#returntooffice

Employee survey results woke him up

Wells Fargo renews major East Bay office lease while downsizing in headquarters city of San Francisco

https://archive.is/uOXND

While Wells Fargo & Co. has significantly scaled back its presence in San Francisco, raising questions about the city's future as its headquarters, the bank is recommitting to office space in the East Bay.
Wells Fargo inked a lease renewal for 257,000 square feet of space across the two-building Concord Tech Center, according to a source familiar with the deal. The lease renewal marks likely the largest office lease deal in the East Bay signed so far this year, as many large companies have shrunk and vacated their back office space in suburban Bay Area markets in recent years.
This news arrives after Wells Fargo reduced its San Francisco office footprint to less than half of its prepandemic scale, and listed its 409,000-square-foot headquarters for sale last December, fueling speculation that the bank might relocate its headquarters out of California to Texas. The bank recently opened its sparkling new $455 million campus in the Dallas suburbs that some have viewed as a future headquarters for the company.
Wells Fargo declined to comment for this article. A Wells Fargo spokesperson told the Business Times last December the bank’s corporate headquarters remains in San Francisco, and that they had “no plans to move it out of the city.”
The Concord Tech Center space is Wells Fargo’s flagship East Bay campus. The company’s total footprint in Concord will be 307,000 square feet, as it occupies an additional 50,000 square feet in a lease set to expire in 2028. The deal that closed Friday was a slight reduction in space, downsizing from 335,000 square feet. The bank will now occupy all of 1755 Grant St. and three floors of 1655 Grant St. in a five-year lease renewal.
Concord’s office market took a big hit in 2023 when Bank of America exited its roughly 300,000-square-foot lease at 2000 Clayton Rd. That building was part of a four-building campus that the bank built in the 1980s, which it later sold to Swift Real Estate Partners in 2011.
Bank of America’s downsizing left Wells Fargo as the city’s largest tenant. Concord’s office market is feeling the challenges of the postpandemic shift and slower leasing activity, with office vacancy in Concord reaching 31.4% in the second quarter, higher than the regional average of 21.3%, data from real estate services firm CBRE shows.
“They are the biggest occupant of office space in all of Concord… for the health of that submarket and I’m sure the Concord job market in general, it’s a really big deal,” JLL's Trent Barmby said. “To have Wells make a recommitment … sends a loud message that they’re committed to the Bay Area and the East Bay.”
Barmby and Kevin Mechelke represented Wells Fargo in the lease deal, Newmark represented the landlord.
This news follows several large office tenants in the suburban East Bay market slashing space or leaving the market altogether. Chevron in July listed its entire 400,000-square-foot office space in Bishop Ranch for sublease, after it announced August 2024 plans to move its headquarters to Houston.
In April, BMO Bank downsized from a 276,000-square-foot lease at Bishop Ranch to 30,000 square feet. Last December, Robert Half shrunk its footprint at Bishop Ranch from 250,000 square feet down to a 73,000-square-foot space.
San Francisco-based Redco is currently under contract to acquire Wells Fargo’s former headquarters at 420 Montgomery St., after a deal to sell the building to a residential developer fell through.

We have to report to the office 2 weeks out of the month? I am hearing this is very possible.

so travel banned again to give money back. Sales are not good for Foods. Also a source has given me the heads up that all have to start to come in the office 4 days a week now except Global roles ie the R&D teams!

My husband works for wells and we discussed what would happen if everyone showed up everyday for a couple weeks. Based on capacity and availability over a third will not have seats. At which point wells is no longer providing the tools or equipment to effectively do your job and balance the in office key strokes required. Just a thought.

Some of my team lives in North Carolina, California, Florida… what happens to us? We’re really confused as it would not be feasible to move.

Do we get to pick a cube anywhere in the building? This is almost as exciting as deciding where to park all my brand new cars. Oh wait.

Now that we know we are getting Friday, January 2nd as a holiday, this might be a sign that we will be expected to come to the office 4 or all 5 days a week in 2026.

Then again, they might be doing it to take away another WFH day. It was either between January 2nd, Christmas Eve 2026 (Thursday), or giving us two floating holidays.

If they are making us come into the office more in 2026, then I could see why they would want to give off on Friday the 2nd.

I think the CEO will use the company’s poor performance as punishment to make us come in more.

Stay tuned….

The office is about to be the most depressing place. More depressing than it already is.

Upcoming company policy will dictate that SVP and above must be tied to, and regularly go into talent center offices. I.e Jacksonville, London etc. Policy is part of the Return to Office mandate company wide. If you own high end property in JAX now is the time to sell!

