The social distancing that we are exercising as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in lots of people working from home. With I would guess mixed results. After the pandemic recedes some of those people will want to go back to the office. Some will want to keep working from home and will be able to be productive. Some significant number will want to be in a work environment and having found out that they can work remotely but not at home they will be looking for an alternative. This is where shared space companies like WeWork have an opportunity. People can cut their commute and still have an environment with structure and peers.
Working in an office we have always had a combination of supervised productive work and a socialization network. The pandemic has shown us that because of powerful networks many people can still do supervised productive work away from the office with their coworkers. What many are missing by working from home is the socializing component. This could be a huge opportunity for companies like WeWork. A person working for a company in Santa Monica could work four days at the Wework office in Pasadena near their home and go to the corporate office only one day per week. This would be a huge saving of commuting time, it would lower the carbon footprint of the company and perhaps save money. WeWork would have to set up a program that encouraged regular working hours so that the remote workers could fill their socializing need.