Omicron Places Many Downtown San Francisco Companies in Limbo Relating to Return to Workplace – CBS San Francisco
SAN FRANCISCO (KPIX) — With the Omicron wave of COVID cases still rising, more jobs are stuck in downtown San Francisco trying to figure out if, how and when they will return to their offices in any way.
Leonid Plotkin, a small business owner in San Francisco’s Financial District, is keeping a close eye on developments.
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“Probably the most important thing is when offices reopen their doors to their staff for at least part of the week,” he said.
Plotkin has managed to keep his barber shop open during the pandemic, but as a business that relies on walk-in customers who perform traditional 9-5 jobs in the Financial District, he’s lost a large chunk of his clientele.
“It was very up and down,” he said. “Last week was probably my slowest week since coming back from lockdown.”
“Employers kind of pause and think, ‘What are we actually trying to do with our long-term plans?'” said Kelly Obranowicz of the Bay Area Council.
They survey approximately 200 Bay Area employers of all sizes monthly to gain a better understanding of plans for the return to the office.
“Approximately 6% of employers who took part in the survey say they have no plans to return to the office. We’ve seen a lot more comments saying people are considering this possibility,” she said.
However, the vast majority of companies plan to return to the office in some capacity, she says.
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“Employers say they anticipate about a quarter of their employees will be remote post-pandemic,” Obranowicz said. “Even that means you still have to rehire 75% of your workforce, maybe three days a week on average. It’s not like we won’t have anyone in the downtown San Francisco corridor. It may just be a little less or with less frequency.”
Obranowicz says it appears many employers are likely to move to a hybrid way of doing business remotely as the new norm.
“We now have nine months of data where 40% or more of employers have said, ‘Yes, three days a week we will ask employees to come in.’ And 60% of employers also polled in December that they were confident or very confident that this will be their new norm,” Obranowicz said.
A good sign for the recovery: Sephora announced that they will be moving their headquarters to the Salesforce building at 350 Mission St.
A Sephora spokesperson provided KPIX 5 with the following statement, which is attributed to Jeff Gaul, Sephora’s senior vice president of store development.
“Sephora is pleased to confirm that we will be moving our San Francisco headquarters to 350, 16-story Missions in 2023. 350 Mission has been carefully crafted to support and enhance the future of work at Sephora, which places a strong focus on our employee culture, collaboration and flexibility,” the statement said. “Most importantly, this move consolidates the number of buildings our corporate employees work in and supports our hybrid on-site and remote work practices while providing ample room for growth as Sephora continues to be a leading employer in the Bay Area .”
Obranowicz said the Bay Area Council is excited to learn more from its next series of data from the latest poll results.
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“I think we want to look at not just when you plan to bring people back, but when your new, long-term norm will be implemented?” she said. “Do we still expect about 85% of employers to have employees back with the consistency they want by May, or are we looking further ahead?”