How is this going to be enforced? It appears that only certain departments complied to the 3:2.

.... if RTO == "Really Tempting Offer" to work somewhere else! XD

For those that have a RTO order and continued to WFH, have you faced any consequences?

Anyone know?

Genuine question - Does anyone even find themselves productive in the office? Not here to rant - actually just genuinely curious. My in office days are filled with trying to tune out an outrageous amount of noise and side chatter about sports, etc. (people playing mini golf in the aisles, solving puzzles). How is that collaborative when it comes to a work environment? I have to struggle to tune out the insane amount of noise and random people coming up to my desk to talk in order to actually get my job done properly. I get ten times the amount of work done at home. So frustrating.

We are far removed from the days of the Great Resignation. Anyone trying to change jobs these days can tell you endless horror stories about the current job market. If attrition is slowing and Shart thinks he can juice the stats with this 8 hours a day thing, I think he's in for a rude awakening. There are diminishing returns on making your employees' lives miserable, eventually you're just beating on a long dead mule for no reason. Sooner or later the C-suite is going to have to man up and get with the voluntary buyouts or mass layoffs

How does the hour tracking even work? In Minneapolis there’s a “site leader event” outside so does that mean if we attend then we need to stay longer since we are leaving the building ?? Or is it just based on your last active timestamp? This RTO tracking is becoming ridiculous. We are not children!

Increase of days? Same schedule?

How many hours is that exactly? 6,7,8,8.5? Are they trying to keep this vague on purpose?

Hey, forcing people back to push attrition. Using policies that will disproportionately affect older workers and primary caregivers. All while pi----g off in demand people that can leave if they have a chance. What could go wrong? 8 is great.

So far my manager has not set an 8 hour requirement . I am in the office 6 hours but who knows when that will change….

Article from WSJ/Linkedin https://www.wsj.com/lifestyle/workplace/return-to-office-workers-fail-3d966807
Possible things would turn around w.r.t RTO.

Are RTO just corporate offices they are looking at or any sales agency/clinic location?

In regards to return to office, if TIAA truly valued their employees, they would be willing to work with them to come up with solutions for remote/flex/return to office profiles rather than sticking everyone in the same box and saying one way works for everyone. About 25 years ago Google pretty much invented the unique office model with free snacks, flex work spaces like pods with bean bag chairs, phone booths, and foosball and billiard tables and for some reason TIAA thinks this is some cool unique idea that will draw people back to the office. As usual, TIAA is about 30 years behind the rest of the world and they will continue to bleed good talent as a result

Things I’ve heard and seen posted on their sites. I’ve definitely heard about the remote workers being laid off if they don’t relocate, and the multiple support center layoffs. I’ve also heard about 2-3 days back to the office, not 5, but I guess we’ll see.

• Removal of FTO
• If you aren’t at Walgreens when bonuses (if we even get them) are paid out in November, you won’t get one.
• Switching to Business Casual, no jeans or sneakers.
• 10/20: Remote Employee town hall informing them to relocate or they will lose their job.
• 10/21: 10% support center workforce reduction
• January: 30% support center workforce reduction
• January: 2-3 days in office but also heard it may go to 5 days in office

Day 1 of 5 tomorrow. 8 hrs per day, 40 hrs per week. M-F. Don't FORGET ABOUT IT! See you in the office, slackers.

To whom it concerns.. You know who you are.

Please stop making this about remote work. It really makes me want to swear when I hear some little smug punk say "ten toes down" as if to imply that people who have concerns over the new RTO mandate are simply unmotivated or, dare I say, LAZY. It is such an insult to people who aren't career employees, who aren't interested in being in the club, or who aren't in our vendor's pockets.

Remember that famous, yet misquoted statement from Marie Antoinette? "Let them eat cake".. Now, she didn't actually say that but the spirit is there. If you don't have any water, stop complaining and just drink wine. If you want to work at AT&T, stop complaining and come into the office 5x9. So, some people complained about RTO. Instead of asking why, leadership has made resistance a terminatable offense. But, do you ask why we are resisting? While you sit on the executive floors, many have to fight for spaces. We have to fight for parking. We have to endure inane conversations, i mean 'collaboration' about how bad Dallas is playing or how terrible/great presence tracking and RTO are. What have you done to make RTO something we can get behind?

