“There’s a level of camaraderie, there’s a level of interaction, there’s a level of ‘me reading your body language’ that you can’t do over Zoom,” said Lupoli, whose office employees now come in five days a week. “We’ve lost so much of this interaction. We’ve just got to get it back.”
From giant companies like Amazon to local businesses like Lupoli’s, many executives have been rethinking their return-to-office requirements after a year of relative stability. And while many major office employers show no signs of budging, evidence of a changing mood is starting to pile up. A recent survey by consultancy firm KPMG shows 79 percent of US chief executives expect to resume largely in-office work within the next three years, up from 62 percent a year ago.
Along with Amazon, other tech employers with a major presence in Massachusetts are well on the way, such as Salesforce — now at three days a week or more, depending on the job, as of Oct. 1 — and Dell, every day for sales teams as of Sept. 30. CarGurus will require workers to be in the office 60 percent of the time starting in the new year — essentially three days a week, up from two currently — and environmental services firm Veolia North America is adopting a similar requirement.
Chief executive Micah Remley, whose Boston firm Robin makes workplace management software for employers, said the balance of power has shifted to employers in the current labor market, compared with two years ago. In some places, attendance requirements focused on building an in-office culture are factored into performance reviews or are used to subtly trim payrolls as people voluntarily leave and are not replaced.
“The vise is starting to tighten,” Remley said. “You can just see this tide turning. . . . The data doesn’t show it yet, but we are seeing it. Companies are newly emboldened.”
Once a laggard in the share of the workforce returning to the office, Boston now appears to be around the national average, if not above it. Mayor Michelle Wu recently bragged to the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce that occupancy at office buildings owned by BXP now exceeds 90 percent of prepandemic levels — on Tuesdays through Thursdays. Financial services, law, and real estate workers are more likely to be in the office. Tech startups and government agencies, less so.
Return-to-office trends could have huge consequences for the battered commercial real estate industry, which is suffering from some of the worst vacancy rates in memory. Roughly one out of every four offices in downtown Boston are empty. While there are some signs the situation could be stabilizing, the return-to-office requirements haven’t been pervasive enough to start turning things around yet, because most companies are holding onto their hybrid or remote schedules, said Ashley Lane, senior vice president at brokerage Perry CRE.
Then there’s the broader impact on Boston’s struggling downtown. Michael Nichols, president of the Downtown Boston Business Improvement District, said foot traffic is on track to rise 4 percent from last year, with a pickup seen in the second half of 2024 as more return-to-office requirements kick in after a slow start.
But traffic is still considerably short of prepandemic levels, particularly on Mondays and Fridays. He pointed to numbers from data analytics firm Placer.ai that show weekday commuting traffic in Boston at 58 percent of prepandemic levels, close to the average of the top 25 cities in the country.
Nichols has been positioning the downtown to be less reliant on office commuters, but they are still critical to the district’s health.
“The core concern I heard two years ago was that companies didn’t want to be isolated in their return-to-office [approach] and that they could lose talent to someone who is allowing more days at home,” Nichols said. “Now I think that fear is eroding.”
However, for every office employer that increases its requirement, there are others keeping the status quo, based on the Globe’s inquiries to local companies in recent weeks. Liberty Mutual remains at two days a week, while MassMutual and John Hancock are at three. Attendance is sparser at health insurers Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts and Point32Health. On the other end of the spectrum, Wayfair started requiring corporate employees to return four days a week (tech workers could opt for three) last year, as did State Street, though neither seems poised to go further.
The bottom line for Boston: The city now has the widest spectrum of return-to-office requirements since the term first started being used, early in the pandemic.
That said, few companies are expected to match Amazon’s extreme position, at least for now. “I appreciate their boldness [but] I think four days a week is going to be the high and three days a week will be the low,” said John Dolan, managing director for New England at brokerage Avison Young. “It all depends on the type of industry, but three to four seems like the sweet spot.”
Veolia is among the local employers entering that sweet spot. Starting in January, Veolia office employees will be expected to show up three days a week, up from two currently. (Most field workers already work in person all five days by necessity.) In Boston, the change coincides with a move of the headquarters to a smaller office in the Financial District.
Veolia North America chief executive Fred Van Heems said he unveiled the new plan in part to address employees who felt disengaged during the pandemic. Also, onboarding newcomers, particularly younger workers, is easier when they have more time in person with their more experienced peers. “It’s a lot easier to convey joy when you have people around you, than through screens,” Van Heems said. “It’s good for us as a company and for the people individually, and important for the collective mental health that we have more human interactions.”
At Akamai Technologies in Cambridge, though, executives are taking a different approach. In mid-2022, Akamai allowed nearly all employees the option to work in person, at home, or a hybrid of the two. They get to decide based on where they feel they’re most productive. Akamai chief human resources officer Anthony Williams said the company has seen an average 25 percent increase in the number of applicants per open job since adopting the policy and a 40-plus percent drop in attrition (although it has also announced three rounds of layoffs since the pandemic began).
“We believe this is a differentiator for us as a company,” Williams said of Akamai’s policy. “We’re a company that operates on the internet. What greater way to show the power of the internet than showing we can be successful in operating in a virtual environment.”
Meanwhile, entrepreneur Gogi Gupta is taking an “office first” approach that essentially requires people to come into the office four days a week, or five if they just joined and are learning the ropes, to enhance employee retention and culture. Gupta, who employs about 80 people in Boston at his marketing firm Gupta Media, enacted a policy called “Flex 48″ at the start of the year, a reference to the number of days in the year they can work from home.
“There’s a number of people who don’t apply to work here, and that’s all right,” Gupta said. “The extroverts and the people who believe in collaborative work and enjoy an office environment, they’re very excited.”
Jon Chesto can be reached at [email protected]. Follow him @jonchesto.
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