Returning to Work

Companies are still very upset that their workforce is not returning to work five days a week. I think three days a week is plenty. People need to come in for meetings, face-to-face, and have conversations. It’s a different vibe, and other things get done, but life is different now.

Covid allowed us to breathe and look at the most important things around us: family, friends, and personal health. Things changed because the world changed and how we interacted with products and companies, and our lives changed, but work still got done.

It’s harder for young people to enter the workplace. How do they learn? Who can they lean on for advice? How can they see how people operate in the business world? This is the next evolution of work, and we’ll figure it out as we always do.

In the end, the people win; they always do. Companies should rethink how they work now, not pining for the past. The bigger question is, what will happen to these empty buildings?

Are bankers sitting around the table and looking at how much money they gave developers to build buildings with very little skin in the game when money was essentially free? How many buildings are going to default? How many will have to renegotiate their debt?

We are shifting economies because of how we live our lives. So much has changed that we have yet to wrap our heads around it fully. I suspect the banks to take a huge hit, and the impact will, unfortunately, be taken out on all of us. Perhaps this time around, they will be big enough to fail.