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FTI Expert’s Hub: How Would Employees React to Return-to-Office Rules?

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Ingrid Noone and Josh Herrenkhol discuss the telling results of a recent FTI Consulting survey with CPE’s Laura Calugar. The post FTI Expert’s Hub: How Would Employees React to Return-to-Office Rules? appeared first on Commercial Property Executive.

In this FTI Experts’ Hub episode, Laura Calugar talks to Ingrid Noone and Josh Herrenkhol about the impact of a hypothetical RTO mandate. Image by peshkov/iStockphoto.com

Almost three quarters of fully remote or hybrid U.S. workers would seek alternative employment if required to return to office full time at their current pay, the latest survey from FTI Consulting found.

“Employees who have become accustomed to working remotely value the flexibility and benefits of not having to commute into the office,” said Ingrid Noone, senior managing director & co-leader of the Real Estate Solutions practice at FTI Consulting in this quarter’s episode of FTI Experts’ Hub. Some of them would even consider a pay cut in order to maintain their ability to continue to work from home.

At the same time, the survey also revealed that the majority of employees are excited or OK to be back in the office for some portion of the week. A large part of the workforce understands the benefits of being together in person, particularly those working in architecture, engineering, arts and culture, retail and banking.

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“The larger the organization, the more employees are willing to work in the office on a full-time or hybrid basis, and the smaller the organization, the more respondents indicated they preferred not to be in the office at all,” Noone noted.

Ingrid Noone and Josh Herrenkhol expand on how modern and updated office space providers will be better positioned to support RTO directives. Images courtesy of FTI Consulting

Among the biggest practical takeaways of this study is that office landlords need to think about the future of their properties and, specifically, what will attract tenants, according to Josh Herrenkhol, senior managing director in the Real Estate Solutions practice at FTI Consulting.

“I expect that live-work-play type, mixed-use properties will do well, particularly in larger urban areas, so setting and surroundings do matter,” said Herrenkhol.

The survey was conducted by Southpaw Insights among 1,000 people who work in a corporate office setting or home office setting and who were asked about their views of a hypothetical RTO mandate.

Here’s what else Noone and Herrenkhol revealed:

General view of the survey’s results (0:54)
How employees’ current work model impacts their attitudes toward remote or in-office work (2:45)
Industry/size of company influence views about RTO policies (5:11)
Variations across the map and among all the different generations (6:47)
Can employers sweeten RTO mandates? (9:47)
Why some office workers would be excited about returning to the office (11:05)
Updated office spaces better positioned to attract employees back to office (13:25)
Federal employees have been called back to the office. Does this matter? (14:52)
The labor market (16:46)
Will we ever go back to the 2019 status quo? (18:10)

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The post FTI Expert’s Hub: How Would Employees React to Return-to-Office Rules? appeared first on Commercial Property Executive.