Editorial: More complex business solutions needed than asking all workers to return to offices

Schaumburg Mayor Tom Dailly said this to his audience at his State of the Village address last week: "There is one thing we need from you, and that is not to be afraid to return to work. If we are to survive as the type of community we are and progress, people need to safely return to work."

Dailly is just one government leader here among officials nationwide who are making a similar call to arms to rescue office buildings and all the businesses that surround them - restaurants, pubs, dry cleaners and retail shops, especially in downtowns or corporate areas.

"Business leaders, tell everybody to come back," New York Gov. Kathy Hochul said in remarks before a civic organization earlier this month, according to The Wall Street Journal. "Give them a bonus to burn the Zoom app and come on back to work."

But that Wall Street Journal article this week also points out the problem: Not nearly all office workers want to return to the office.

COVID-19 is not the only reason or even the primary reason. After all, people are getting more comfortable gathering in crowded indoor places. As the Journal reports, citing data analyzed by Kastle Systems, movie theater attendance in the first week of February was 58% of what it was before the pandemic, restaurants were nearly 75% as full, and air travel recovered to about 80%. Yet the average portion of the workforce that has returned to offices in 10 major cities Kastle monitored hasn't climbed above 41%, in the first week of December; it was 33% last week.

The larger problem is, again as the Journal says, "most employees simply prefer (working from home) to the office, which often requires lengthy commutes and gives workers less flexibility in how they spend their days."

Who understands the distaste for commuting more than suburbanites? Employers are hearing their wishes.

Real estate experts working in the suburbs have given us their views.

"I think this has essentially changed what the American workplace is," Angel Douglas Stiemert of Ryan Companies told us last May.

"I don't think there's going to be a 'post-pandemic' (for the office market)," said Michael Flynn of NAI Hiffman. Flynn said he believes offices will continue to be valued, but the way forward for many companies will be complicated and individualized.

We feel for those businesses in corporate areas and the people who make a living in them, not to mention the office building owners losing rental income. And this all can disturb the property tax base - especially in a business-heavy suburb like Schaumburg. Dailly and the businesses can hope for a rebound to pre-pandemic life, where office workers abandon the work-from-home phenomenon.

But it's more likely that more complex solutions will be required - from incentives to entice workers back into offices to a total rethinking of real estate and business development. It's not looking like all the workers will return to office buildings simply because some businesses and elected leaders ask them to.