Working from home and future of city centres

AmberGold

_Brian wrote: »

The demise of city centres will likely hit pension funds who have invested in office buildings that no staff now occupy.
Cant see leases on these being a very valuable asset.

This will be a major issue and not one I have seen discussed elsewhere.

NSAman

Outkast_IRE wrote: »

To date no company i know of is looking at reducing their city centre office accomodation. What they are actively looking at is changing it over to more of a hot desk type environment where people can come and go alot easier than previous. So they can have more staff than before in a smaller space as they are not all there concurrently.

For alot of industries we are dealing with people in their 40s,50s and 60s who are at high level in management and they have an expectation of meeting rooms and office space to be available

You obviously are not looking closely.

I know of a large employer. They have paid off lease breaks for two buildings outside the city. They have stopped using and paid off lease break on 50% of Dublin offices and have 95% of their staff working from home.

This is the start of it all.

New York has something like 8% of staff working in offices in the city.

This is going to cause a massive commercial property issue, which ultimately will affect the banks.

Thats me

Wompa1 wrote: »

Different countries (even within the EU) have different employment laws, different public holidays and also for Irish PAYE, they'd need to be registered with the Revenue.

There are companies who specialize in global HR and payroll but there's an overhead to using them.

Our company has permanent employees in EU, i never heard about any issue with this. Since tax should be declared in the country of tax residence, i'd guess such employees are simply paying their tax in their countries and having nothing to do with Irish Revenue office. Generally speaking, you even not need to stay within EU while working for EU employer.

showpony1

eviltimeban wrote: »

For the first while, sure, there'll be the option to "work from home", but (and especially) with younger / lower ranking office staff, they'll soon be "encouraged" to be in the office more / all the time, so they can be kept an eye on number one, but also because companies have all this space and they won't want it to be not used.

This will 100% be the case for most busy companies once they can get offices fully opened again.

the-island-man

It's very hard to predict what will happen with the virus not too mind the future workplace! ... But I'm going to take a swing at it!

Provided Corona Virus goes away this year I would see things largely going back to normal with regard to permanent jobs in Multi-National companies. Suddenly in some cases or gradually in others.
Start-up companies and less secure contracting work may be offered as a largely remote role as an incentive as a trade off for lower pay\risk.

The reason for me saying this is because I feel many large companies like to do what they know works. Sure they'd potentially save on leases, running costs etc but they'd be stepping into the unknown with regard to a lot of areas. I would imagine there are a lot of legal grey areas due to a law that was created with a physical workplace in mind. How culpable is a company for an Employee's welfare who they might never see? How do you go through a disciplinary procedure? How do you ensure an Employee is not trying to work two gigs?

This is coming from a person who loves having no commute and hopes it continues but I just think one thing is for sure in all this, a company will always do what's right for the company. They're not there to make our dreams come through.

CelticRambler

Not being resident in Dublin/Ireland, it's interesting to see how so many of you equate "city centre" with "office work(ers)" with only the odd voice suggesting that the life of city centre could be based on anything other than a grab-and-go coffee shop culture. Here on the continent, while there are some cities that are devoid of human life outside of office hours, for the most part, there is a living, breathing population of permanent city-centre residents. This is especially so in the less touristy cities, but I read an article last year describing how coronavirus purged many European big cities of the infestation of temporary visitors (tourists and commuting workers) and actually enabled life to "get back to normal" for real people.

This does not apply to Dublin, because however much someone might want to live a European-style city-centre life, it is impossible to do so: family-sized apartments never feature in any of the development projects, so either you pay an astronomic price for a Georgian mansion or you have to live in the suburbs or beyond. I would have thought that now would be a great time for the government to claw back commercial property for conversion to good-quality more-than-DINKY-sized accommodation ... but I thought that too just after the Crash of 08 and several times before, and it never happened; so I expect central Dublin to remain inhabited by singletons with no lasting attachment to the place for the foreseeable future.

westgolf

Fair points CelticRambler but this conversation would apply to most major towns and cities in Ireland not just Dublin.

