Microsoft to Partially Reopen Global Headquarters Next Week

BREAKING NEWS Microsoft To Partially Reopen Global Headquarters Next Week New Policy Coincides With Release of Survey Showing the Downside of Remote Work Microsoft's headquarters campus in Redmond, Washington. (Coolcaesar/Wikimedia) By Clare Kennedy CoStar News March 22, 2021 | 8:02 P.M. Technology giant Microsoft plans to let workers return its headquarters campus in the Seattle suburbs for the first time in more than a year, a move that follows its own research finding that employees working every day at home for months on end can lead to reports of screen fatigue, exhaustion and crying. To that end, Microsoft said in a Monday statement that on March 29 it would kick off a "soft opening" of its offices in Redmond, Washington, a city about 15 miles northeast of Seattle. Under Washington state's coronavirus protocols, offices are limited to 50% of their usual occupancy, which means that roughly 28,600 of its 57,200 employees in the Puget Sound region could go back next week — if they so choose. "Taking a pulse of thousands of employees who have returned to Microsoft work sites in some capacity, we’re observing employees are embracing the flexibility to split their time between a Microsoft office and home," wrote Kurt DelBene, executive vice president, in a blog post. Microsoft's measure is not mandatory, or total, and it reflects a growing trend among major companies to shift permanently to a work culture of "extreme flexibility," as Microsoft executives put it. It comes as a national vaccine rollout accelerates, bringing with it loosening regulations, some reduced fears about gatherings that have spurred businesses to consider bringing workers back and debate whether regulations are being changed too quickly. The idea behind Microsoft's new policy is to give employees more control over where and how they work. However, the measure also belies Microsoft's growing unease about the downside of remote work. Microsoft was among the first major companies to ask its employees worldwide to work from home in March last year as the pandemic rapidly spread around the globe. Since then, many companies have found benefits and shortcomings of remote arrangements that vary from increased productivity as a result of cutting out commute times on the positive side to struggling to foster collaboration through digital meetings on the negative side. A flexible office policy has broadly emerged as what could be future of work from companies including tech giants Google, Facebook and Salesforce, which have also said they plan some form of a dual remote and in-office work strategy when it's safe to have workers together again. Such plans have been spurring renewed real estate growth among the tech companies, even as much of the nation's office market remains stagnant. Microsoft said it conducted a study that shows that a permanent shift to a hybrid model that blends remote work and in-office hours is "inevitable" but also found that employees are overtaxed and extremely unhappy with remote work as it is practiced. The situation is so dire that Microsoft's research team found in a survey of 31,000 workers, including full-time and self-employed respondents, results that found more than 40% of the respondents said they planned to leave for a new job within months. As the virus becomes more contained, Microsoft said it has able to slowly add workers back to office sites in 21 countries, which DelBene estimated was about 20% of its global employee population, which stands at about 168,000 in all. Whether Microsoft's Puget Sound employees will want to return is an open question. In a survey of Microsoft employees who had already been given the option to work on-site about 54% of said they "are spending less than 25% of their time at one of our work sites. Furthermore, 69% are spending 50% or less time on-site." The company said some of the those respondents could be hesitant to return for more personal reasons such as having children at home while schools are closed or waiting to receive a vaccine. Collaboration Desired Microsoft's news is a breath of fresh air for many in the commercial real estate world, where office subleasing is high and the future has seemed uncertain. Offices in downtown Seattle have been operating at about 15% to 16% capacity over the past few months, said Rod Kauffman, president of Building Owners and Managers Association Seattle King County, led mainly by those in medicine and research. Its rival, Bellevue, Washington, has fared slightly better, with occupancy ranging around the 20% mark. Kauffman said Microsoft's news "reinforces" what he and the organization's members have been hearing from tenants. "It's a competitive advantage to have an office," he told CoStar News on Monday. Brain-storming, on-boarding a new employee and developing staff are all extremely difficult at a distance, and for that reason some quantity of office space will be necessary for most businesses. There will probably be downsizing, and some won't return, he said, but organization is optimistic. Activity is slowly "ticking back up" he said, estimating that recovery would take two to four years. Much has been said about the benefits of working from home, but the Microsoft study found that there is a stark split in how and to whom these benefits accrue. "Remote work has created new job opportunities for some, offered more family time, and provided options for whether or when to commute. But there are also challenges ahead," Microsoft researchers wrote. "Teams have become more siloed this year and digital exhaustion is a real and unsustainable threat." The study, called the 2021 Work Trend Index, involved a survey of more than 30,000 people in 31 countries over January and an analysis of trillions of productivity data and labor signals across the Microsoft programs that make remote work possible, namely the Microsoft 365 platform. The report shows ample satisfaction with the shift to remote work on the part of the executive class but an increasingly restive rank-and-file workforce that is fighting a losing battle with stress, burnout and "digital exhaustion." "The data is clear: our people are struggling. And we need to find new ways to help them,” wrote Jared Spataro, corporate vice president at Microsoft 365. While 61% of those in the C-suite described themselves as "thriving" in the new normal, one in five of the survey respondents said their employer "doesn’t care about their work-life balance," and 54% percent feel overworked. About 42% said they lack essential office supplies at home, and one in 10 still don’t have an adequate internet connection. By that same token, more than 46% said their employer made no attempt to help them with remote work expenses. One in six had cried with a coworker in the study with a sample heavily skewed toward tech workers who are male, white and affluent. Because workplace interactions occur behind a screen rather than in real life, the unhappiness of the employees is largely invisible to managers, the authors added. Microsoft's own user data showed a dramatic increase in the intensity and length of the workday, made possible by the devices and software it provides. Time spent in Microsoft Teams meetings has more than doubled globally and, apart from a brief dip in December, is still on the upswing. The average Teams user is also sending 45% more chats per week and 42% more chats per person after hours. This metric also continues to be on the rise. "This barrage of communications is unstructured and mostly unplanned, with 62% of calls and meetings unscheduled or conducted ad hoc. And workers are feeling the pressure to keep up," the authors wrote. "Despite meeting and chat overload, 50% of people respond to Teams chats within five minutes or less, a response time that has not changed year-over-year. This proves the intensity of our workday, and that what is expected of employees during this time, has increased significantly." As a result, about 41% of those surveyed said they are likely to consider leaving their current employer within the next year, with 46% planning to make a major pivot or career transition. The report also argued that the lack of interpersonal interaction and the shrinking of workers' social networks would result in an increase in group think at the expense of innovation. It points toward giving employees an accessible and appealing office, the ability to work from home when it suits and proper respect for adequate rest and the boundaries between the personal and the professional. "We believe in the value of bringing people together in the workplace. Having facilities around the globe enriches our culture with new ideas, fresh perspectives and unique local viewpoints that help us continue learning from each other," DelBene wrote in his statement about the Redmond campus. "From innovation labs to briefing centers, being near our customers and having more touchpoints helps us better understand customer and partner needs, adding value to the great work we’re doing together." .

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