Pontiac — United Wholesale Mortgage Holdings Inc. is bucking the trend of major employers in Metro Detroit that are allowing employees to continue to work remotely after months of doing their jobs from home amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
Detroit’s three automakers and DTE Energy Co. have announced they are adopting hybrid models for the return to work. UWM rival Rocket Companies Inc. has, too, and it’s been recalling its 19,000 employees in phases this summer to downtown Detroit. Most are working two to three days in the office weekly with teams staggered throughout the week.
These companies say the flexibility they can offer their workers is a recruitment and retention tool. But UWM, the publicly traded Pontiac-based mortgage lender, says recalling its more than 9,000 employees to work in-person full-time is the best way it can support them.
During the work-from-home orders, the country’s No. 1 wholesale lender completed renovations to a building it acquired that more than doubles its complex. Returning employees will make use of it, and being on the site together is an important part of the company’s business model, says Laura Lawson, UWM’s chief people officer.
“We’re not a just do-a-job company,” Lawson said. “We are everything. We are a support system. It creates greater tenure, loyalty when you enjoy your job and going to work.”
Throughout the pandemic, Lawson continued to work in-person even at times when most UWM employees worked from home. Still, the lender last year closed a record $182.5 billion in mortgage origination volume with a $3.38 billion profit.
Now UWM is looking to top Rocket Mortgage as the largest direct mortgage lender in the country by 2024. To do that, CEO Mat Ishbia believes his employees work better when they’re under one roof.
As a result, an undisclosed number of people left the company as employees returned to work this year, said Lawson, noting it wasn’t a large disruption.
At the same time, the company grew by nearly double, as it hired 5,000 — 40% who had been laid off from other jobs — over the last year, including a few who initially left, Lawson said.
The departures are indicative of the difficult decisions employers are having to make in balancing the health of their workers while continuing their operations, said Deborah Gordon, a civil rights and employment attorney in Bloomfield Hills.
“This is a whole new area,” she said. “You have the ability to set your own health and safety standards.” Once Gov. Gretchen Whitmer lifted all COVID-19 restrictions in June, “that meant there was no longer a law in the state of Michigan that prevented employers from having employees come back to the job.”
The only exception to that is employees who have doctor’s notes. Otherwise, employees can be subjected to that culture shock of returning to work, said Deborah Brouwer, co-managing partner specializing in labor and employment law at Nemeth Law PC in Detroit.
“If you’ve been working from home for 18 months, you may not be used to dealing with people face-to-face,” Brouwer said. “There may be people you’ve never worked with. You’re working regular work hours and making a commute. Employers should offer a lot of communication and patience.”
DeJuan Edwards, 38, of St. Clair Shores transitioned during the pandemic from a sales account executive to a business analyst in information technology services at UWM, developing applications used by mortgage brokers to sell and close loans. It was an opportunity provided by UWM to do two-and-a-half months of training. He’s spent some of his 18 months at the company working from home, but employees have all returned to in-person work after they began being recalled in phases starting in June.
“I may be working on a project, and I can just turn around and say, ‘Hey, look, I’m having an issue with this,’ versus sending a message and waiting on them to reply back,” Edwards said. “There is a lot of value in meeting face-to-face, being able to explain something face-to-face, whiteboarding.”
The return of those workers also is important for the city of Pontiac, which has an individual income tax rate of 1% for residents and 0.5% for non-residents. It’s the city’s largest source of revenue, contributing about 35% of its total revenue, and UWM is the city’s largest employer. Although it will depend on future tax refunds, Pontiac Treasurer Sekar Bawa estimates the city will have lost anywhere between $250,000 to $500,000 in income tax revenue for the fiscal year that ended June 30.
“We utilized some of the rescue money coming from Congress to replace our lost revenues,” Pontiac Mayor Deirdre Waterman said. “The hybrid workplace model we know is becoming more common, and so we are replacing it with other income,” especially through economic development of which UWM is a prime example.
UWM’s return to in-person work comes as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is recommending that even vaccinated people wear a mask indoors in public in areas of substantial or high transmission to maximize protection from the highly contagious delta variant. This week, Oakland County was labeled as having “substantial” transmission, according to the CDC.
The county health department is recommending people get inoculated, wear masks indoors and social distance, and the Michigan Occupational Safety and Health Administration is encouraging employers to follow CDC guidelines. Detroit’s automakers reintroduced a mask mandate at its U.S. plants and offices this week, and rival Rocket said Wednesday it would require masks and weekly COVID testing for unvaccinated employees.
UWM says health and safety remain a top priority during the COVID-19 pandemic. A year ago, Oakland County’s health department reported 50 cases among employees and ordered UWM to strengthen its safety protocols. UWM says not all of the employees were working in the building at the time and that it was following state mandates.
“Bringing our team members back to the office was important to us because of the positive impact being in-person has on our teams, clients and incredible company culture,” Lawson said. “We will remain in compliance with CDC and state of Michigan guidelines.”
UWM employees are not required to wear masks, though they are made available. Employees also are not required to be vaccinated, though UWM has partnered with the county to distribute vaccines at the sports complex it purchased nearby. They’re also available through the on-campus doctor.
“That was huge for me,” Edwards said of the company’s vaccination efforts. “Mat made a conscious effort and push to make sure everybody was OK, that everybody was vaccinated, and everyone was back healthy.”
UWM in 2018 moved from Troy to the more than 600,000-square-foot headquarters it built in Pontiac, complete with a basketball court, fitness area, doctor’s office, dry cleaning, salon, gaming room and Starbucks café.
As the company expanded amid a housing market boom and low-interest rates, it quickly grew out of the new building and acquired the facility across South Boulevard East that offered another 1 million square feet. What the company says is the longest enclosed pedestrian bridge at nearly 1,000 feet connects the buildings. The pandemic expedited the opening of the redevelopment, the cost of which the company declined to disclose.
In designing the new space, Lawson got to flex her creativity. It previously was the site of a former General Motors Co. plant. She brought in industrial containers and created an elevated structure to hold meeting space, including a cargo net to sit on, to emphasize that history. She found an old 1950 Chevrolet truck built at the plant for $5,000, had it refurbished, and it now sits by the south building’s cafeteria offering free fruit.
The expansion also emphasizes local businesses. A new pavilion set to open in September will offer a space for employees to grab lunch from food trucks. A rotating “GuestRaunt” program partners with 33 restaurants to cater lunches at six locations throughout the complex. And a replica of Birmingham’s Hunter House Hamburgers opened in June.
The idea to bring the white porcelain pill-box 1950s diner to the campus came to fruition after Lawson saw reports that the Woodward Avenue mainstay was in jeopardy of losing its location in a deed discrepancy. It hasn’t, but owner Kelly Cobb agreed to expand to UWM’s site, a decision that has helped the business to offer its 30 employees more benefits and a wage increase.
“Honestly, I was partially flattered and partially thought they were crazy,” Cobb said. “They have a very clear appreciation and love for Detroit institutions and the culture and the people of Detroit. They had a love for Hunter House. We just humbly took it to heart. They’re very team-oriented, and we just clicked.”
The decision was more than just providing another lunch option to employees, Lawson said: “Our deeper intent of things is that Hunter House is an experience. I’m not just saying I want to bring burgers to campus. I want to bring something that’s legendary like a retreat experience.”
In making those experiences for employees, from DJed afternoon dance parties to drive-in movie nights, she thinks about her time as a student at Michigan State University.
“Every time I go back, it’s a feeling,” Lawson said. “…I want team members to have that type of feeling, a campus, a community.”
bnoble@detroitnews.com
Twitter: @BreanaCNoble
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