MONEY

Office desks still empty across Memphis as thousands still work from home due to COVID-19

Across the city, restaurants and stores serving the big office districts remain closed or less than busy and some are clawing to hang on. The reason: Tens of thousands of office employees are still working from home.

Ted Evanoff
Memphis Commercial Appeal

Office desks remain empty across Memphis as tens of thousands of employees continue working from home.

Shelter-in-place rules issued in March by mayors and governors to fight the coronavirus ended in late May, but rush-hour traffic remains light in June.

Across the city, restaurants and stores serving the big office districts remain closed or less than busy and some are clawing to hang on.

On Thursday, First Horizon National will begin to restaff the bank’s 25-story Downtown tower, but only about 250 employees will show up, instead of the typical 1,000 filling the head office.

From the vast offices of corporate giants such as First Horizon, International Paper and ServiceMaster to the fourth-floor suite in East Memphis leased by Adams Keegan, many companies rely on a hybrid style. Some employees report to the office. Most remain home, working from living rooms, kitchens, bedrooms, studies, garages and other spaces in an extraordinary effort to get the job done.

Just when that balance will shift is not certain, although many companies now are mulling when to make the change.

“Our larger tenants seem not to have made a decision yet,” said Ron Belz, chief executive of Belz Enterprises, which manages about 1 million square feet of office space, mostly Downtown. “They’re still in the process of thinking about making the move.”

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Hanging over the 21 million square feet of offices in Memphis — and for that matter, hanging over America — is a threat that leaves people wary of crowded offices. No remedies are available yet to stamp out the infection caused by the coronavirus.

People worry that steady contact again with office colleagues raises the chances of getting infected, especially if the virus surges in a second wave, Belz said. Out of caution, many companies remain in that hybrid work style.

Working from home continues for some 2,000 of International Paper’s nearly 2,400 headquarters employees in East Memphis.

International Paper

Handling tasks from home continues for some 2,000 of International Paper’s nearly 2,400 headquarters employees in East Memphis.

“Using guidance from the city of Memphis and Shelby County, we developed guidelines for team members to return to their offices, but in the interest of employee health and safety, our plans will call for employees to gradually return to the office in phases,” said Adam Ghassemi, spokesman for the global company, the largest manufacturer based in Tennessee.

ServiceMaster

ServiceMaster sent most workers home under the shelter-in-place rules and continues to only lightly staff the 1,200-employee Downtown headquarters.

“We are continuing our work-from-home policy for office-based employees and have not set a date to return to the office,” ServiceMaster spokesman James Robinson said. “We don’t have many specifics now, but we will limit the number of people in the building at any given time, require employees to check their temperatures before coming in, put restrictions on meeting sizes and are exploring facility modifications to foster social distancing measures.”

First Horizon National employees will begin to restaff the bank’s 25-story Downtown tower on Thursday, June 4.

First Horizon

First Horizon's shift to its Phase 2 coronavirus response, beginning Thursday, lets  customers back into branch banks, where they will be greeted by an employee at the door who limits entry to one customer per banker.

Although the 30-plus branches in the Memphis market have been fully staffed with no layoffs, bankers had stayed behind locked entrance doors. Customers could access the bank by phone, drive-up window or computer. Now they’ll be able to step inside.

Phase 2 also brings up to 25% of the head office employees back into the Downtown tower after they complete an online health survey, said Tammy LoCascio, First Horizon executive vice president for consumer banking.

The survey will be a daily ritual paired with elevator limits in the office tower — two passengers per ride — and social distancing rules of one empty desk between every two workers. This first wave of returning workers will include employees whose jobs are difficult to perform away from the office, and allow most people who prefer to stay away from the office to continue working from home.

Phase 3 will bring back up to 50% of head office employees, although bankers have no deadline in mind for when to begin that phase, LoCascio said.

“We’re planning for it,” LoCascio said of Phase 3, “but we don’t have a date assigned. You want people to feel safe and secure and feel the company is looking out for them. While the community has begun to reopen the virus is no less virulent.”

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Belz Enterprises

Belz Enterprises resorted to shelter in place for its 100 head-office employees and still has not brought them all back into the Downtown office. Instead they divided into small teams assigned a specific day. Each team can work in the office that day. Workers can stay home if they wish.

Ron Belz said this team plan, which he calls the matrix, could remain in use for weeks, although eventually the date will be set to bring back workers in a permanent fashion.

“Over the next 30 days I think a lot of companies will make a decision about fixing a date or trying to fix a date to reopen their offices,” Belz said.

Adams Keegan

Adams Keegan has had managers work in the fourth-floor suite in East Memphis, and let any other worker who wanted to come in, but has no guidelines for returning all employees.

“We’ve brought very few people back in from our usual diaspora,” said Jay Keegan, chief executive of the 200-employee payroll services and consulting firm. “I’m not sure when we’ll have everyone back. We’re in kind of a defensive mode right now — just observing.”

Shelter-in-place rules aimed at what were called unessential businesses, such as bars, beauty shops, hotels and retail stores. These firms accounted for most of the 65,700 jobs lost in April in metropolitan Memphis. About 588,500 jobs remained filled.

Essential businesses — including Adams Keegan, International Paper and First Horizon — stayed open. They had the option of fully staffing the office or letting employees perform tasks from home. It turned out to be a learning lesson for Keegan.

In all, about 140 employees opted to work from home, while about 60 entered the office daily.  Even though the work force was scattered across the region, concerns about completing tasks faded quickly.

“We’re actually moving faster,” Keegan said, noting employees sense they have more autonomy to make decisions. “We were forced to trust people and by and large people have surprised their managers with how well they have responded.”