Work from home or remote work is not a new concept and is being followed by people around the world for several years now. However, the outbreak of COVID-19 pandemic and shelter-in-place guidelines around the world has forced a large number of people to work from home. This, in result, has shown that a large percentage of the workforce can continue to work from home. It has also led to the conceptualization of continued work from home policies by companies like Twitter.
We are already preparing ourselves for the post-COVID world. In this world, social distancing will become a new normal. Employers are expected to restructure their office layout with respect to social distancing guidelines. This would result in some people being asked to work from home. Whether you like it or not, this is the new normal. You cannot shy away from this idea of working from home.
Leading work from home plans
Twitter was the first major organization to bite the bullet and announce permanent work from home policy. The micro-blogging platform announced that employees who don’t want to return to office after COVID-19 pandemic. Jack Dorsey, CEO of Twitter announced that virtually all employees will have the option to work from home forever. Against all odds, it seems like work from home has been successful for companies like Twitter.
Dorsey has even extended this policy to Square, the payment company run by him. Square’s decision came as a surprise since the company had plans to move employees to a new office. Twitter and Square are the only big companies in the Bay Area to implement permanent work from home policy. Google and Facebook are taking a moderate approach to this idea.
Both the companies are asking their employees to work from home till the end of this year. However, Facebook plans to let some of its employees work from home permanently in the future. CEO Mark Zuckerberg has laid out a plan where up to half of Facebook employees will work from home within five to ten years, according to The Verge.
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Twitter is non-critical of work from home
One of the most vocal critics of work from home has been Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella. He told the New York Times that work from home can have an adverse impact on the psyche of employees. He akins work from home as “replacing one dogma with another”. Nadella is particularly concerned about burnout and the mental state of people working from home permanently.
The pandemic has painted a clear picture that there is a workforce in every organization that can be remote. It is likely that these people will be moved to work from home policy permanently. However, the companies implementing these rules must keep in mind the mental effect of such a decision.