Will refrain from comment on your description of the inhabitants of Dublin going forward.

Outkast_IRE

NSAman wrote: »

You obviously are not looking closely.

I know of a large employer. They have paid off lease breaks for two buildings outside the city. They have stopped using and paid off lease break on 50% of Dublin offices and have 95% of their staff working from home.

This is the start of it all.

New York has something like 8% of staff working in offices in the city.

This is going to cause a massive commercial property issue, which ultimately will affect the banks.

I understand that some of the Big Tech companies over extended as they were in heavy competition with each other for upcoming space and were afraid of not having room to grow so were taking up leases left right and centre. Certainly they are going to have to break leases or leave space idle , as they were the first companies to commit to allowing WFH forever.

But alot of your non tech companies are currently not looking at major changes bar setting their offices up for more hot desking in the future. No need to take on additional space but you can have additional staff.

emmalynn19

Bambi wrote: »

Dublin, Texas? Dublin was jammed regardless of the time prior to Covid, it was fkin awful

What a weird take, surely you'd want the city you live in to be lively, not dead?


If you want to live somewhere quiet its not like there are not options - thats everywhere in ireland other than a few square kilometres in a couple of cities.

Thats me

emmalynn19 wrote: »

What a weird take, surely you'd want the city you live in to be lively, not dead?


If you want to live somewhere quiet its not like there are not options - thats everywhere in ireland other than a few square kilometres in a couple of cities.

But if you also want a good weather, more affordable prices etc - thats everywhere outside of Ireland. If you working remotely - you have great options :cool:

wes

Company i work for, went with a hybrid model a few years ago now. They drastically reduced office space and offered everyone to work from homes pretty much. By all accounts a lot of money has been saved on office space and it has worked out for everyone who works there.

At the start, there were restrictions on how many days we could work from home, but those were ignored after the first couple of years.

I think a lot of wanting to keep an eye on people by older management types, will not be able to justify the attitude in the face of savings, and the fact that most companies already have software to check who is and isn't working. I am not even talking about crazy invasive tools or anything, but simple stuff like ticketing systems, document management etc already track who is doing what when. The tools are already there if needed, and regular meetings deadlines etc on the there own are enough to see if someone is or isn't doing any work.

I think companies that don't at least adopt a hybrid model, will find themselves in a bind, as the best people will go to places that offer them the option of WFH, as even if you largely work in the office, being able to work from home the odd time is very useful, even for the lads who come in pretty much everyday before covid, the WFH option was used by them now and again.

emmalynn19

Thats me wrote: »

But if you also want a good weather, more affordable prices etc - thats everywhere outside of Ireland. If you working remotely - you have great options :cool:

Sure but thats nothing to do with the post I replied to. You are hardly going to relocate to another empty city centre are you, you either move to somewhere with lots going on or somewhere quiet.

Wompa1

Outkast_IRE wrote: »

But alot of your non tech companies are currently not looking at major changes bar setting their offices up for more hot desking in the future. No need to take on additional space but you can have additional staff.

I work for a chain of hospitals in the US. I worked in the office for a few years. Our CFO became the CEO which of course means financially restructuring. He made the decision before COVID that reducing the physical real estate should be a long term goal. He gave up the lease on a couple of the admin buildings and sold another one. He expected to save about $27 million in the first 2 years just from the operating costs alone.

I would bet companies like Wayfair, SmartBear and others without a physical dependency will at least remain partially remote. They'd be silly not too.

It's becoming a bigger story in the media when a company announces an intention to bring employees back into the office in future like a certain US bank.

wes wrote: »

Company i work for, went with a hybrid model a few years ago now. They drastically reduced office space and offered everyone to work from homes pretty much. By all accounts a lot of money has been saved on office space and it has worked out for everyone who works there.

