Washington Post employees are joining a growing portion of the American workforce in reverting back to a full five-day workweek.
Starting next year, the daily news organization plans ramp up its in-person mandate by requiring its workforce to commute to the office Monday through Friday, effectively terminating the remote and hybrid policy it adopted in the early weeks of the pandemic. Post managers will have to come back starting in early February, Publisher Will Lewis told employees this week, with the rest of the newsroom's roles returning in June.
"I want that great office energy for us every day," Lewis wrote in a memo viewed by CoStar News. "You know how much we all must do to improve our company, and I do not believe we can do that successfully via Zoom. We are really good when we are working together in person."
The ramped-up enforcement is the latest in a slew of policies implemented by companies rolling out stricter in-office schedules. UPS, Starbucks, Disney, Amazon, Dell, Bank of America, Meta and others have stepped up efforts to get workers back to physical office space, deploying a mix of strategies that include attendance-tracking apps, asking employees to relocate and threats to link in-person time with annual performance reviews.
The widespread reversal of pandemic-era work arrangements has been welcome news for a real estate industry scrambling against a tide of record vacancies and tenant move-outs.
The national office vacancy rate has been stuck at about 14% for the past year, according to CoStar data, and the increasing percentage of companies requiring employees to be in the office more frequently could be the push necessary to move the needle. About a third of all companies in the United States required workers to be in the office five days a week in the third quarter, up from 31% in the second quarter, according to flexible work tracker Flex Index.
Back to the office again
Since the early months of 2020, Washington Post employees have been able to work on either a completely remote or flexible policy. The company in 2022 began requiring workers to be in the office for at least three days per week, and even under the soon-to-be-enacted mandate, there will be a few exceptions.
"If you are a reporter out on a story, a salesperson out selling or a colleague going to a medical appointment, carry on as normal," Lewis said. “The change is that there is a presumption that between those key work or personal appointments, you will be office based."
The media company's new policy echoes the one recently issued by Amazon. The e-commerce giant made headlines with its decision to dump remote working arrangements for all of its employees, a move CEO Andy Jassy said was critical to "strengthening our culture and the effectiveness of our teams."
Jeff Bezos, Amazon's founder and former CEO, also owns the Post.
Even with the growing return-to-office push, the market is still contending with lingering pandemic-related challenges — such as tenants requiring less space — that have remained stubborn despite escalated in-person policies.
The amount of space office tenants occupy across the country has largely remained flat since the beginning of the year, according to CoStar data.
The Post's escalated mandate follows the blockbuster renewal of its downtown D.C. office at 1301 K St. NW. That deal, which was finalized in February, stands as the city's largest lease by a non-federal government agency since the onset of the pandemic roughly half a decade ago, according to CoStar data.
However, filling space in and around the nation’s capital remains a challenge with a vacancy rate that hovers just over 17% as of the end of the third quarter, an all-time high, according to CoStar data. The East End area, where the Post building is located, is especially stressed, as its vacancy rate has climbed beyond 19%, CoStar data shows.