Poll: Half of Bay Area residents feel offices still unsafe

Those surveyed also still consider public transit, indoor dining, attending pro sports particularly risky

Half of Bay Area residents believe working in an office is still risky, according a new poll from a prominent business group, reflecting the difficulties big employers may have in bringing workers back after more than a year of social distancing.

About 1 in 5 of those surveyed said working in the office was “very unsafe,” while a third described it as “somewhat unsafe” in a poll of 1,000 registered voters for the Bay Area Council.

But other experiences — from dining inside to attending sports events — were deemed even riskier by respondents, the poll found.

Pollster Ruth Bernstein cautioned that public sentiment is changing quickly on COVID19-related issues. The nine-county survey was conducted three weeks ago and has a margin of error of 3.1%.

“As the vaccine is coming out we’re seeing opinions change,” said Bernstein, CEO of Oakland’s EMC Research, adding that the lifting of restrictions is also affecting people’s perceptions of safety.

Nevertheless, the poll provides a glimpse into Bay Area residents’ evolving attitudes about life after the pandemic and the results highlight challenges companies, commuters and residents face amid hopes of a new normal unfolding.

“What we really all want to be able to do is look around the corner and I think this poll can help us to do that,” said council CEO Jim Wunderman. “We are in this incredible moment in history where we’re just about beginning to see the start of something dif

ferent, and we’re all wondering what that’s going to look like.”

Opinions about schools were close to evenly divided, with 47% saying attending school was unsafe and 52% considering it safe. Views about going out to eat showed a stark division between indoor and outdoor dining, with three-fourths of respondents saying eating outside was safe but almost two-thirds viewing eating indoors as dangerous.

Among the riskiest activities, according to respondents’ perceptions, were attending pro sports games, which 70% viewed as very or somewhat unsafe — and gathering indoors with 100 or more others, which nearly 80% believed was perilous.

Airline travel was still seen as fraught, with 58% of people saying they viewed it as unsafe.

Transit ridership plummeted during the pandemic, and people remain wary of buses and trains, with 64% saying they viewed taking public transit as unsafe. While nearly a third of people said they often rode transit before the pandemic, only 1 in 5 said they planned to take buses and trains afterward.

Looking forward, nearly three-fourths of respondents plan to go back to driving alone for work and errands at least two days per week, about the same percentage of pre-pandemic solo drivers. While 43% of residents said they had walked or bicycled for transportation at least two days a week before the pandemic, only 26% said they thought they would do that afterward.

Still, significantly fewer residents appear to be planning a return to a five-day-aweek commute, with about 60% saying they did so prepandemic and only about 40% saying they would after the pandemic. About 16% of employed respondents said they wouldn’t go into workplaces in the future, a slight rise from the 10% who said they were fully remote before the virus hit.

However, the poll found that just 22% of those making less than $50,000 a year planned to shift to remote work more often while 47% of those making more than $150,000 plan to do so.

The Bay Area Council represents hundreds of employers including Silicon Valley technology giants Google, Facebook, Apple and Salesforce, which have all said they plan to have employees return in stages. Wunderman pointed to Salesforce’s plans for a flexible model mixing remote and office-based work, and suggested that employers “meter” when employees are in the office. “We certainly don’t want to see a situation where everybody’s driving in at the same time,” Wunderman said. “There’s actually a really good opportunity here for the employer community and employees to work together to find solutions.”

To attract and retain workers, companies will have to recognize that employee views on offices have changed, Wunderman said. “You don’t want to lose people because another employer is going to be more flexible than you are,” Wunderman said.