At the start, there were restrictions on how many days we could work from home, but those were ignored after the first couple of years.

I think a lot of wanting to keep an eye on people by older management types, will not be able to justify the attitude in the face of savings, and the fact that most companies already have software to check who is and isn't working.

This is going to become a big revolution work culture wise, I think. Measuring employee productivity. The concept of starting at 8am and finishing at 5pm is silly. Managers who micro-manage and need to see their staff at all times should go the way of the Dodo. More will be invested in the value of measurable output. Managing based on results rather than hours.

If you look at executives and the goals they set for departments and the company overall for a given year, they never include an expectation of 500k collective employee hours or any of that sh1te. If they can meet or exceed expectations, why would they care how many hours were spent to get them to those goals?

My cousin use to work for a large chain of toy stores in the US. He would manage the team who worked the night/morning shift in the lead up to Christmas. He said most of his workers had other jobs or were in college. He told them "the company expected this much stock stocked on the shelves and this much replenished in the back each night. You guys are all scheduled to work until 6am. I can't let you leave early but if you get the work done before the end of your shift, any time leftover is yours to study if that's what you want to do or find a spot to sleep if that's what you want as long as you stay here and clock out at the end of your shift"

Goal based is best, imo.

deathbomber

yes agreed on wanting to keep an eye by some people in management but these people need to adapt, this is really the future. It will also potentially bring life back to rural towns impacted by immigration and younger folk moving to Dublin, Cork etc for work. i see it as a very manageable great opportunity we should embrace

Wompa1

deathbomber wrote: »

yes agreed on wanting to keep an eye by some people in management but these people need to adapt, this is really the future. It will also potentially bring life back to rural towns impacted by immigration and younger folk moving to Dublin, Cork etc for work. i see it as a very manageable great opportunity we should embrace

Which goes against what some have said on this forum and also what some politicians have said about urban planning. The broadband rollout is required but it would be less of a pain in the arse if fewer people lived out in the shticks...

I agree with you though. I think it would be great if they could use this to rejuvenate some of the towns and villages around the country. Get class sizes back under control and alleviate some of the pressure on Dublin. I'm living in a small spot, we're lucky we have 1GBps Fibre so I can work remotely just fine. There are only 17 kids in the playschool my son goes to. We moved here from a small town closer to the city where there were more than 30 kids in the playschool. The principal here said in 2001, they almost closed the school entirely due to low numbers. Since then there has been a population boom with young families moving in. It's a great community. I wouldn't want to live anywhere else even if JustEat and Deliveroo don't come out this far :pac:

showpony1

Most people working normal jobs aren't allowed decide to relocate themselves abroad during this WFH period which some on here seem to think can simply do. You are expected to be in Ireland while working.

CelticRambler

westgolf wrote: »

Fair points CelticRambler but this conversation would apply to most major towns and cities in Ireland not just Dublin.

Will refrain from comment on your description of the inhabitants of Dublin going forward.

Why refrain? Surely that's the nub of the problem, especially if the context is work-from-home and its impact on city centres? I don't have any hard-and-fast statistics to hand, but personal experience suggests that the vast majority of Dublin residents (can't say how it is in the other Irish cities, as I only know them as an occasional visitor myself) are:
- Irish students, a lot now working from home-home because they don't like their flatmates/Dublin that much;
- Irish singletons working for one or other of the tech/finance companies and only living in Dublin because that's where the job it;
- Foreign students and tech/finance people who are only there until they have no reason to be there any longer
- Long-stay tourists

Sure, you get some couples (again, often keeping an eye on the property market outside the Pale) and even some one-child families; but they're few and far between. Two-child families or more, other than those in social housing, they're practically non-existent in the centre-centre; and even extending the "centre" out as far as the two canals, you'd be hard pressed to find many "big" families - hardly surprising when there's nowhere for them to live. A quick bit of googling shows me that I can get a proper family-home-sized apartment in central Paris (5 bed, 2 living rooms) for less than the cost of a something similar (looking at Hanover Quay).

