News & Updates
Jun 03

Key Takeaways from sf.citi’s Return to Work Survey

By Zach Drucker

With San Francisco’s vaccination rates and COVID-19 cases trending in the right direction, we wanted to reach out to the sf.citi community to get a sense of where companies stood on returning to work. We sent the survey to our network in late April and left it in the field for a couple of weeks. In total, we received 79 responses from San Francisco and Bay Area employers in the tech, nonprofit, or real estate industries.

From the survey results, we gleaned that the office we knew before the pandemic will never be the same and it reaffirmed the common perception that remote work, whether permanently or a few days a week, is becoming the go-to return-to-work model for companies. Companies are even doing the previously unthinkable and selling off San Francisco real estate. We are suddenly seeing companies reverse long-held beliefs about offices and workplace structures and embrace customizable back-to-work models that best fit their needs—and the new needs of their employees. 

The way we work has changed for good, creating ripple effects throughout the entire economy. This will especially be noticeable in cities like San Francisco that were specifically designed to cater to a dense workforce in their downtown core. Now with these new changes, San Francisco and cities like it will have to adjust to or face being left behind. 

Read below for more in-depth key takeaways and the survey results in full.

 KEY TAKAWAYS

  • There’s no rush back to the office. Few employers are planning to return to a full-time in-person office with only one out of five respondents working at a company that plans to use this return-to-work model. The number gets even lower for tech companies with around ten percent of tech respondents going fully back into the office.
  • Remote work—and its many forms—are not going away anytime soon. 
    1. The hybrid model where a majority of employees work two to three days a week from home was by far the most popular choice among our respondents with 53 percent.
    2. Right behind the hybrid model, companies implementing a remote-first policy received more than a fifth of the responses.
    3. Over half of the respondent’s employers will offer the option to be permanently remote or at least allow permanent remote work on a case by case basis.
  • Companies don’t value San Francisco office space as much as they did before the pandemic. 28 percent of respondents said their company is planning to decrease or eliminate their San Francisco office real estate. This represents a drastic shift for a city that was home to the most expensive and competitive office space market in the country before the pandemic.
  • Each company is doing what’s best for its specific needs. In our survey, we found no causation between company size or industry in determining what back-to-work model companies plan to use.
  • Reopening offices is costly and difficult. Employers face a variety of challenges and obstacles to reopening their San Francisco offices, including meeting costly and strict health and safety guidelines, searching for a clear guideline on vaccination policies, waiting for the San Francisco public school system to create a plan for students to go back to the classroom, and wanting to ensure that the public transportation system is fully operational.

To learn more about the current return-to-work models, policies, and challenges, check out our latest policy piece on San Francisco’s Return to the Office.

SURVEY RESULTS

1. What Industry do you work in?

2. Where is your office located?

3. How many employees does your company have?

4. Which of the following best describes your company’s return to work plan?

5. Will your employers offer employees the option to stay permanently remote?

6. What is your company’s office real estate plan in San Francisco?

7. What obstacles or challenges are facing employers reopening in San Francisco?

  • Public transportation: Many employees need assurance that they can navigate public transportation safely and have reliable service and routes to and from the office.
  • Health and safety guidelines: The rules and mandates are inconsistent and it’s costly to continually sanitize the office and organize the workplace to meet physical distancing guidelines.
  • Vaccine policy guidance: Employers are navigating unchartered territory with no City guideline on whether or not workers need a vaccine and if employers can mandate that they receive it. 
  • Public school reopening: It’s difficult for employees that have kids in the San Francisco Unified School District to go into the office if their kids aren’t in the classroom.
  • COVID-19 safety hangover: Employers have hesitations on rushing employees back too fast and have received concerns from their employees about the overall safety of the office.