Thousands of public servants working from home impacting on CBD occupancy rate

Thousands of public servants are working from home amid warnings that the ‘new norm’ in the Brisbane CBD will be about 75 per cent occupancy.

THE State Government might be playing it down but sources reckon the lights may be on in the CBD but thousands public servants in the city are preferring to work from home.

And with millions of dollars spent on leases annually and businesses relying on office worker patronage there will continue to serious discussions about the future of the CBD’s largest employer in the city.

A source within the public service estimated that the across the government portfolio occupancy was currently about 40 per cent.

“You can fire a cannon through the office on a Monday or Friday and not hit anyone,” they said.

“Peak attendance seems to be on Thursday and Mondays and Fridays are extended weekends.”

However, a spokesman for Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk played a straight bat saying there was no work from home directive.

“The vast majority of government workers are working from their usual place of work. The Premier has encouraged other employers to follow suit,” he said.

“There may be some arrangements individual employees have with their managers based on personal circumstances.”

For the record, a spike in Covid and flu cases saw the Property Council’s latest Office Occupancy Survey for the Brisbane CBD fall from 64 per cent in June to 53 per cent in July, its lowest rate since April.

And we’d better get used to it.

CBRE state director office leasing Chris Butters believes with flexible work being “the new norm” in the CBD will be about 75 per cent occupancy.

“It’s up and down but we are doing better than Melbourne and Sydney,” he says.

“We were never at 100 per cent before but in saying that there has been a structural change with more people now working from home.”

The Brisbane CBD still has office occupancy issues.

MASTER CHEFS

THE knives were out at the Lumiere Culinary Studio in the Mercedes-Benz building at Newstead.

And it was all about team building for CBRE’s Queensland Executive Committee with 19 heads of department divided into three groups battling it out for the honour of being – dare we say it – master chefs.

A former top level chef, CBRE Hotels’ national director Wayne Bunz says the day “was so much fun”.

“There was a lot of pressure and everyone said it was the best team exercise we’ve ever done,” he says.

“This is Brisbane’s most spectacular cooking school, and it’s amazing to have the CBRE team learning and cooking alongside internationally renowned chef, Shannon Kellam, from the famous Montrachet restaurant.”

CBRE’s Queensland Executive Committee at the cook-off in the Lumiere Culinary Studio at the Mercedes-Benz building in Newstead.

For the record Bunz was an award-winning chef with Hyatt Hotels in New Zealand before progressing from executive chef to general manager of Powerhouse Boutique Hotels in Brisbane and then starting his real estate brokerage career.

Each team was given the task of preparing and being judged on two dishes – Port Lincoln Yellowtail kingfish served fresh with Geraldton wax dressing, native blood lime and citrus; and pan roasted Grampians lamb loin with coastal rosemary, butternut squash and Pepper Berry gnocchi, chestnut mushrooms, and blue gum sabayon.

Bunz’s team of Deanne Bradley, Fiona Keys, Peter Turnbull, Andrew Lynch and Boyd Kildey were declared the winners.

And for one CBRE executive there must have been a sense of relief over the outcome.

“It would have been a sad indictment if the guy who was a chef for 16 years and didn’t win,” Bunz says.