US: Insurance company Allstate has revealed plans to move a quarter of its 54,000-strong workforce to flex office premises.
The company has reduced its office footprint from 12 million to four million square feet, and has partnered with coworking platform LiquidSpace to give employees the flex option.
Following the switch to remote work, the company has cut spending on its office leases from $382 million in 2020 to $138 million this year, according to Bloomberg.
Those cuts have included its former 232-acre campus outside of Chicago. In late 2021, Dermody Properties acquired the former headquarters, replacing the two million square feet of offices on the site with a distribution centre.
Allstate bought a 10-story office building in Chicago’s Loop, with plans to make the property its new headquarters but just over two years later it sold off the building for aroubd $11 million, a third of its purchase price.
In cities such as Atlanta, Indianapolis, Minneapolis and Columbus, Ohio, Allstate said it has between 100 and 1,000 employees, which it considers insufficient to justify an office lease.
“Workspaces need to be different than what they were,” said Lauren DeYoung, Allstate’s workplace futurist. “The days of cubicle farms are over.”
Bloomberg reported that a 10-person coworking membership costs less than a comparable office lease in 97 of 102 US cities,.
