How do different cities and states respond to getting back to work?

Watch how reopening strategies differ across industries throughout the US, and learn which tenant communication and building readiness tools are helping businesses return to work safely and efficiently during the pandemic.

In this episode of Preparing for the New Normal we bring a panel of real estate experts from leading property management, development and ownership firms together to discuss what they are seeing on the front lines. They discuss their plans for tenant communication and building readiness post COVID-19, and how their tenants and property managers are responding to “return to work” readiness plans at their various properties across the nation. Hear from Lincoln Property Company leaders, Matt Hickey, Daniel Younger, Scott Barbee and hear from Husein Sonara who is the COO of Safir. Moderated and hosted by James Segil (Openpath) and Michael Beckerman (CREtech).

As we review the landscape of America's return to work response, the data shared by Openpath from their Social Distancing Index is a strong indicator that we’re all still sheltering in place, and that very few businesses have actually gotten back to work. What we can deduce from our discussions amongst the panelists is the following:

  1. There are tremendous differences across the nation in regards to sheltering at home and returning to work, as many of the more rural and southern states have continued to stay at work a great deal more than most of the northern and coastal states.

  2. Portfolios with lots of knowledge workers have seen an easier shift to remote work and expect a slower return to the office given the ability for many workers to work effectively from home.

  3. It appears that many employers will be coming back to work in shifts with reduced numbers of workers allowed back at the same time.

  4. Many buildings have deployed post COVID-19 upgrades in terms of cleaning and load-in/load-out management but fewer have deployed technology or design upgrades yet as it's still too early.

  5. Open communication and transparency with tenants is proving to be the most effective strategy, as leading from the front puts property owners in a position of strength, trust and respect which tenants value.

  6. Early sentiment amongst workers surveyed showed that there is a great amount of desire to get the economy restarted, and that outweighs the stress over getting sick for many/most workers.

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