US offices are sitting empty – business owners will have to adapt | Gene Marks

You'd better not wait - small businesses must reconsider their location and business model to survive in this new era

You'd have to be asleep not to notice the generational change that's happening in just about every US city. A significant swath of our downtown office space is sitting empty. New York, Chicago, Atlanta, Los Angeles, Denver, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Houston, Dallas and other big cities are experiencing record-high office vacancies as workers keep working from home and companies keep letting them.

Let's face it: the downtown office market has changed significantly and permanently. Companies - such as Comcast in my home town of Philadelphia - can demand that their employees come back to the office, but they're fighting against the tide. Work attitudes have changed. Technology is better. Remote working is accepted. Some face-time is necessary but we're never going to go back to a 100% in-the-office policy, and companies that attempt this will lose talent to those that adapt to the shift.