WeWork
- WeWork CEO Sandeep Mathrani said workers in some big cities aren't quickly returning to offices.
- But in Florida and Texas, people are returning to work "in droves," he told The Wall Street Journal.
- Getting people back to the office is about the "tone from the top," he said.
- See more stories on Insider's business page.
The chief executive officer of WeWork said the return to in-person work in some big US cities has been slow, but Texas and Florida are another story.
In Florida and Texas, "people are starting to return to work in droves," WeWork CEO Sandeep Mathrani said on The Wall Street Journal's new daily Spotify podcast "The Journal."
He said the activity in those markets is "very high" for WeWork, a New York City-based office-sharing company with more than 800 locations globally.
As for bigger cities like New York, people continue to be concerned with "things like the cleanliness of the of the public transportation," and that's slowed the return to work, he said.
"But I do think that as people are vaccinated, those fears go away," he said.
So far in the US, about 45% of the adult population is fully vaccinated against COVID-19, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. But, demand has begun to slow for the vaccine, and experts are wondering if the US can reach herd immunity.
Even so, Mathrani said getting people back to work in the office is about the "tone from the top" of the company.
"I think if the tone from the top said, 'You know, you've got to start to come to work; I think people would come. I think people like to stretch the limits." Mathrani said on the podcast, adding that if executives did so, "you're going to start to see a change in attitude."
A growing number of Wall Street firms have announced plans to go back to work recently. Blackstone Group said it planned for workers to come back to the office full-time on June 7. JPMorgan, Goldman Sachs, and Bain Capital have similar plans to get back to having workers in the office. Others are considering hybrid models where employees work from home some days and in the office on others, while others are allowing workers to stay remote.
In his interview with The Journal, Mathrani said executives have complained of "Zoom fatigue. "If you want to collaborate, innovate, build culture, the office is an important part of what you do," he said.
WeWork's business model relies on having workers in the office. Last year after the pandemic began, Insider reported the virus was a "nuclear bomb" for office-space companies like WeWork.
Now, Mathrani, a real-estate veteran, has said the company will finally be profitable by the end of the year.
WeWork, which was at first valued as a $47 billion company in 2019 before nearly going bankrupt, has majorly slimmed down expenses. It's now aiming to go public with a $9 billion valuation with a special purpose acquisition company, better known as a SPAC.