Major Charlotte employers delay return to offices as coronavirus uncertainty remains
Large swaths of Charlotte’s white-collar workforce won’t return to the office this year, an Observer survey of a dozen of the area’s top employers found.
Ally, Barings, Brighthouse Financial, LendingTree and Red Ventures will all continue to work almost entirely from home until at least 2021 — a move impacting thousands of workers. And many Charlotte companies are leaving open the possibility of pushing back return dates even further.
No business wants to send employees back into the office too early, and both workers and management are likely to be anxious about when returns begin.
The federal agency charged with protecting employees in the workplace has largely not cited employers over coronavirus safety complaints, which has prompted concerns about whether workers will be protected when they do return.
And with Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools planning for fully remote learning, many parents will face challenges obtaining childcare if they have to go back to the office.
Here’s what the area’s largest employers are planning:
- The area’s biggest non-healthcare employer, Wells Fargo, will continue to have about 80% of its employees working remote through at least Sept. 7, Labor Day, according to Josh Dunn, a bank spokesman. Many branch employees are still working in their locations, with precautions in place. The San Francisco-based bank employs about 27,000 people in the Charlotte area. Wells Fargo is still in the midst of creating a plan to return employees to the office in phases, Dunn said.
Bank of America said that it too will not return employees to the office until at least Sept. 7, according to Mark Pipitone, a bank spokesman. The bank is planning a phased return as well, and remote employees who will have to return to the office will get at least a 30-day heads up. The bank employs roughly 16,000 people in Charlotte, its headquarters city.
Duke Energy has already returned roughly 200 to 300 employees to offices, but “disturbing trends in communities we serve” will potentially delay the next phase of workers returning to offices until September, according to utility spokesman Dave Scanzoni. Right now, 90% of Duke Energy’s 6,000 uptown Charlotte employees are working from home, he said.
While Lowe’s stores are still open across the country, employees in the hardware store chain’s headquarters in Mooresville were told last week that they will work remotely until at least February.
Mecklenburg County is looking at Sept. 30 for the start of a slow return to county offices, but that date is subject to change, according to county spokeswoman Tammy Thompson.
Around a quarter of city of Charlotte employees are working remotely, said spokesman Cory Burkarth, many of whom work from home three to five days a week. He said it has not yet been decided when the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Government Center will reopen to the public.
Red Ventures notified employees in July that they would continue working from home until 2021, spokeswoman Maghan Cook said. And 2021 remains up in the air, she said, as the company monitors vaccines, therapeutics, school decisions and virus curves in the places where it operates, including its headquarters near Indian Land, S.C.
Ally, the Detroit-based bank with a major presence in Charlotte, will also give its employees advance notice of the return to the office. Some jobs, like field auditors, have returned to working in person, but with contactless procedures, according to Rebecca Anderson, a bank spokeswoman.
“Flexibility will continue to guide our management philosophy,” Ally’s Anderson said. “We recognize the full spectrum of logistical and emotional challenges — from childcare to anxiety — that will come with a return to the office.”
Making and changing
Many employers haven’t committed to returning to the office even in 2021, and some national companies like Twitter have said employees can work from home in perpetuity.
Barings, the Charlotte-based asset manager, said that it will develop a plan for next year closer to the end of 2020, according to a July 28 companywide memo obtained by the Observer.
The Observer announced that it would leave its uptown office this summer and would work without a physical office for the rest of the year.
LendingTree, the Charlotte-based lending marketplace, is moving out of its offices in Ballantyne as the company’s leases expire, according to spokeswoman Megan Grueling. Employees will not return to work at the Ballantyne offices.
The firm’s new headquarters in South End is expected to be completed in the first or second quarter of next year, and a survey of Charlotte employees found a strong preference to work from home until that building is completed.
Depending on how health outcomes develop, some employees may be able to return to other area offices before the new headquarters opens, she said.
Meanwhile, with uptown deprived of most of its workers, the businesses that used to cater to the banker crowd are struggling. One restaurant said foot-traffic is down 90%.
Questions also continue to linger about the future for office leasing in the area.
That is a key barometer of whether the area will ever see new construction after the current wave of building tops out. In the second quarter office vacancy rates rose, but the broader market was still robust.
This story was originally published August 3, 2020 at 10:59 AM with the headline "Major Charlotte employers delay return to offices as coronavirus uncertainty remains."
