The COVID-19 pandemic has greatly affected the work routines of everybody and forced companies to instill a work from home set up. The industry of finance, customer support, and marketing are just some industries that can operate fully while working from home while other industries who need physical labor, such as construction, have been stopped.
Because of this trend, experts have been asking how wide and big does a company office should be. Darren Fleming, a real estate CEO, states that client needs now, in terms of space, are much different than before the pandemic happened. This also can result in office space demand dropping, ranging anywhere from 10% to 25% in the next few years.
In the past months, many offices were already cleaned out. Rogers will not renew its lease on Ottawa call center, and the Ottawa headquarters, which housed the think tank for almost 35 years, is already for sale. Many companies have also created a restructuring plan for their offices which greatly reduced the office number into half. Office centricity is now over and thus, experts think that work from home will continue to be the top trend even after the pandemic.
