Blackstone CEO Says Remote Staff "Don't Work As Hard"

It has taken Wall Street - which rushed in 2020 to offer workers virtually unlimited work from home options at a time when lockdowns were the mandatory narrative and anyone who strayed was summarily canceled - almost 4 years to realize what has been obvious to modern civilization for centuries: there is a reason why employees work in offices and not at home.

Today, Blackstone billionaire CEO Steve Schwarzman shared that insight when he revealed that part of the reason workers are proving difficult to lure back to offices is because they enjoy a lighter workload at home while saving money.

The Blackstone boss, whose firm is the single largest commercial and residential landlord in the US and maybe the world, said people profited from remote work as they found "they didn’t work as hard regardless of what they tell you" and saved money on commutes, lunches and expensive work clothes.

That’s contributing to the continuing vacancies in office buildings in the US, with Schwarzman saying he expects companies to cut back on space when their leases end and some of those properties are “not survivable as economic entities.” Still, he said newer office buildings were proving resilient and demand for other categories of real estate like warehouses continued to rise.

Schwarzman was speaking on a panel at the latest edition of the Future Investment Initiative summit in Riyadh, aka Davos in the Desert. According to Bloomberg, the executive may have drawn solace from comments by Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon, whose workers have largely returned to their desks.  Solomon said on the panel that his firm is, “by and large, operating the same way now as it did before the pandemic.”

At Blackstone’s own offices, things are back to pre-covid normal with all executives and investment professionals expected to be at their desks five days a week. The good news for Blackstone is that it collects rent no matter where workers are physically located.