“Once workers discovered that remote work could be less expensive and… make their life a little easier, they just wanted to keep doing it, even once the pandemic began fading away.”
Eric Mastrota is a Contributing Editor at The National Digest based in New York. A graduate of SUNY New Paltz, he reports on world news, culture, and lifestyle. You can reach him at eric.mastrota@thenationaldigest.com.
As the pandemic comes to a slow finish, many are realizing they’ll be able to continue working remotely as the world returns to a sense of normalcy. The real estate industry is adapting to accommodate for this new type of buyer that views a proper office space as one of the biggest essentials in a potential property.
Patrick Carroll is the founder and CEO of CARROLL, a national real estate firm, who also writes about the industry for Forbes Magazine. Carrol recently discussed how “a recent study by the freelancing platform Upwork found that an estimated 14–23 million Americans are planning to move as a result of remote work. At CARROLL, we have seen this directly, with approximately 25% of our residents working from home before Covid-19 compared to 60% now. The key for apartment owners now becomes attracting this newly liberated workforce to their communities.”
Carroll claims that clients ask about Wi-Fi connectivity almost immediately now when viewing a potential property, so if you’re selling, make sure your internet connection is upgraded. Properties with built-in wireless internet have become a huge seller in the market.
Properties that also have clubhouses, or separate spaces for conference rooms and workplaces have become a major seller in the apartment market. “These common areas should include more than just a desk, with access to additional screens and HDMI connectors, printers, copiers and even quiet rooms, when possible. We have seen an increasing demand for these large workspaces in our communities,” according to Carroll.
According to a survey done by Gallup, “the majority of remote workers today are millennials, aged between 25 and 44 today, and 74% do not want to go back to the office full time. Almost 70% of remote workers have at least a bachelor’s degree or higher. These are relatively young, educated workers looking to support themselves, pets and families from the comfort of their homes.”
Pet-friendly leases have become a minimum requirement among millennial buyers, as many have purchased a pet within the past year of the pandemic. Providing on-site, or nearby amenities, like dog parks, playgrounds, open fields, etc. have become another major requirement for buyers.
The modern millennial buyer also prioritizes flexibility in all aspects of life, so it’s important to find properties that can be adjusted to accommodate what the buyer is looking for. Lease flexibility is one of the best ways to get buyers more interested in a certain community/property.
“Ultimately, it comes down to being open to offering your residents a personalized approach that will make them feel more comfortable, while allowing them to continue their work-from-anywhere lifestyle.”
“With the many different communities and amenities available for residents, the key to attracting the remote worker resident base to your communities is to not only make the right accommodations, but also to be adaptable and understand these residents’ needs and priorities beyond their work-from-home office desk,” Carroll explained, adding that apartment owners looking to lease out their properties need to rethink what they consider amenities and start thinking of them as necessities.
Eric Mastrota is a Contributing Editor at The National Digest based in New York. A graduate of SUNY New Paltz, he reports on world news, culture, and lifestyle. You can reach him at eric.mastrota@thenationaldigest.com.
Google recently spoke with more than 5,000 of their employees to figure out the best remote working practices that they’ve experienced within the past six months. Chief executive Sundar Pichai recently announced that because of the Covid-19 pandemic, Google would be extending their work from home policy until at least July 2021. Before making this decision the company surveyed their employees to better grasp what was working, and what wasn’t in terms of remote working.
The main thing Google wanted to focus on with their employees was their well-being, performance quality, communication with one another, and productivity from home. They found that making team meetings a priority was extremely important for maintaining a positive company culture virtually. These meetings are often the only time employees communicate with each other “face-to-face” via video conferencing.
Google has also recommended that all of its team leaders take a special interest in their employees personal lives and getting to know them on a deeper level. Enduring working through a pandemic together has proven to be a bonding experience for many companies, and Google wants their business model to exhibit that.
