Is Alabama returning to the office?

At Rural Sourcing Inc. a team of 134 workers want to get back into their trendy downtown Mobile office.

The software development firm is not requiring its employees to return physically to the former Turner-Todd Motor Co. building on St. Louis Street. But employees are returning to the office based on their comfort level.

In Mobile, as compared to other locations where the Atlanta-based company is located, there seems to be a stronger interest to get back to the office and work among colleagues.

“I think Mobile was (the location) that was the quickest to come back in terms of the group of people wanting to come in and they were anxious to do so,” said John Lenzen, chief marketing officer with the Rural Sourcing, which operates six development centers in the U.S.

The story at Rural Sourcing is similar at other companies in Alabama where cities like Mobile, Birmingham and Huntsville are bucking national trends seen in major metropolitan areas where the white-collar workforce is slower to return to the office building. The Downtown Mobile Alliance is reporting that approximately 65 percent of the workforce has returned to the downtown area, and restaurants are starting to see foot traffic like pre-pandemic levels.

“I think it’s a different story in Alabama than it is around the nation,” said Stuart Norton, data analytics coordinator at the Alabama Center for Real Estate at the University of Alabama’s Culverhouse College of Business. “The bigger cities up North are maybe slower in getting back.”

And more of the workforce is mostly expected to return to their offices by Labor Day. A survey by Rev Birmingham last month reported that 19% of employees in the state’s largest city have returned to their downtown office places, but an additional 42% plan to do so by September. Another 29% are undetermined.

Much of the workforce, according to the survey, prefers a flexible work environment that combines both in-office and at homework schedules.

“The employment numbers after Labor Day will be the real determining factor on how downtown’s workforce looks moving forward,” said Rob Buddo, manager of the City Center District and a major contributor of Rev Birmingham’s “2021 State of Downtown BHM” report.

Health concerns

The Rev Birmingham survey also indicated that vaccinations will be key on whether the workers fully return. To that end, Alabama continues to lag considerably behind other states with 41 percent of adults ages 18 and over fully vaccinated. Only Mississippi has a lower rate.

The spread of a deadly delta variant of the coronavirus is raising concerns with President Joe Biden warning on Thursday about higher death tolls. Approximately 20% of new COVID-19 cases are from the delta variant, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Health officials in Alabama are concerned about the high rate of unvaccinated adults working in close quarters with colleagues and heightening the potential spread of virus.

“With people going back to work, you will have a group of non-vaccinated people in a space together and with these variants going around, we have the potential for an outbreak in a workplace,” said Dr. Mark Wilson, health officer with the Jefferson County Health Department.

The reopening of physical workplaces is also giving health officials another chance to make another plea for employees to get their shots.

“If you are unvaccinated, you really need to think hard about protecting yourselves and your loved ones by getting vaccinated especially if your employers are getting back to resuming normal activities, pre-COVID,” said Dr. Rachel Lee, an infectious disease expert at the University of Alabama at Birmingham.

Lee said how to return to work is a “complex question” that employers are trying to address. She said that that the CDC continues to require unvaccinated people to wear masks and socially distance, even in a work environment.

“It’s very important we remain truthful in our responses and not just take off our masks because everyone else is,” Lee said.

She added, “I believe some work is well-suited for working at home. At the same time, there is something to be said for being a part of a team. You have to weigh those risks and benefits when you are doing something like this.”

Alabama, even with workers returning to the offices, has a murky long-term outlook on whether the workplace will look the same as it did before the onset of the coronavirus pandemic last year.

“Organizations like ours and companies that have a lot of office buildings are wondering what the next two to three years will look like,” said Carol Hunter, spokeswoman at the Downtown Mobile Alliance. “We don’t know. But as long as we work on creating a downtown environment that is conducive to creative and collaborative work and is a wonderful environment for residents, I think we’ll be OK.”

Hybrid approach

The Rev Birmingham report highlights the trend toward a hybrid work model where flexibility of working from home and in the office is preferred among workers. The survey showed that a whopping 72.7% of Birmingham workers want to continue with the hybrid approaching, while only 13.6% preferred working at the office only and at home only.

Companies that are reopening the offices are continuing with the hybrid approach. At Alabama Power, two-thirds of the company’s workforce is working in a physical building, while other employees continue to work remotely, according to spokeswoman Beth Thomas.

At Rural Sourcing, Lenzen said they will likely continue with a work-from-home component.