We are a company drowning in debt. We are in negative growth. Our employees hate the company. Our culture is dead, and, oh yeah, we have to come into an office in an environment where we are forced to fend for ourselves like a bunch of lemurs looking for a little patch of grass only so we can pop up our collective heads every time someone new enters the jungle. You call that progress and you label these jungles, "collaboration zones". They are not. You are the bosses living in the penthouse, completely blind to the struggles of the people in steerage. Did it ever occur to you that this is the part of RTO that makes us uneasy? Give me a cube with a docking station, a couple monitors, my own keyboard and mouse, a phone, maybe pictures of my family and some cute little desk tchotchkes that make me feel like I'm a person with freedom and the respect of my leaders instead of being in a prison cafeteria. You think you get it but you don't. I don't mind driving an hour to get to work but it would sure be nice to know that my company gave a darn about my experience once I get there.

If you're still reading, here's a thought. There's this huge building with AT&T plastered all over the place. Its got a ton of space that's mostly used on weekends so it probably sits empty m-f. I think there may be people who work their but I think its fairly well understood that they are pretty terrible at their jobs. Clearly RTO doesn't equate to job performance. Anyway, maybe y'all can think about selling that eyesore to someone else and maybe we can use that money to, oh, I don't know, improve the working conditions for your people who are actually trying to be successful?

Just something to think about..

I took a look at the layoff boards for other banks. They've been complaining about the same things we do about RTO. It's not just us.

If we all band together and collectively don’t follow the 8 hours in office, it’ll create so much extra work for mangers, hr, etc. The documented discussions, write ups, pips, involving HR.

They are already extremely tired of hearing and talking about RTO.

I’m not saying don’t go in at all or coffee badge. Get your 3/4 days in and stay 4-6 hours. But don’t do anymore. Show them that we are willing to go in and put our time in but not for 8 hours.

First.... employee RTO mandates looming at Big Green while outsourcing many positions to contact labor that won't be subjected to RTO like employees. 🤔🤷🏻‍♀️

Second....
https://www.inc.com/joe-procopio/return-to-office-mandates-are-about-to-backfire/91244646

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So the guidance is that you need to work a full 8 hours but should still feel free to pick up your kids or attend medical appointments etc? I literally asked what happens if it’s snowing and I need to leave a little early to pick my kid up before school closes or my kid is sick and I need to get them and the answers was find a way to be here 8 hours/ find another day to come 8 hours or you risk being ‘noncompliant’ which may impact your performance LOL so the real answer is that the RTO guide that was sent to managers is straight up BS and there is zero flexibility for unexpected events. Feeling so tired of this company which I’ve foolishly worked hard for all these years. We are truly unappreciated and disposable.

Has anyone ran into the issue of the rigid RTO and ADA accommodations for a condition where remote work is warranted?

When did it start? And how does the reporting actually look?

At the risk of sharing too much and outing myself, I feel like it’s important for employees to know that there have been internal discussions for several weeks about preparing for a full return-to-office (RTO) with a target date of 12/01.

This shift will not affect designated telecommuters. However, leadership is considering changes that could indirectly impact them, such as reducing merit increases by a percentage, withholding them entirely, or halving API targets for remote employees. These adjustments are being framed as a way to “counterbalance” the RTO mandate. Announcements are expected around the start of the new year, once PTO balances reset.

The intent behind these measures is to drive natural attrition among both remote and in-office staff, minimizing or eliminating the need for another large-scale reduction in force. Notice the timing right before the holidays.

At the same time, corporate leadership is optimistic that AI and automation can replace many roles vacated through attrition. The long-term plan includes maintaining the hiring freeze indefinitely; at a minimum, next year’s budget will not allow for backfilling positions unless they are deemed business critical.

I worry there is significant risk. From what I’ve seen, the company is years behind in AI adoption. Betting heavily on it now could backfire, potentially resulting in millions in fines and penalties by 2026–2027.

Like if I’m going to be out for two weeks do those extra days work for the week right before? How does it work for when it’s the end of the month? I don’t see this published anywhere

https://www.rte.ie/brainstorm/2025/0923/1534732-return-to-the-office-mandates-emoployer-employee-control-power-productivity-innovation/

Narcissistic behavior? Surely not

So d-mb

Effective immediately? What a sh-t show.
Tracking our mouse movements or clicks.
I assume Q1 is the announcement of 4 days a week or back to 5.

I guess this is one way of saying, I’m only doing my 8 hours and shutting down.. see ya again at 7am.

anyone know what happens if you continue to not adhere to the 4 day mandate even after the final warning?

A lot of people it should theoretically apply to, including me, still haven’t. All it’s done so far is create a ton of confusion.