With half its workforce at home, Nationwide plans no more office shrinking – ‘We probably

COLUMBUS, Ohio (COLUMBUS BUSINESS FIRST) — With half its workforce permanently working from home, Nationwide plans no more shrinking of its real estate footprint.

The Columbus insurance and financial services giant is subleasing just less than 300,000 square feet of offices in the Arena District and Grandview Yard. After closing some offices in April 2020 at the start of the coronavirus pandemic, Nationwide plans to keep what it owns now, CEO Kirt Walker told Columbus Business First.

“There’s still a need to have real estate,” Walker said. “We probably have it right.”

Nationwide currently has 1,400 job openings, with about 900 of those in Central Ohio. About 12,000 of its 25,000 employees are in the region. Besides its hometown, Nationwide is concentrating its presence at large regional offices in Scottsdale, Arizona; San Antonio, Texas; and Des Moines, Iowa.

Half its workforce has permanently shifted to working at home. About 10% report daily to offices, such as for security and facility maintenance, and the rest rotate between home and office – although no more than half of a building’s occupants can be inside at any one time.

“We’ve embraced our new model moving forward,” Walker said during an interview that focused on the company’s record $53 billion revenue in 2021.

In 2018, Nationwide completed a four-year process of consolidating some 3,600 suburban employees in new office buildings at Grandview Yard. The mixed-use development was built by Nationwide Realty Investors Ltd., the insurer’s real estate arm.

The offices still have a “favorable outlook,” and there’s no need to sell despite the sublet, CFO Tim Frommeyer said.

“We’re hanging on to it,” he said. “We’re going to keep our position here.”

As a private company partly owned by its policyholders, Nationwide doesn’t have to answer to public stockholders, Frommeyer said. “We have the benefit of taking a little longer view than public companies.”

About 500 of the current open positions are early-career technology roles to accelerate the century-old company’s digital transformation, Walker said, including jobs in data analytics and data science.

Nationwide lifted its mask requirement for vaccinated employees as of Monday. The employer does not require vaccines, but unvaccinated workers still need to wear a face covering.

Walker credited the strong financial performance in 2021 in large part to the workforce.

“We’ve always hired for attitude at Nationwide,” he said. “You hire for attitude, the rest will come along.”

For more business headlines, go to ColumbusBusinessFirst.com.