Being present is also key to a healthy work environment in general, but especially when workers aren’t able to be in each other’s presence. Specifically, Google recommends making sure all employee cameras are on during group video conferences, but muting your microphone when it’s most practical to not distract from whoever is speaking in the moment. They also recommend giving both verbal and non-verbal cues of agreeance (“yeah that’s a good plan”, “most definitely!”) so employees really feel like they’re being listened to.
While it’s important to also give your employees their space to actually do their work, industry and team leaders should make it a point to check in with everyone at least once a day. Even if it’s just a quick message exchange about the weekend, it’s important to keep communication up so employees feel comfortable to go to one another when life and work gets overwhelming; as it has for most of us at this point in time.
It’s also important for team leaders especially to recognize and praise their employees’ good work. Now that we’re all working on a more independent level at home, it can be easy for our hard work to get overlooked. Receiving a message from your boss praising you for a specific completed task of any kind will keep morale up, and greater build that bond between you and your workers.
Google also recommends that employers discuss a list of “norms” that all employees need to abide by with their work. These norms could include expectations for email response times, taking days off, who to go to when your having difficulty with a certain task, the easiest ways to communicate with you and other higher-up employees, and how often everyone should be checking in with one another, even to just say “hey, how have you been this week?”
Finally, make sure your company is using a digital platform that is easy and accessible for everyone. Not every meeting needs to be a video conference and not every clerical error needs to be addressed with a phone call. Digital platforms like slack, discord, whatsapp, etc. make it easy for employees to quickly message each other for clarification/checking-in. So when discussing the list of norms with your employees, make sure to mention which mediums of communication are most appropriate for specific tasks or issues.
Eric Mastrota is a Contributing Editor at The National Digest based in New York. A graduate of SUNY New Paltz, he reports on world news, culture, and lifestyle. You can reach him at eric.mastrota@thenationaldigest.com.
The coronavirus pandemic has forced many workplaces to convert to remote environments for obvious health and safety reasons. For some companies the transition from office to at home has been a struggle, but for others, the transition went so smoothly that many big businesses are debating keeping their staff at home permanently even after this pandemic comes to a close; whenever that may be. Here are some of the companies who announced their new permanent stay-home work orders:
Facebook: Mark Zuckerberg announced recently that up to 50% of all of Facebook’s employees could be working remotely for the rest of the decade as a matter of satisfying employee requests, and for financial reasons as well.
“When you limit hiring to people who live in a small number of big cities, or who are willing to move there, that cuts out a lot of people who live in different communities, have different backgrounds, have different perspectives,” Zuckerberg said on a livestream posted to his Facebook page.
Twitter: Along the same social media lines, Twitter executives also recently announced that they would allow a majority of their workforce to continue working from home for as long as they choose; even if that’s for the rest of their career. Like any major company, there are some roles that will need to be fulfilled in an office environment once non-essential businesses re-open, however, for now this is easing a lot of employee anxieties who know that they’re in a job position that wouldn’t require them to do so.
“If our employees are in a role and situation that enables them to work from home and they want to continue to do so forever, we will make that happen. If not, our offices will be their warm and welcoming selves, with some additional precautions, when we feel it’s safe to return,” said Twitter’s vice president of people, Jennifer Christie, in a statement.
Jack Dorsey, Twitter’s CEO, recently announced that his other company, Square, would also allow their employees to continue working remotely indefinitely after the pandemic for the same reasons he implemented the new policy for Twitter employees.
Box: Box is a cloud-storage company that has nearly 2,000 employees working throughout the United States. In a recent blog post from the company’s CEO, Aaron Levie, he informed his entire workforce that they’re free to work “from anywhere” until the end of 2020 at least. Before the pandemic, Levie says that 15% of his employees already worked remotely, and while having that in-office community is important, the fully virtual way of working would be just as successful.
Shopify: The CEO of Shopify, a small business ecommerce platform, Tobi Lutke, recently released an entire statement about his thoughts on the world of work being “turned on its head.”
