AT&T is adding its name to the list of some of the country’s most powerful employers ditching their pandemic-era flexibility and calling workers back to the office for five days a week.
The Dallas-based telecommunications giant will kick off the new year with an in-person mandate requiring all office employees to work on site for the complete workweek, a company spokesperson confirmed to CoStar News. And for those who will be reporting to an office more regularly, AT&T said it is investing in making it a worthwhile commute.
“The majority of our employees and leaders never stopped working on location for the full workweek, including during the pandemic,” the spokesperson said. "As we continue to evolve our model, we are enhancing our facilities and workspaces, adapting our benefits programs, and incorporating best practices to ensure our employees are best equipped to serve our customers."
The move, taking effect at the beginning of 2025, is the latest escalation the company has made in getting workers to commute to an office more frequently.
Last year, CEO John Stankey told employees they would be required to report to an office at least three days a week, reporting to one of nine corporate hubs: Dallas, Texas; Los Angeles and San Ramon, California; Seattle, Washington; Atlanta, Georgia; Washington, D.C.; Middletown and Bedminster, New Jersey; and St. Louis, Missouri.
AT&T’s real estate footprint had previously included more than 300 offices across the country, meaning thousands of workers had to either relocate to one of those primary hubs or put in their notice. Now, the roughly 18,000 workers AT&T said ultimately decided to stick around will once again have to adjust to a new schedule, this time reporting to an office eight hours a day, five days per week.
The company joins a parade of large employers eager to move past hybrid and flexible work schedules they adopted in response to the pandemic. Corporate heavyweights such as Amazon, IBM, Salesforce and Dell, among others, have recently stepped up their in-person requirements, and employers are now demanding workers commute to an office all five days of the workweek.
More people, more space
Escalated mandates have fueled optimism among national office landlords, many of which have been struggling in recent years to retain their portfolio occupancy as tenants aggressively slashed real estate footprints in a move to both trim costs and adjust to flexible, post-pandemic work policies.
The combination of depressed demand, stagnant leasing and ongoing flexible work has helped push the national office vacancy rate to a record high of about 14%, according to CoStar data. Tenants collectively handed back upward of 65 million square feet last year, boosting the total to more than 210 million square feet of move-outs since the start of 2020.
What's more, the leases that are being signed these days have shrunk considerably, averaging about 20% smaller than their pre-pandemic averages.
Recent news of escalating return-to-office mandates could be a turning point for the national office market, executives at BXP and Hudson Pacific Properties have said, with some companies realizing they may have prematurely dumped space they now need.
Amazon, for example, is postponing the start date for its new in-person requirement for employees based across at least seven of its offices in the United States. The company told CoStar News that while most of its workforce would return for a full, five-day workweek, some would be held to “different timelines" because it doesn’t have the real estate necessary to accommodate them all.
For AT&T, however, the company has been scooping up additional office space seemingly in preparation for its employees’ widespread return.
The company earlier this year expanded its Atlanta hub with the addition of two buildings at 1055 Lenox Park Blvd. and 1057 Lenox Park Blvd., a deal that totaled more than 205,760 square feet. All told, the company occupies about 33 million square feet of office space across the country, according to CoStar data.