As the restrictions to combat the coronavirus have been easing, many companies that implemented remote work during the pandemic to continue their activity have decided to return to the face-to-face model, either totally or partially through a hybrid regime of teleworking .
In the United States, for example, many workers are returning to the office: this is indicated by data recently published by Kastle Systems, a company specializing in information technology.
There are more people coming back to the office. According to the report entitled ‘Getting America Back to Work’ (USA returns to work in Spanish) prepared by Kastle Systems, the ‘Back To Work Barometer’ system, developed by the firm and capable of quantifying the proportion of wage earners who return to the office, detected an increase of 0.9% in the period between January 18 and 25. In other words, 50.4% of the employees analyzed by Kastle Systems in ten US metropolitan areas went to their workplace, the highest percentage since the pandemic began.
Study methodology. The analysis system developed by Kastle Systems collects the data of 300,000 users, distributed in ten metropolitan areas of the country, through the use of a security card that is inserted at the entrance of the offices where these users work. Some of these metropolitan areas are New York, Washington and San Francisco, three urban regions in which the percentage of workers who have returned to the office has increased by 0.4%, 1.1% and 2.6 %, according to the report recently published by the firm.
Differences between regions.On the other hand, all the cities analyzed by Kastle Systems reached a percentage of workers who returned to their office equal to or greater than 40%, the highest since the pandemic began. In this sense, the metropolitan area of Austin, located in the state of Texas, registered the highest percentage with 68%, while the metropolitan area of San José, in the state of California (where Silicon Valley is located), registered a 41%, the lowest data.
The owners of the offices, happy. On the other hand, these data are great news for the owners of office buildings. In June 2022, the universities of Columbia and New York published a study entitled ‘Telecommuting and the office apocalypse’ which indicated that due to the low demand caused by remote work, a 32% reduction in value was estimated from US offices
Teleworking continues. Although many companies are choosing to return to the face-to-face model, the truth is that teleworking offers advantages for companies, workers and the environment. It is also a tool to attract the best qualified professionals, increasing the competitiveness of the firms that apply it.
Do not return to the starting box. For this reason, there are companies that continue to refine their remote work policy. In this context, the solution for offices that are being emptied is not to return to the traditional face-to-face model, but to allocate them to another use, as proposed by organizations such as ‘The Utilize Project’ in the United Kingdom.
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