More Than a “Remote” Possibility

 

Years ago, I queried to no one in particular as to why time seems to accelerate with each passing year.

I recalled during my elementary school years on how the annual summer vacation seemed endless, while now July and August appear to pass like a 747 from New York to D.C.

Perhaps the most plausible explanation I received was that when you’re 10 for example, a year equals one-tenth of your life, while at 50, it is one fiftieth.

So, along those lines, I somehow still struggle with the belief that in two months, I will have been in my current position for nine years. NINE. And all that time working remotely.

As I’ve stated in this space many times, not reporting to an office for the first time in nearly a quarter century took some getting used to. I immediately missed the camaraderie of my colleagues, and often my only contact with the outside world would be comprised of phone calls and emails.

And now with the nation battling the coronavirus pandemic, remote workers not surprisingly have grown exponentially. In fact, according to the U.S. Census Bureau more than half of the labor force in major metropolitan areas such as San Francisco, Boston, Seattle, and Washington D.C., are working from home.

Research from accounting and financial staffing conglomerate Robert Half showed that more than 50 percent of some 2,800 senior managers surveyed, indicated that their companies have hired either full time or temporary remote staff since the onset of the COVID-19 crisis.

And that’s not likely to ebb anytime soon.

Nearly 100 percent of our CPA firm clients have either some or much of their staff working from home and many are mulling whether to reduce their current office space permanently. That trend does not bode well for the commercial real estate market, which has, to be kind taken a brutal pounding since the national lockdown.

Even in my humble bucolic town, signs for available office space have sprung up like ragweed in October. At least two of our current clients are engaged in lawsuits against landlords who are refusing to let them out of their leases for fears of getting perhaps half of the cost per square foot prior to COVID-19.

And to be fair I cannot say I blame them. After all, they have to make a living too.

And unlike myself and much of the current workforce, they would be hard-pressed to do it remotely.