The CEO Resource - Working From Home
Business owners, CEOs and their leadership teams certainly have a variation of views about the impact on their business models and on their people with respect to, COVID-19 fueled, working from home. Corporate real estate teams, commercial brokers and developers worry about long term impact in their industries while subleasing ramps up as CEOs and CFOs pro forma big dollar savings on office rent.
This dynamic, coupled with COVID-19 driven significant financial stress on state budgets, is placing major pressure on economic development groups at the state and local levels to become more creative and aggressive in the facilitation of deal flow into their communities. While many state economic development offices are reassessing their incentive programs and trying to find more financial resources for their deal making tool kits, others are actually far ahead of the pack with valuable incentives ready to be negotiated.
This is no more evident than with the massively popular work from home trend taking hold on what appears to be a permanent basis across the country. At KMK Consulting, we are seeing multiple relevant examples of state economic development offices willing to negotiate incentives for companies for job growth focused on employees working from home. Of the seven states where we are currently active, locating over 4,500 new jobs, every one of these jobs were targeted for new company owned or commercially leased office facilities as of this past March.
While no one knows the long term impact of working from home on community economic growth, we do know that it is imperative that companies properly assess work from home economic incentives – usually job tax credits – as part of their forward looking business growth strategy. We are deep into these negotiations now. As more states adjust to this competition addressing this new normal, more financial negotiation opportunities for companies will emerge. Indeed, communities will win. Certainly, employers will win also if they are engaged in this process.
At KMK Consulting we are ready to help you grow. Should you have any questions or need assistance, please contact us.
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| James J. McGraw, Jr. | Thomas G. Seward, Jr. |