The same argument that was made above for developing serviced estates close to town/village centres applies to cities too: if there were more opportunities for families to live in the city centre, within walking distance of a place of work, the city would be more resistant to societal shocks such as the one we're experiencing at the moment.

Dravokivich

Wompa1 wrote: »

This is going to become a big revolution work culture wise, I think. Measuring employee productivity. The concept of starting at 8am and finishing at 5pm is silly. Managers who micro-manage and need to see their staff at all times should go the way of the Dodo. More will be invested in the value of measurable output. Managing based on results rather than hours.

I don't get this results over availability thing at all. A lot of office work is services and provision of a service is usually time based.

fly_agaric

CelticRambler wrote: »

Not being resident in Dublin/Ireland, it's interesting to see how so many of you equate "city centre" with "office work(ers)" with only the odd voice suggesting that the life of city centre could be based on anything other than a grab-and-go coffee shop culture. Here on the continent, while there are some cities that are devoid of human life outside of office hours, for the most part, there is a living, breathing population of permanent city-centre residents. This is especially so in the less touristy cities, but I read an article last year describing how coronavirus purged many European big cities of the infestation of temporary visitors (tourists and commuting workers) and actually enabled life to "get back to normal" for real people.

This does not apply to Dublin, because however much someone might want to live a European-style city-centre life, it is impossible to do so: family-sized apartments never feature in any of the development projects, so either you pay an astronomic price for a Georgian mansion or you have to live in the suburbs or beyond. I would have thought that now would be a great time for the government to claw back commercial property for conversion to good-quality more-than-DINKY-sized accommodation ... but I thought that too just after the Crash of 08 and several times before, and it never happened; so I expect central Dublin to remain inhabited by singletons with no lasting attachment to the place for the foreseeable future.

There's often a dislike and contempt for cities and towns in Ireland from our mostly rural electorate and its representatives in the Dáil. They are seen as a necessary evil really.

They are a handy whipping boy for drumming up votes (opposition to "them up in Dublin" or replace with "them in" the nearest big town or city somehow damaging rural or "real" Ireland).

The local governments (in Dublin anyway) are fragmented + have limited powers. IMO Dublin is run by central govt. as a cash cow for efficiently making money for the state, not with a view of making it a good place where someone would want to live. So we see problems allowed to fester in Dublin for decades (e.g. the hotel building boom & short stay/AirBnB tourism) because there's good money to be made out of it. I think there was about to be a boom of throwing up "bedsit" type accomodation for wealthy foreign students and young professionals (apologies - "co living" or whatever its called) again because there is alot of profit in it but hopefully Coronavirus has done some good & put a spanner in some of that getting built. edit: end moan!

westgolf

I think what we can agree on is that there is an opportunity to revitalize town centres in terms of inhabitants and business occupants. The shift to WFH whether permanent or short term could be the driver but unless there is government support then it's unlikely to be a serious runner.

jkforde

wes wrote: »

I think companies that don't at least adopt a hybrid model, will find themselves in a bind, as the best people will go to places that offer them the option of WFH, as even if you largely work in the office, being able to work from home the odd time is very useful, even for the lads who come in pretty much everyday before covid, the WFH option was used by them now and again.

yeah, reckon genie is out of the bottle w.r.t. WFH, and job market expectations and competition will drive it toward normality fairly quickly. I think the reduced numbers of commute workers and their spending in the city center (e.g. Galway, any publicly available data of how much this was I wonder) is going to shift public policy (e.g. planning) in terms of what development is needed \ envisioned in the future... I mean the snazzy new office development on the docks in Galway (Bonham Quay), apparently Genesys are going in there, bet they're trimming their lease.

anyway, it'll be very interesting to watch the law of unintended consequences play out in the next few years, thanks all for the discussion thus far!

HansKroenke

AmberGold wrote: »

This will be a major issue and not one I have seen discussed elsewhere.