At some of Birmingham’s largest employers, including banks, a hybrid approach is also the current policy while more long-term plans are under consideration. BBVA USA announced earlier this month that employees who have been working remotely – excluding those in California – can return voluntarily to their workplace beginning next week. Those who prefer to continue working from home can do so while the company plans are developed for a full return, according to spokeswoman Christina Anderson.

Region’s Bank is making plans for most of its teams to return to their workplaces after Labor Day, according to spokeswoman Alicia Anger. Branch bankers, though, have continued working on-site throughout the pandemic, and “a number of other teams continue to work in our corporate facilities as needed,” she said.

“We will continue to provide flexibility as we recognize every associate’s situation is unique, but we believe it is safe and appropriate to begin moving back to the office,” Anger said.

Flexibility in workplace models, especially at banks in Alabama, stands in contrast to the edict coming from bankers in other parts of the U.S., especially those on Wall Street. New York-based Morgan Stanley is ordering employees to get their vaccinations and to get back into the office. Goldman Sachs required most of its workers to return to the office, and to state their vaccination status.

Those requirements come at a time when New York City and San Francisco, among other major metros, are reporting sluggish returns to the office. Kastle Systems, a nationwide security company that monitors access-card swipes at more than 2,500 office buildings in cities across the country, reports that 32.1% of office workers have returned to the workspaces they occupied before the COVID-19 pandemic. The percentages are below 30% in Chicago, Washington, D.C., and Philadelphia. But in Texas cities like Dallas, Austin, and Houston, close to half of the workforce has returned to the office, according to the Kastle Systems data.

‘Collaborative’ environments

Data wasn’t available for Alabama’s cities, but hybrid work models are expected to last a while in fast-growing Huntsville, where demand continues to be high for downtown office space.

The downtown employment base relied heavily on the medical community, many of whom were considered “essential” workers during the pandemic and had to work in a physical office space, according to Chad Emerson, CEO with Downtown Huntsville Inc.

At HudsonAlpha’s biotech campus, where 1,100 people are employed at 47 companies spread throughout a 150-acre campus, most workers have returned to their offices even if there is no requirement in place for them to do so.

“We implemented a policy (during the onset of the pandemic) that anyone’s job that can be done from home should be done from home,” said Danny Windham, chief operating officer at HudsonAlpha. He said that people who had to physically arrive to the campus to work did so in a “lower density environment” where people could remain at a safe social distance from others.

Windham said that HudsonAlpha has been “fairly conservative” about its return to the workplace. He said employees are returning because it’s important for them do so from a work perspective, because the campus is designed for random collaborations with specialists in DNA analysis and genomics research.

“This is a collaborative campus,” he said. “Our work intent is to bring people back to campus in similar fashion as we were pre-COVID.”

He said the hope is to have employees completely back on campus by the time schools go back in session in mid-to-late August. The plans, though, are subject to change.

“Any plan is subject to interruption should there be another surge in the virus,” Windham said.

Boeing, which is also in Huntsville, employees will return to their office spaces starting in mid-July depending on local health and safety conditions.

Boeing, like other companies, is welcoming a flexible work environment.

“We recognize that many positions and customer requirements aren’t compatible with virtual or hybrid work, but many others are,” said Mike D’Ambrose, chief human resources officer and executive vice president at Boeing in a memo to employees. The Chicago-based aerospace corporation directly employs 3,000 Alabamians.

“Embracing additional virtual and hybrid work arrangements is one way we’ll attract and retain the world’s best talent, while also ensuring we meet the needs of our customers and business partners, and that we’re well positioned to thrive in a dynamic business environment,” D’Ambrose said.

Small firms like Red Sage Communications Inc. are also maintaining flexible schedules. The company, with their main offices in Decatur and an office in Huntsville, has two of its team members working full-time in the Huntsville office, and two others working full-time Decatur. The rest of the team of 13 employees (soon to be increased to 16) are working flexible schedules where they will come into one of the offices on days to meet with clients or during team meetings.

The company is establishing an employee team building program with quarterly events aimed at getting everyone together at once.

“Neither of our offices is large enough for our entire team to gather, so these events will be at local venues such as parks, top golf, Trash Pandas games, and similar venues or activities,” said Ellen Didier, president of Red Sage Communications. “We are exploring additional ways to connect our team members in between these quarterly, company-wide events.”