My new team has a completely flexible work-location approach. There is an office, and we can come in if we want to. But there's no requirement or badge-swiping. Those of us who are local also collaborate daily with colleagues in drastically different time zones-Europe, Middle East, Africa (EMEA) and Asia Pacific (APAC). So our overall team is distributed enough that in-person work can't be our organizing religion.
Unsurprisingly, financial firms, as well as tech, media, and advertising companies, are driving the surge with major deals. In April, Deloitte signed a lease with Hudson Yards for 800,000 square feet of a 717-foot tower still under construction. Amazon is expanding its NYC office presence, too. In 2020, the tech giant bought the historic Lord & Taylor building. This year, the company bought a building at 522 Fifth Ave.
NBCUniversal is offering separation pay that isn't tied to employees' number of years on the job, an atypical move that some leadership experts say risks denting worker loyalty in the long term. The media giant told employees this week that if they don't want to comply with a new return-to-office mandate, they can leave and take a severance package comprising eight weeks of base salary, Business Insider first reported.
The data, which comes from the Census Bureau's American Community Survey, shows that about 21% of San Franciscans reported working from home in 2024, continuing a decline since remote work peaked at a whopping 45% in 2021. Meanwhile, public transit usage has seen the inverse trend: last year, 25% of people reported commuting by transit, up from the 2021 low of just 11%.
In an internal memo on Thursday, ANZ Group said employees' salaries will be cut if they are not in the office for at least half the working week. Bloomberg first reported the memo. A spokesperson for ANZ confirmed the contents of the memo to Business Insider. "Our hybrid working expectation has been made clear to our employees, including potential impact on future remuneration if employees don't have an appropriate exception," an ANZ spokesperson said.
