing in mid-May 2021, it will lease the office back for 18 months as it looks for available space in the same market for its future corporate headquarters.

Joseph J. Liberatore, president of Kforce, says the sale became a possibility because of how employees thrived working remotely through the pandemic.

“We believe our future lies in a technology-enabled, fully integrated hybrid work environment,” Liberatore said in a prepared statement. “This decision is not only based on our review of business data and trends, but also on feedback from multiple employee surveys where they have indicated a strong desire for less time in the office and a greater amount of flexibility.”

Kforce has occupied its roughly 130,000-square-foot corporate headquarters in Tampa since September 2001. As the company narrowed its focus on technology and finance and accounting staffing and solutions by completing a series of divestitures over the last couple of years, it has needed less space.

CEO David L. Dunkel said that Kforce is only using about 50% of the capacity of its corporate headquarters and it intends to provide its employees with an aptly sized, state-of-the-art corporate headquarters that encourages a high degree of collaboration by leveraging technology.

“Given the underutilization when combined with the need to satisfy our employees’ desires for a more flexible, technology-enabled future work environment, it was no longer necessary to maintain a large real estate footprint in our corporate headquarters,” he said in prepared remarks.

Many companies are grappling with how to handle office space after the pandemic. While flexibility is important, respondents to Cushman & Wakefield and CoreNet Global survey of 339 people from over a dozen countries indicated that 100% remote work is not ideal for most employees. Pre-pandemic, 59% of respondents described their company’s approach to work as office first. Post-pandemic, that number dropped to 10% as 58% of respondents indicated that they wanted to go to an office-first hybrid. After the pandemic, only 18% of respondents said that “mostly working in company offices” described their approach.

“We see a real opportunity for smart employers to transform the workplace experience with flexible options for employees by offering a variety of locations and experiences to support convenience, functionality and well-being,” said Despina Katsikakis, global leader of Cushman & Wakefield’s Total Workplace Global Lead in a prepared statement.