WeWork Makes Heavy Decision to Cut Costs During the Pandemic

More news is in pertaining to companies cutting back on costs while everyone around the world navigates the coronavirus pandemic. This time, flexible work space aggregator, WeWork, has announced more staff reductions by the end of May. 

The co-working company's CEO Sandeep Mathrani made the announcement himself while the Chief Financial Officer, Kimberly Ross, encouraged staff to proactively cut costs wherever they can.

Ross said:

“Do not wait to be asked to cut expenses. Be proactive. If you see waste, eliminate it. If you see unnecessary spending, stop it. Let me be very clear: With or without Covid, we need to run a more disciplined business.”

This isn't the first time in recent history that the company has had to make a tough decision. WeWork had cut 2,400 employees after it's failed IPO. Last month, it cut another 250 jobs to make ends meet.

Furthermore, the company hasn't paid April rent for some locations, showing that it's not just individuals struggling to pay their landlords around the country. Even investor-backed startups are struggling when it comes to meeting rental needs.

A WeWork spokesperson explained:

“Rather than implementing a companywide policy on rent payments, we are individually reaching out to our more than 600 global landlord partners to work in good faith towards finding asset-specific solutions that benefit all parties involved.”

WeWork has made other measures to meet the needs of its clients, offering some tenants discounts to minimize cancellations during the quarantines, which has hit the flexible office space provider particularly hard. 

Will companies like WeWork make it through to the end of this period of unrest and be able to bounce back from the financial blow that is the coronavirus? Companies across all markets are struggling to adapt to the societal shift caused by quarantines that seem to have no end in sight. What will society be like after things drift back to normal? What are the repercussions of a society that will prefer to stay indoors to keep healthy when the fog settles?