Allstate cut annual corporate office spending by more than half in four years, from $382 million in 2020 to $138 million this year, for Bloomberg – a decrease of $244 million.

Although Allstate has also reduced its real estate footprint from 12 million square feet to 4 million, the insurance giant says it is metaphorically “building something new” in the near future by allowing remote workers to meet in workspaces or shared offices used by many companies at the same time. .

According to one Bloomberg report on Monday25% of Allstate's 54,000 corporate employees will have the opportunity to meet with each other in co-working spaces across the country. They will be renting space in cities like Atlanta, Indianapolis, and Minneapolis through LiquidSpace on a daily basis. T-Mobile and Philips use as well the platform.

^{Allstate corporate office in Northbrook, Illinois. Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images}

The collaborative plan is currently in the “test and learn” phase, Allstate vice president of administration and real estate Mike Thomas told Bloomberg. It's happening in cities where Allstate has between 100 and 1,000 employees — not enough for an office lease, but enough for an occasional in-person gathering in a workspace for training and team building.

Related: 'Not a cost game': Amazon's CEO explains why employees should return to the office

Allstate's test-and-see approach varies from strict back to the office policies recently adopted by companies such as Amazon and Dell.

At Dell, working remotely means not being considered for promotions or new roles within the company. A leaked memo in May indicated that Dell had begun to monitor attendance and use it as a factor in determining how employees were reviewed, rewarded and compensated.

At Amazon, all corporate employees will be required to work in the office five days a week starting January 2. Amazon CEO Andy Jassy stated in September that personal work was better for strengthening company culture; Amazon Web Services CEO Matt Garman said in mid-October that there were other places employees could work if they didn't like the tenure.

Meanwhile, the benefits of personal work over hybrid work remain in question. or study published in Nature at the beginning of this year found that employees on a hybrid schedule were just as productive as those on a personal schedule. A hybrid schedule presented a measurable advantage: it led to a one-third reduction in absenteeism and higher levels of job satisfaction.

Related: Hybrid workers were put to the test against fully office workers – here's who came out on top