Warnings from large global banks, including Citigroup, J.P. Morgan Chase and Wells Fargo, that more than $40 billion in commercial real estate loans were coming due by the end of 2024 came as early as April this year.

But the current and potential defaults associated with just one commercial real estate sector (CRE) sector — office space — have the banks' largest share of attention.  As recent record vacancy rates and bank defaults in Los Angeles; San Francisco; the Washington, D.C. metro; Austin, Texas; New York; and Chicago have shown, the expectation that workers would return to the workplace soon has not occurred.

The big question for office investors and owners is not just, "How do we get people back to work?" but, "What do we do when our lease is up, and should we move or renovate," according to a recent article in the Harvard Business Review (HBR). Most of these issues would be solved if companies could figure out how to fill their now-empty offices.

HBR talked to the co-founder and managing principal of Hartford-based Amenta Emma Architects, Tony Amenta. Amenta is an ardent proponent of people coming back to the office. He discussed changing office design as one way to encourage that.

"I think that employers seem to understand that it's not all about the space," he said. "I wish it were, for architects' sake, but technology plays a role, flexibility is huge and accommodating employees' needs is important. Maybe it's just a battle for which days to be in the office. Employers are spending a lot more energy and time on these things."

The companies that have had the most success bringing back employees have been tech-based companies like Microsoft Corp. and Twitter Inc. They believe it's nearly impossible to collaborate and create separately from home.

Another of those creative tech companies is mobile games giant Playstudios Inc., which is trying to manage return-to-work incentives in offices around the world, including Tel Aviv, Israel; Belgrade, Serbia; and Vietnam, as well as San Francisco, Las Vegas and Portland, Oregon, in the U.S. Playstudios CEO Andrew Pascal, agreed that for a creative company like his, with between 850 and 900 employees, coming back to the office is imperative to its success.

"It's a lot harder to collaborate on a Zoom call and although an effective and efficient way for people to communicate, it doesn't allow you to connect to the natural rhythm that you find when you're together in a room and in person," Pascal told Benzinga. "There's no substitute for people working together. If you spend time in our offices, you'd see that. Our Tel Aviv office is a cool old warehouse with an interior workspace designed with a lot of separate pods and the infrastructure needed to support particular teams."