Maybe it’s time to buy your own water cooler.
Many Detroit-area companies exceeded five months of empty area as staff left the site to make their paintings remotely amid the coronavirus pandemic.
For the most part, the arrangement looks good, a little too good. Additionally, some employers are contemplating cutting the length of their offices or giving staff more flexibility to permanently paint off-site. This would replace the genuine Detroit landscape, erode the city’s tax base, and bankrupt some retail establishments that had foot traffic.
In fact, one of Detroit’s largest employers, General Motors, is rethinking the way it uses workplace space. GM owns the Renaissance Center, its global headquarters, in Detroit, where approximately 5,000 employees paint. Because GM owns the building, it can’t, but GM executives are discussing how the automaker can offer staff more flexibility in how it paints in the post-pandemic world.
“It is very difficult to expect how this will spread in the future. The purpose is to paint to get the most out of both worlds, so that painters have flexibility and, at the same time, get the team spirit and collaboration that you get. at the Paintingplace, “said GM spokesman David Caldwell. That’s what the team is about . . . That’s what we’re doing right now. There are many tactics to do this.
More: GM tells Maximum to stay home until next summer
More: GM sets a date to bring workers back to the office
There will probably be pressure from the municipal government on many downtown tenants to get their labor back because those staff pay detroit’s source of income tax, which some don’t have to pay if they paint in a suburban house.
Frank Monaghan, a real estate broker whose company, Monaghan
“There is a whole new and conversion dynamic in the s operation. We’ll see more people running remotely and see more people who don’t go regularly,” Monaghan said.
He predicted that the ground plate would also shrink, and that staff would eventually enter their s a few days a week and exchange the use of the cubicle with other employees.
“We will see more consolidation in those painting environments,” Monaghan said, adding that the days of going five days a week will be a thing of the past.
He said stores are also affected by the trend to work from home and may want to downsize. Their owners also feel the rush.
“There have been concessions to retail tenants in those buildings due to orders from the house,” Monaghan said.
But given the existing pandemic, it is still too early for knowledge that measures the permanent to have an effect on the workplace in the future.
Jim Bieri, director of Stokas Bieri Real Estate, said detroit’s labor market will take two years to get out of the pandemic.
Bieri, who worked from his offices in Woodward’s First National Building near the Martius campus in Detroit, said downtown Detroit is a “ghost town” right now.
But he sees that many staff members eventually return. Many of your employers will need you back because it’s to collaborate; there is a synergy of being with colleagues.
“It works too well for too many people,” Bieri said. There are things you miss if you’re not in an environment.
“You can run a business remotely, but it’s difficult to move the business forward and allow it to grow if you don’t have the opportunity for your workers to collaborate on new ideas,” said Bieri, specialist. real estate advertisement.
“There is an explanation why for staff meetings,” Bieri said. “You can’t do everything over the phone. You can’t read the faces of your (employees), you don’t know if you have their attention, you miss the spontaneous thing. ” That might just be the concept you are looking for. It’s hard to stay involved when you’re searching on a screen.
For many of these reasons, GM Control is discussing what to do with its paint force. Last month, GM asked his administrative staff about his painting reports on the pandemic. His comments indicated that remote paintings are very effective, Caldwell said.
“We’re compiling the lessons learned and looking for tactics where we can use workspaces in the future,” Caldwell said. “The ongoing transformation of the Global Technical Center is a smart example. “
GM has spent about $1 billion over the more than 3 years rebuilding its facilities in southeastern Michigan at RenCen, Warren Global Tech Center and its grounds in Milford.
“Recent investments and enhancements to our campuses, adding advanced non-unusual areas, advanced generation and increased flexibility, put us in a smart position for the future,” said Caldwell.
GM has approximately 40,000 non-unionized workers in the United States. Here’s how it happens in Michigan:
On Friday, GM said US painters who work remotely plan to continue to do so until at least June 30, according to an internal document provided to the Free Press. The memo says GM is working to create a “more flexible paint culture” after the pandemic.
In a recent interview, GM CEO Mary Barra told the Wall Street Journal that one of the lasting effects of the pandemic may be how GM’s salaried workers will do their jobs in the future, monitoring remote work.
“I was very inspired that the team could continue to expand cars and facilities remotely,” Barra told the Journal. “Everyone has demonstrated this commitment to ‘We’re not going to slow down. We’re going to find a way. ‘ And so many things they’ve done, now we can put them in position permanently. “
For example, Barra said there is a domain where GM makes adjustments and, “Normally, it would be a two-week procedure with revisions and anyone who had the idea had to have an opinion. We did it in a day. What I like is that there is now this new intolerance of the old. “
Crosstown’s rivals, Ford Motor Co. , and Fiat Chrysler Automobiles, also continue to contemplate a return to date for their administrative staff.
