Major Bay Area companies push employees to return to offices
SAN FRANCISCO -- Below several high-rise office buildings in San Francisco, you'll find Amber Woolcock on the job at an outdoor training facility called LuxFit.
"We specialize in personal training and group fitness but we also offer open gym memberships for people to come utilize the gym," she said.
She appreciates all of the clients who come to her facility in the Rincon Hill / East Cut neighborhood, many of whom are people who live or work in the area. She says they're busiest on certain days of the week when companies have people working in nearby offices.
"There's really no one around here except for the residents and then those two days a week when you've got consistent people coming in -- like Blackrock twice a week. Sometimes people are coming from Meta twice a week," she said. "A return to office in this area would create more foot traffic which would be fantastic for us to continue to build our member base."
Indeed, a number of large companies are moving toward less remote work and more time back in the office.
Google informed employees recently it will start to include badge-tracking in its hybrid, three-day-a-week office policy and attendance may be included in performance reviews.
Meta recently announced it will require all workers to come to the office three days a week starting in September.
Salesforce hoped to entice remote workers to come back into the office this month for two weeks, offering $10 charitable donations per day if they did.
"Giving back is deeply embedded in everything we do and we're proud to introduce Connect for Good to encourage employees to help us raise $1 million-plus for local nonprofits," a Salesforce spokesperson said.
Getting workers back in the offices in San Francisco is more of a challenge than in many other parts of the country, according to Jim Wunderman, president & CEO of the Bay Area Council.
"The trend to return to work has been upward but it's been slow and it's been steady," he said. "San Francisco has the highest number of remote-work-eligible jobs in the country at over 50 percent," he said.
Wunderman thinks that, with major companies pushing for more in-person work days, smaller ones will follow suit.
"The really big companies are clearly the trend-setters. If their employees are coming back, it's going to force the smaller and mid-size companies who depend on the business from those companies to also come back," he said.
If that happens, Wunderman says the Bay Area economy will benefit from it.
"The economy benefits from that. The small businesses certainly the most but, also, the general economy overall from the activity," he said. "There's a lot of feeling that San Francisco has seen its best days. There's a lot of doubt in this community -- and especially outside -- about the future of San Francisco but I'm really bullish on the future of the city."
At LuxFit, Woolcock says the more foot traffic the better for her business.
"Our facility is such an attraction and such an amazing community to be a part of that the more people that walk by, the more people will want to join and that will be really helpful with return to the office," she said.