WorkSpace Connect News Wrap: Modo Labs Makes a Buy; Hybrid Work Carries On

Welcome to the WorkSpace Connect News Wrap, where we'll be featuring news briefs relevant to the modern workplace and the people responsible for making it work. This edition: Modo Labs buys its Xcampus co-creator; hybrid office arrangements make workers happy but real estate investment trust (REIT) investors may be getting nervous.

 

Low-code app building platform provider Modo acquired workforce integration company RojoServe, which specializes in integrating Oracle PeopleSoft tools into client-specific platforms and workflows. The two companies had developed XCampus, an integration of Oracle’s PeopleSoft student management solution that provides students access to scheduling and financial workflows inside unified Modo-powered campus apps. After the acquisition, the RojoServe team will be focusing on integrations and developing integrations of other enterprise and campus apps and services.

 

Deloitte announced a $500 work-from-home technology subsidy, a move that the Motley Fool worried could signal longer-term trouble for office REIT investors because it suggests big companies like Deloitte have moved toward a workplace model that de-centers the office and leans into a hybrid-work model.

 

This shift may also play a role in employee retention — a recent Gallup survey of people who can work at home found that only 10% of these workers wanted to return to the office full-time, while approximately 60% wanted to go to the office from one and a half to two and a half days a week. Giving employees a flexible option may help keep them around more — as Bloomberg reported in June 2021, employees were choosing to quit rather than return to the office. And now, as Stanford University economics professor Nicholas Bloom told the BBC last week, workers who have decided they like working from home may be willing to demonstrate to their employers how important that option is to them.