Ford’s world headquarters is located on Michigan Avenue in a 12-story glass-lined building known as the “Glass House. ” The automaker has several other offices, design and engineering facilities spread across Dearborn.
Ford told staff it would fill those buildings, continue to operate remotely through at least January if their jobs allow for off-site work. Ford conducted a survey in North America in June and found that three-quarters of its 30,000 remote employees liked to keep running. Off site.
More than 100,000 ford international workers in on-site work have returned to these facilities.
At FCA, the 18,000 painters in North America have adapted to remote paints and the automaker continues to “actively monitor long-term operating situations,” said Shawn Morgan, FCA spokesman.
The FCA corporate campus is on I-75 in Auburn Hills. A 15-story construction primarily employs white-collar corporate executives and others such as lawyers, human resources, finance and marketing, to name a few. The complex measures 5. 4 million square feet, making it the second tallest construction in the United States in terms of surface area under one roof, according to the company. The Pentagon is bigger.
The nearby technical center houses a 170,000-square-foot pilot plant. There are clinical laboratories in the complex.
FCA has taken steps to maintain its workers and ensure business continuity while others are running remotely to the fullest. Monitor and adjust career situations as needed, Morgan said.
“Our team that has the ability to paint remotely will continue to do so until they listen directly to their manager,” Morgan said. “All painters who want to be physically available to make their paintings continue to be exhibited on their painting sites where we have physically powerful multi-layered processes in position of their physical condition and safety.
California trends often tend to spread across the country, so it’s inevitable that the commercial coffee makers in many workplace break rooms will be relics of a bygone era.
Silicon Valley took the floor: Twitter said it can paint remotely at all times. Facebook has joined Google to say it will allow painters to paint from home until mid-next year, as GM.
“In fact, they are the pioneers of the workforce,” said Adam Robinson, CEO of Hireology Inc. , a Chicago-based human resources generation provider. “When you start seeing big corporations like GM imagining this new reality, you know it’s the new move. “
Robinson has told his two hundred painters who paint in rental offices in downtown Chicago to paint remotely for the rest of the year. His painters have called for permanent flexibility in the way they paint after the pandemic and Robinson has said he will grant it to him.
“If you have a people-centered culture and your workers are asking for something that’s vital to them, then there’s no explanation why not,” Robinson said. “This represents the new reality. If you can take care of your consumers and the business can operate, there is no explanation why not do so ».
After all, he said, the generation has allowed other people to meet in real time from anywhere in the world.
But there are companies derived from companies that depend on the workers of the center, such as restaurants, dry cleaners and other companies.
“They’re suffering right now. So adjust what it means to own genuine property in a central business district,” Robinson said. “Rents are falling, which is hurting landlords. It replaced the landscape. “
In Chicago, the number of subleases has exploded as corporations seek to get out of their area, Robinson said. It is priced between $ 50 and $ 80 consistent with the square foot for high-end workspace in many primary metropolitan markets, he said.
This means that for a company with 1000 employees, assuming an open fashion design, it takes at least 125,000 square feet, setting the value of this area to a minimum of $6. 3 million consistent with the year.
“It’s a lot of money; these are expenses No. 2 of corporations’ maximum wages and payments; No. 2 is regularly a genuine heritage or physical care,” Robinson said.
Many corporations reduce some of the Internet prices at employee homes and workplaces near this number 2 cost, Robinson said, noting: “It is much less expensive to pay for an Internet connection than for a workspace. ” .
Employers aren’t the only ones seeing savings through remote work; employees who have had to live close to their offices in, say, Silicon Valley, where the burden of life is astronomical, can now move to one more domain without losing their jobs. .
If corporations go through a permanent remote execution style, that doesn’t necessarily mean the end of teamwork and collaboration.
“Of course, communication around the water cooler is lost,” Robinson said, admitting that he likes to come in and chat with people.
“But managers are going to have to replace their taste to fit their time,” he said. “Being a very effective manager, remotely assembling your team’s skills, is a skill you’ll have to acquire. “
Robinson’s prediction: “I wouldn’t be surprised to see remote control courses taught in long-term MBA programs. “
Editors Eric D. Lawrence and Phoebe Wall Howard contributed to this report. Contact Jamie L. LaReau at 313-222-2149 or jlareau@freepress. com. Follow her on Twitter @jlareauan. Learn more about General Motors and subscribe to our newsletter.