Unum is closing its office in Worcester, Massachusetts and transitioning the 400 employees who work in that downtown complex to permanently work at home.
The Chattanooga-based disability insurer says it has no such plans to shut down other corporate offices it maintains in Chattanooga, Portland, Maine or Columbia, South Carolina. But it is shifting more of its work out of the office and into workers' homes and, at least for now, more than 90% of its 10,000 employees are doing the vast majority of their work from home.
"With the COVID-related transition to remote work, we've continued to perform efficiently with exceptional service levels – confirming our capability," Unum spokeswoman Kelly Spencer said Friday. "Remote work is a contemporary solution that strengthens our business resiliency and reduces costs, like building space and office expenses."
Global Workforce Analytics, a consulting firm which studies the future of work, estimates the typical company can realize an extra $11,000 a year in benefits from each teleworker through both reduced office expenses and improved worker productivity.
Unum, which has operated an office in Worcester for more than a century, will sublease the 214,000-square-foot building it now leases through 2030 for its individual disability insurance lines serviced in Worcester. Spencer said since Unum moved into its current office space in downtown Worcester in 2013, the company has shrunk its staff at that location from nearly 700 employees to about 400 today due to the rise in remote work within our broader company, and some of shrinking of Unum's Closed Disability Block business managed at that site.
"Some work may shift to other locations as result of not having building space, like processing mailed items, but the large majority will stay in Worcester (and work from home)," she said. "We're proud of our Worcester heritage and to have been a key part of the revitalization of downtown, but our shrinking headcount and ability to work remotely means we don't need physical space as much as we used to."
Unum's office closing in Massachusetts highlights the potential threat for commercial office buildings in downtown markets in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic and the work-from-home trend it has helped propel. Since March, a majority of the workers at most of Chattanooga's biggest corporate employers - BlueCross BlueShield of Tennessee, the Tennessee Valley Authority, Unum, U.S. Xpress Enterprises, the University of Tennessee at Chatanooga and others - have worked from home rather than come into the office. That pattern is continuing through at least this summer.
BlueCross, which has more than 4,200 employees in Chattanooga, decided this spring to physically locate at least 53% of its staff at home to do their work rather than in the company's corporate headquarters atop Cameron Hill in downtown Chattanooga.
Contact Dave Flessner at dflessner@timesfreepress.com or at 757-6340