Sun Life head office in Waterloo, the old mutual Life building, has told everyone they can wfh ongoing, overriding some middle managers.
The property is the old mutual Life building (a beautiful historic building) with this huge office tower behind it. I guess they sold the office tower years ago and leased it back. I bet they’re pretty happy if they can simply not renew their lease going forward.
Equitable life and Manulife Canada both have large ho office footprints in Waterloo but I haven’t heard anything about what they’re doing.
I bet we see a mix. Some will push people back in person, and some companies will use that as an opportunity to hire high-caliber talent for remote work.
Inflation is pushing many to look towards expense reduction, which means getting rid of office space. Some of the big companies with dedicated campuses may follow suit, but I don’t think it’ll be a reasonable trend for many. I think it was Allstate that completely sold their campus or was talking about doing so?
I have gone into our office 4 times since it opened. There is hardly anyone there, my double monitors aren’t there, and I have to slink into empty offices to have phone meetings for 1x1’s. It sucks in the office. The wires thing is that many of the people who signed for being in the office on return aren’t going either. So they wanted to return but they aren’t doing it because it’s too much work to get there.
Yeah our office is similar. I’ve been there a few times and the trouble is because the occupancy is never above ~20% it always seems a bit silly being in the office. Bit like you’re WFH at the office, so I try to just go in strategically when it’ll be a worthwhile social day because of who else is there.
It’s way worse for actually getting work done though because my home set up is a lot better.
Maybe you could set up a little cot in your office to sleep in and save some commuting while you’re doing your 3 days. By the third day they’ll be begging you to WFH.
Still have not been to the office since 2020 despite living ~14 minutes away.
Weirdly, during a casual interview for a company they asked if I was okay being flown cross-country 1 day per month to visit their home office for meetings.
Imagine spending all that money to fly and hotel somebody for something that easily could have been a Zoom call.
My office still has double monitors at every work station, but the rest is true.
If it weren’t so expensive to reconfigure space, I’d say the winning move would be to make everything bookable offices, and completely eliminate cubes for anyone who ever collaborates with anyone. It’s SO much easier to collaborate in an enclosed office, where you aren’t annoying anyone and no one will overhear you. Where you don’t have to disconnect and reconnect your computer, it’s just there.
That’s the part leadership has had no qualms about cutting altogether: we no longer bring entry level candidates on site when interviewing. I think that’s a mistake, as we are still asking them to move here and be in person (at least hybrid) while they are in the rotation program, but can’t bother to give them a taste of our city or company’s culture.
While my office does have bookable rooms like this, they also did away with all personal desks, so we now have Claims people intermixed with Legal mixed with Actuarial mixed with Sales. So most departments have people on the phones all day long within a few desks of them.
I don’t think so. Companies can save a LOT of money on real estate by not sending everyone back. And a lot of management has figured out that WFH works. My department has been talking about making everyone go back to the office for months, and now that we are getting close, they have changed their tune.
Unless your company also has a huge real estate ownership as well…my company owns most of the surrounding area of our office. They’ll convert some to apartments and condos, but it’s in their best interest for most of us to go back, since the restaurants need to pay their rent and we provide most of the lunch business for them.