Well, anyone who has their pension invest in property is fully aware that it is a high risk investment and that means potentially higher returns of course but also greater potential to lose money. My pension only allocates a small portion to property for this reason.

It's interesting to see the news headlines recently with Hugo Boss I think it was securing 24% of their lease on Grafton St and also some shopping centre owners being forced to take haircuts on rents being received the last year. Remember, prior to covid we actually had property funds having to close the gate to redemptions so it is not just a covid issue but in fact reflective of the commercial market potentially peaking already.

Jim2007

_Brian wrote: »

The demise of city centres will likely hit pension funds who have invested in office buildings that no staff now occupy. Cant see leases on these being a very valuable asset.

Unlike individuals who see a property as good idea for a pension. Pension funds do not, they following the best practices known the world over, but ignored by Irish individual investors...

If you look at the actual structure of of a pension fund you’ll find that they fully acknowledge property to be one of the highest risk categories in the portfolio and manage it accordingly. They may take a hit, but it won’t be significant.

Jim2007

Well, anyone who has their pension invest in property is fully aware that it is a high risk investment and that means potentially higher returns of course but also greater potential to lose money.

But it does not! Historically it a high risk investment that delivers a poor rate of return, given the risks involved.

BruteStock

No company is ever going to hire some guy in India to work remotely from his crappy local ISP. Think of the data thats being sent across the world.
Won't ever happen

Thats me

BruteStock wrote: »

No company is ever going to hire some guy in India to work remotely from his crappy local ISP. Think of the data thats being sent across the world.
Won't ever happen

How long you were frozen? Welcome to the modern world where Indian specialists are working remotely for EU customers over many years and their "crappy" ISPs are capable to serve second largest market in the world (after China), which is more than 100 times larger than Irish market

BruteStock

Thats me wrote: »

How long you were frozen? Welcome to the modern world where Indian specialists are working remotely for EU customers over many years and their "crappy" ISPs are capable to serve second largest market in the world (after China), which is more than 100 times larger than Irish market

Mickey mouse jobs. Maybe you know more about them than me.

completedit

The times they are changing. But realistically, office spaces exist to signal the might and prestige of a company. There's no need for financial companies to have huge glittering businesses but they do, much the same way they built churches, each other better than the last throughout the Middle Ages. Company culture matters, you can keep company culture going with wfh if majority of your staff were working for you prior to Covid but what happens as staff leave and new staff come in? Slowly the organisation begins to lose its identity.

I am excited by a more lived in Dublin City centre which isn't just coffee shops to serve office workers.

NSAman

Outkast_IRE wrote: »

I understand that some of the Big Tech companies over extended as they were in heavy competition with each other for upcoming space and were afraid of not having room to grow so were taking up leases left right and centre. Certainly they are going to have to break leases or leave space idle , as they were the first companies to commit to allowing WFH forever.

But alot of your non tech companies are currently not looking at major changes bar setting their offices up for more hot desking in the future. No need to take on additional space but you can have additional staff.

This is not a big tech company.. it is a finance company.

The times are a changing my friend.

Even in my own business I have not seen many of my employees all year (apart from meetings online).

Physically they do not need to be in the,office. VoIP systems, zoom etc, servers and computers allow the transfer of work seemlessly.

Jim2007

BruteStock wrote: »

No company is ever going to hire some guy in India to work remotely from his crappy local ISP. Think of the data thats being sent across the world.
Won't ever happen

BruteStock wrote: »

Mickey mouse jobs. Maybe you know more about them than me.

Every day of Indian staff manage the systems of major companies across Europe and I can assure you that they are very competent and definitely do not do it from crappy ISPs. I know because I’ve worked with many of them over the years.

And it does not end at IT. Being old empire, their commercial and tax law is very similar to the UK/Ireland and they are making strong in roads into providing accounting, tax and financial services etc as well.

It is a very big mistake to dismiss the competition so flippantly.