CoStar Announces Insane Incentives to Get Vaccinated Employees Back in the Office

Since the pandemic, many companies have allowed their employees to work from home. Some go as far as to promise the continued offer to work remotely, as it doesn’t have any impact on employee work ethic. Zillow is one of the companies to go public with such a stance. 

CoStar is taking a different approach. The real estate giant is promising brand-new Teslas to its vaccinated employees who are willing to come back to the office to continue in-person work. Furthermore, the company is promising incentives like $10,000 in cash, an all-expenses-paid trip to Barbados, and smaller prizes like gift cards. 

Seems excessive when remote work isn’t exactly a new concept or even a bad option for any company. However, CoStar Group CEO Andrew Florance stands by this decision. He recently explained to The Wallstreet Journal:

“Yes, this is a lot of money, but in the context of a multibillion-dollar company with thousands of staff and hundreds of offices, it’s a drop in the bucket. So you can have some fun, you can incentivize people to do the right thing.”

This isn’t the first time during the pandemic that CoStar has pulled a stunt like this. Earlier, the company ran a rewards program corresponding to vaccine rollouts to get its employees vaccinated as quickly as possible. 

Florance reported that since enacting the incentives, office occupancy has gone up from 4% to 20%. 

Florance said

“We are going to do interesting and creative things until the workplace is settled down and until we’ve adjusted to our new reality. And I think that will be months and months and months.”