Last month WeWork surveyed the heads of real estate from 69 global corporations asking how they envisioned the world of work in this new COVID-19 age. Three themes emerged:

+  Acceleration of how flex space might be utilised

+  Optimising existing portfolios

+  Leveraging data to offer employees a greater range of working choices

These results are perhaps unsurprising from a flex-space provider, but WeWork are not alone in arriving at these conclusions. Nevertheless, the debate about the death of the office/rise of flex and work from home (WFH”), (or ‘work from anywhere’ as I recently suggested), continues to be the CRE topic of the moment.

Diverse views proliferate from office investors, workplace experts, occupiers and tenants, each with valid observations. McKinsey Consultants have dedicated a whole series on “re-imagining the office and work-life” after COVID-19, and Cushman & Wakefield were first out of the traps with their design for a virus-combating “Six Feet Office”. Conversely Twitter has announced staff can work from home ‘forever’. More locally, here in NZ AMP Wealth Management is closing its offices, telling its 350 staff to work from home, and the four day week, already underway pre-COVID, appears to be gaining more corporate support – probably because it is a baby-step to other more disruptive “new ways” of working.

History will tell us who was right, but at present it’s very hard to see how it all might play out long-term as the disease remains unrestrained in many countries and has re-emerged in places where it was thought to be under control. No stable, observable platform for a return to work has thus far existed, until now.

The best available empirical evidence demonstrating how economies might return to work can be found in New Zealand, in reality the first, most transparent country to bring the virus under control.