Power Reads: 5 Interesting Articles That Will Help You This Week

Each week, I select a few articles that rise above the fray and hopefully help you on your journey in leadership and the CRE world. They pull from one of four "corners": corporate real estate, technology, management science and anything positive. Each day we can become a better version of ourselves.

1. Attracting Talent During a Worker Shortage

As of late April 2021, there were over 9 million open jobs in the U.S., a record high. Recent reports show employers across the country are scrambling for ways to fill their open requisitions. While it might sound contradictory, the U.S. is experiencing higher unemployment numbers and a labor shortage.

Conversations with our clients indicate that filling low-wage and hourly positions has been particularly a challenge. How do you attract high-quality talent in a labor market that keeps defying previously established business patterns? Here are a few areas you can start.

Briefly after the layoffs caused by the pandemic, some thought leaders expected to return to an employer’s market. In an HBR piece published a few months after the shutdowns, we cautioned against too heavily using old rules-of-thumb to predict how Covid might impact hiring outcomes and argued that the ensuing labor market would not be “like anything anyone has observed seen since the birth of modern capitalism.”

2. Hybrid Hurdles: A Partial Office Return Full Of New Complications

The hybrid office plan seeks to offer everyone flexibility. But as more firms return, it's clear this new workplace principle is causing its own hiccups.

A recent Wall Street Journal story details the cybersecurity challenges of a team of co-workers, and their devices, constantly moving between home, office and elsewhere. Lugging laptops isn’t new, but IT teams, stretched thin by the demands of switching offices to all-remote overnight, now need to make sure more seamless movements between offices work, all while updating security patches and making sure personal and corporate devices are properly sequestered.

It’s a scenario, studies show, hackers are happy to exploit. The World Economic Forum believes cyberattacks jumped 238% globally between February and April 2020.

3. Morgan Stanley chief to bankers: If you want NYC salary, you need to be in NYC

Morgan Stanley’s top boss issued a stern warning to his staff Monday — come back to the office by Labor Day, or face a pay cut.

“Make no mistake about it. We do our work inside Morgan Stanley offices, and that’s where we teach, that’s where our interns learn, that’s how we develop people,” Chief Executive James Gorman said during the firm’s annual U.S. Financials, Payments & CRE conference from the bank’s Midtown office, which was held virtually this year.

“If you can go into a restaurant in New York City, you can come into the office.”

Since the pandemic first started, the banking giant permitted its 70,000 employees to work from home, but with 70 percent of Big Apple adults vaccinated and an infection rate that’s not even half a percent, Gorman said it’s time for workers to get off their couches and back to their desks.

4. 'Five-day office week will become the norm again'

The five-day office week could become the norm again within two years, the Centre for Cities think tank has told the BBC.

A blend of home and office work is expected to be popular while the UK recovers from the pandemic. But some analysts then anticipate a shift back to pre-Covid working patterns for many. Currently, people who can work from home are still advised to do so. However, that is likely to change if the government ends all social distancing restrictions on 21 June.

"I expect we will see three or four days a week in the office as the UK recovers," Paul Swinney, director of policy and research at Centre for Cities, told Radio 5 Live's Wake Up to Money programme.

"Over the longer term, I'm quite hopeful that we will see people return five days a week.

5. People Are Returning to Restaurants, Stores and Hotels. But Not Yet the Office.

Office towers and nearby businesses in central business districts are missing out on the strong economic recovery, largely because the rise in vaccinations and easing of mask restrictions haven’t propelled most employees back to work.

Fewer than three out of 10 white-collar employees were working at the office on average in 10 major U.S. cities, including New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Washington, D.C., according to Kastle Systems. The nationwide security company monitors access-card swipes in more than 2,500 office buildings in cities across the country.

As of last week, an average of 31% of office workers had returned to the workspaces they occupied before the Covid-19 pandemic, according to Kastle.

The number of employees who are back in the office has been inching up since vaccines began rolling out in the U.S. In some cases, employees have pushed back on their employers’ requests to return. In others, companies are waiting until the fall—when vaccinations will be even more widespread and schools will be in session—to more widely reopen offices.

Your success blesses others. I wish you a great a hugely impactful week!

Ken Ashley