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Mark Zuckerberg, the founder and CEO of Facebook, announced on Wednesday that the tech giant will allow many workers who have been working from home to continue working there on a full-time basis.
The Wall Street Journal reported that Zuckerberg told his 60,000 employees that it will even allow new employees the option.
“We’ve learned over the past year that good work can get done anywhere, and I’m even more optimistic that remote work at scale is possible, particularly as remote video presence and virtual reality continued to improve,” he wrote to employees.
The Journal reported that the company will open its offices at 50 percent in September and then fully in October. If an employee does not get the approval to work from home, the individual is expected to get into the office at least 50 percent of the time.
The paper said Zuckerberg intends to work from home for at least another six months.
“I’ve found that working remotely has given me more space for long-term thinking, it helped me spend more time with my family, which has made me happier and more productive at work,” he wrote.
The Journal reported that other tech giants like Google and Salesforce have implemented a hybrid approach to work. Brent Hyder, Salesforce chief people officer, posted online, “The 9-to-5 workday is dead.”
TREND FORECAST: The Trends Journal has reported extensively on the move to remote working and the effect it will have on commercial real estate. (See: “WORK FROM HOME=CITY REAL ESTATE DOWN,” “REMOTE WORK=COMMERCIAL BUST.”)
The more people who work remotely, the further commercial real estate prices will fall. In turn, businesses and transportation systems that relied on commuters will economically suffer, as will the workforce once employed in those sectors.
The shift to working at home will redefine economic ecosystems, especially in urban centers. Commuters buy lunch, gifts, clothes, gadgets, and other items in locales where they work; as workers stay home, downtown stores and restaurants will lose their traditional customer base and gas stations along commuter routes will see business plummet.
At the same time, owners of commercial real estate will face a reckoning as they slash rents to lure a shrinking base of tenants, forcing them to demand property tax concessions from cities that will struggle even more to maintain police, fire, and public works infrastructures.