In the battle of employees vs commercial real estate giants, it seems the underdogs are winning.
One of New York's biggest office landlords has capitulated to the hybrid working model, declaring Fridays in the office officially "dead forever."
Steven Roth, chairman of New York-based real estate giant Vornado Realty Trust, has instead turned his attention to making his sites as accessible as possible for commuters to tempt them back, and enjoyable once they get there.
Despite having forked out $1.2 billion overhauling two of its offices in Manhattan's Penn Station area, Roth said he was well aware that not only are Fridays in the office over, but Mondays are also touch-and-go.
Roth told the Wall Street Journal he believes staff will commute into major hubs in the middle of the week as long as their journeys are easy—so has put increased focus on a "one-seat commute."
His plan is for employees to not to set foot on the subway to get to their offices—they can either walk given the proximity to major transport hub, or enter the buildings via underground entrances that directly link the buildings to the transport network.
And Roth's billion-dollar gamble is backed up by the data.
According to weekly analysis from Kastle Systems, which provides the security for 2,600 buildings across 138 cities in the U.S., the office occupancy levels across the top 10 cities in the country sits at 49.8%.
In the New York and San Francisco metropolitan areas, this percentage is on the up over the past week or so, sitting at a 50% and 45% occupancy rate respectively.
Likewise Kastle found that offices were by far the busiest on Tuesdays, followed by Wednesdays and Thursdays.
Although the number of workers at their desks has fallen for every day of the week since February 2020, the most recent data for May 2023 shows the number of people commuting in—particularly on Tuesdays and Wednesdays—has increased by up to 10% compared to the same month last year.
What employers are saying
While Vornado—worth $3.35 billion—is hoping to tempt talent back with restaurants, libraries, pickle ball courts, gyms and bars, bosses of the resistant workforce have taken a more direct approach.
Google, which initially offered a more lenient approach in returning to work with a desk-sharing policy, recently went all-in with its return to office mandate.
The Alphabet-owned company told staff earlier this month they have to be in the office three days a week, or risk their attendance acting against them in performance reviews.
Google's chief people officer, Fiona Cicconi, told the company's huge workforce that remote work would now only be allowed "by exception only", with a spokesman telling Fortune, “Our hybrid approach is designed to incorporate the best of being together in person with the benefits of working from home for part of the week."