“Office centricity is over. As of today, Shopify is a digital by default company. Until recently, work happened in the office. We’ve always had some people remote, but they used the internet as a bridge to the office. This will reverse now. The future of the office is to act as an on-ramp to the same digital workplace that you can access from your #WFH setup,” Lutke tweeted.
Lutke continued to claim that all offices for Shopify would be closed until 2021 and the remainder of this year will be dedicated to digital reworking and transitioning into this new world of work. If there’s one thing all big businesses could learn from these major corporations, it’s that listening to your employees and transitioning into a period where everyone feels completely safe and able to do their work to the best of their ability should always be the main goal, but especially in the middle of a worldwide pandemic.
Eric Mastrota is a Contributing Editor at The National Digest based in New York. A graduate of SUNY New Paltz, he reports on world news, culture, and lifestyle. You can reach him at eric.mastrota@thenationaldigest.com.
Now that most of us are experiencing what it’s like to work from home for the first time, it’s important to understand the health effects that staring at a screen for a majority of the day can have. We’re all aware of the fact that staying on the internet for too long can have detrimental effects to your mental health, and how the blue light that’s emitted from our screens can cause us to lose sleep and stay engaged online for longer, however, did you also know that the same blue light can take a toll on your skin?
“Blue light, or high-energy visible (HEV) light, is primarily from the sun, but it’s also emitted by our phone, tablet, and computer screens. While blue light can at times be beneficial, like for killing bacteria and treating acne, being exposed to too much of it can also prompt the formation of free radicals, which break down collagen and cause inflammation, leading to redness, dark spots, and wrinkles. It can also darken hyper-pigmentation, especially in deeper skin tones, so it’s important to protect skin from its powers in the same way we do from the sun,” explains dermatologist Deanne Robinson, MD.
One of the easiest solutions to combat the blue light that’s absorbed into our skin is making sure you’re ingesting enough antioxidants and, surprisingly, broad-spectrum sunscreen. No matter what you should always be putting on sunscreen/SPF every day especially in the morning. Even though you might not go outside throughout the day, especially during this pandemic, SPF’s help improve your skin’s hyper-pigmentation, prevents premature aging, and now, protects your skin barrier from blue light absorption.
In terms of ingesting antioxidants, Dr. Robinson explains that “antioxidants do not physically block the light, rather they work to neutralize oxidative stress caused by the light.” Basically, your skin gets “stressed out” the longer you look at blue light, which leads to all of those detrimental effects, so antioxidants may not stop the blue light from absorbing into your skin, but it will stop your skin from reacting negatively to the light.
According to the American Academy of Ophthalmology, “most of the blue light we’re exposed to comes from the sun, but as research continues to show, we are spending more than half of our waking hours interacting with devices and are therefore exposed to more blue light now than at any other point in history. Luckily, there are plenty of products that provide blue light protection and help shield skin from its harmful effects.”
Some of these products that the AAO is referring to involve skin serums, sunscreens and moisturizers that are designed to combat negative effects caused by blue light exposure. Serums or other skin care products that have hyaluronic acid are extremely beneficial for this as well. Hyaluronic acid is an amazing way to hydrate your skin in general, and it should be a part of your skin care routine anyway, but one of the many benefits of it is that it hydrates your skin immensely. When your skin is properly hydrated, it’s less likely to “stress,” and remember, there’s no such thing as “over-hydrating” your skin, so be generous.
When looking for a sunscreen you want to choose a formula that’s described as “broad-spectrum,” has minerals, and has an SPF of at least 30. Broad-spectrum means it protects your skin from multiple kinds of light (such as blue) and the minerals will give your skin a direct hit of antioxidants as well.
Skin care may be the last thing on some of our minds, but just because we’re not out in public everyday doesn’t mean that our skin’s health needs to suffer too, so what are you waiting for? Stop reading this and go put on some sunscreen!
Eric Mastrota is a Contributing Editor at The National Digest based in New York. A graduate of SUNY New Paltz, he reports on world news, culture, and lifestyle. You can reach him at eric.mastrota@thenationaldigest.com.