Return To Office Where We Are 5 Years After Covid

In and around metro Atlanta, life looks and feels a lot like it did before COVID-19 struck. Traffic and commute times are back to pre-pandemic levels. In fact, Atlanta ranks 5th highest mean commute time in the nation, with commute times averaging more than 32 minutes.

If you’re sitting in gridlock on the Downtown Connector, you might’ve forgotten that just 5 years ago, the highway looked eerily like the movie poster for The Walking Dead.
Source: Buzzfeed

Across the nation and here at home, both public and private employers are calling workers back onsite — a push that’s been termed The Great Return. But before we unpack what that means for the region, let’s take a look at where we’ve been and how work has changed, in order to better understand what’s next.

A TIME OF “GREAT” CHANGE

2020: The Great Transformation

When the pandemic hit, much of the world went on lockdown. States issued shelter-in-place orders to prevent the spread of COVID-19. Employers who could (e.g., tech firms, fintech, marketing, business and professional services) pivoted to working from home (WFH). Business seized the opportunity to work flexibly, building out digital investments and tools that ushered in “the great transformation” — a new way of working and living. A year into the public health crisis, WFH opportunities expanded into remote work or WFA (work from anywhere), as employers capitalized on a growing talent pool and digital-savvy professionals realized they could live in less expensive locations, move across the country or even take a road trip and experience the freedom of travel while simultaneously getting work done.

2021: The Great Resignation

The pandemic reframed how we thought about the world — from how and where we work to how we take care of our families and what we value. In the face of social upheaval, loss and grief, as well as ongoing challenges with childcare, remote schooling, and fear of illness, among many other reasons, a record number of employees left their jobs — nearly 11 million between April 2021 and July 2021 alone. By the year’s end, the US Bureau of Labor Statistics reported a quit rate of 3% in November and December.

Source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics

2022: The Great Reshuffling

Massive resignations continued through the first half of the year, with an estimated 4 million Americans quitting their jobs every month. While some workers dropped out of the labor market altogether, many reported switching for new and more meaningful positions with companies that were better aligned with their values and opportunities for professional growth. HR professionals began to consider how to retain employees, rather than simply attract them, investing in wellness perks and supporting mental health and work-life balance through flexible work arrangements.

2023: The Great Resistance

Following the lead of tech companies such as Google, Amazon, Meta and others, employers began calling employees back to the office amid backlash. In survey after survey, employees made it known they enjoyed a balance of on-site and remote work, a model known as hybrid work, would consider leaving an employer who required them to return full-time for one that supported this balanced approach. Forbes reported that only 1 in 7 employees welcomed going back to the office full-time.

2024: The Great Workaround

OK, you caught us: We made this one up but it fits. After a period of trial and error (and RTO starts and stops), flexible work was widely embraced by the majority of U.S. firms, with 67% offering work location flexibility. A mature “structured hybrid” model emerged to help solidify its popularity. The Flex Report found that 43% of U.S. companies had adopted this model, which requires employees to be onsite a certain number of days and for a certain set of hours.

Source: Flex Index

2025: The Great Return

While some major companies are moving away from their remote work agreements, findings released earlier this month from Stanford and the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta indicate that the majority of U.S. firms support hybrid work and are standing by their flexible work policies. Researchers say the findings suggest that execs are content with the benefits they see with their flexible work arrangements.

IT’S BACK TO THE OFFICE, METRO ATL

In the five years since the global health pandemic struck, much of life has gotten back to normal. Unemployment rates are low, employer surveys indicate an easier time attracting and retaining talent, and business continues to pick up. The U.S. Treasury reports that more than 70 percent of small businesses expect revenue growth over the next 12 months and a surge in entrepreneurship, as more Americans start businesses of their own. Business confidence, together with a desire to bring teams back together for great collaboration and communication, is spurring employers to implement return-to-office mandates.

Office Recovery Underway

Coinciding with The Great Return and just in time for spring, metro Atlanta’s commercial real estate market is also starting to show signs of new growth.

Data from analytics company Placerai finds that the metro area is a leader in return-to-office growth, outpacing major metros such as Miami, San Francisco, Los Angeles and New York. Office visits in July 2024 rose to more than three-quarters of levels reported in July 2019, four percentage points above the national average. It also shows that office foot traffic in Atlanta, including some of its suburban job centers, had increased more than 7% since 2023, compared to just 1.8% nationally for the same time period.

Source: Axios Atlanta

Read more about metro ATL’s post-covid office market!

Federal Workers Return

Earlier this year the Trump administration mandated that all federal employees return to work in-person on a full-time basis.

The metro Atlanta area is home to more than 62,000 federal employees, the majority of whom work in downtown Atlanta. Outside of Washington, D.C., Atlanta has one of the country’s largest groupings of federal office buildings along a half mile stretch, known as the Government Walk area, near the Five Points MARTA Station.

The return of federal staffers, which started in February and will roll out in waves, holds the promise of revitalizing the commercial real estate market, economic development with an increased tax base, and the return of retail and eateries that support office workers.

Expect More Traffic . . .

The morning commute is about to get even more real with the return of federal workers.

Some industry experts predicted that the impacts of federal employees returning to offices might be temporarily offset by the layoffs taking place, but that was before the efforts of state and local governments to prioritize hiring federal workers impacted by the cuts, which could potentially bring more traffic into those communities. Fulton County, for example, launched a new program encouraging federal workers facing job cuts to apply for the county’s 800 vacant positions.

While traffic is expected to pick up in Downtown Atlanta, it could be overwhelming to some areas unprepared for thousands of more vehicles such as at the Center for Disease Control and Prevention’s main campus on Clifton Road, an area that lacks high-speed transit. The AJC reports that the CDC alone employs nearly 14,000 employees — less than 1,000 of whom work onsite full-time — at offices on Clifton Road, in Chamblee and in Lawrenceville.

. . . And More Flexwork

Despite the call for a full return to work by companies such as Amazon, Dell, Washington Post, and others, only 32% of U.S. firms have taken this approach. The Q4 2024 Flex Report finds that 68% of companies offer work location flexibility, a 17-point increase from a year ago and marking a big shift in C-suite attitudes and policies around flexible work arrangements.