T. Rowe Price is giving more employees their desks back

T. Rowe Price opened a sleek headquarters for 2,000 employees last year at Harbor Point. A year in, it’s rearranging the furniture.

About half of the workspace had been dedicated to “hot desking” — flexible areas that one employee could work at one day and another employee the next — and half to permanent desks.

But, after feedback from employees, many of those flex spaces were converted in June into assigned seats, mirroring a national trend.

The Baltimore-based investment manager’s aim is to “strengthen the in-office experience and provide greater consistency for teams,” spokesperson Arminta Plater said in a statement. The changes did not require significant physical renovations, she said.

“As part of this effort, flex desks will transition to assigned seating where appropriate,” she said, which will create a “more predictable and collaborative workplace environment.”

Since the 2020 pandemic, many employers have permitted remote work. That is especially true in Maryland, which ranks among the states with the highest percentage of remote employees.

Fewer people in the office require fewer in-office desks. Ergo, the rise of the flexible workspace.

Constellation Energy employees, for example, often work remotely. The company’s Harbor Point headquarters, next door to T. Rowe, has a “mix of assigned and flexible workspaces,” spokesperson Linsey Wisniewski said.

Some companies, however, have swung the pendulum back toward more in-person work.

Working five days a week in the office is rare, but T. Rowe and Under Armour are among Baltimore employers that generally ask associates to come in four days a week and work remotely one. Under Armour employees at the new Baltimore Peninsula headquarters have dedicated workspaces, spokesperson Matt Dornic said, but there are also flex and communal areas.

According to a recent survey from Gensler, the architecture and design giant, nearly 60% of employees in “unassigned environments say they would prefer a dedicated workspace.” Workers in flex spaces might, in the back of their mind, worry they’ll need to relocate or be unable to take virtual calls, Diane Hoskins, Gensler’s global co-chair, wrote in a recent essay.

It can also diminish a sense of community. Hoskins said “work is deeply connected to place.” As a sense of belonging drops, she said, so does performance.

“When people feel like visitors in their own workplace, connection suffers,” she said.