By Rod Olivero, senior director at Getzler Henrich It appears that the hybrid workforce is here to stay, leaving the future of traditional office space largely unknown. As return-to-office policies continue to evolve, an increasing number of companies are either embracing, or adjusting to, the reality that accommodating some level of remote workforce is now an inevitability. When workers packed up their laptops and work documents and walked out of their offices in March 2020 in compliance with U.S. stay at home mandates, few employer/tenants, landlords or lenders could have imagined what would ensue. The state of the workforce today isn’t merely a function of employees not wanting to return to an office environment on either a full- or part-time basis. In more cases than one might imagine, companies are coming to realize that they can, in fact, operate effectively and with great efficiency under some level of remote worker scenario. Collectively, these businesses occupy tens of millions of square feet of office space in some of the nation’s most historically valuable urban real estate markets. Regardless of their motivation, as more companies embrace or acquiesce to the reality of remote work, companies have started to shrink their physical footprint …
