Following on the heels of Silicon Valley tech juggernauts Google and Microsoft, Facebook announced its return-to-work plans to its 60,000 employees on Wednesday.
The social media giant is offering workers a choice of either seeking permission to keep working from home or return to the office for at least 50% of the time. Asking for approval seems reasonable. It could, however, become uncomfortable. You may work for an “old-school” manager who only wants butts in the seats and who is not a fan of working from home. Other bosses may be more lenient. This inconsistency may lead to disenchantment among workers with strict supervisors.
Apple, which announced its hybrid-work plans last week, was quickly met with protests. Employees wrote a letter to Tim Cook, the CEO of Apple, demanding the right to remain working remotely. It would be interesting to see if there will be similar pushback on Facebook for a more fleshed-out discussion over remote work. To be fair, Facebook and all of the other corporations making these decisions are entering uncharted waters. It’s likely that changes will be made along the way to ensure that the policies and procedures benefit both the employees and company.
Facebook will bring back people up to about 50% capacity by early September. It’s anticipated that by October, it will have full capacity. For the remainder of 2021, as it relates to personal travel, Facebook employees can utilize 20 business days to work from another location, as long as the person has the appropriate authorization. The global social media company will permit staff members to relocate to other countries on a gradual basis.
By June 15, Facebook will allow remote-work opportunities in the Americas, including moving from the U.S. to Canada. Around January 2022, employees may permanently move between seven more countries in Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA).
The Wall Street Journal reported, “Chief executive Mark Zuckerberg said he personally planned to spend as much as half of the next year working remotely,” and the CEO said in a memo obtained by the WSJ, “I’ve found that working remotely has given me more space for long-term thinking and helped me spend more time with my family, which has made me happier and more productive at work.”
According to the BBC, “Brynn Harrington, who is Facebook’s vice president of people growth, says some workers have been “really thriving” at home and will be keen to continue doing so.” She added, “For example, parents who are closer to their children and are happy to cut their commute time and optimize their work day, they’re thrilled to work from home.”
There may be a bit of a catch. Last March, Zuckerberg said that those who flee to lower-cost cities “may have their compensation adjusted based on their new locations.” He ominously added, “We’ll adjust salary to your location at that point. There’ll be severe ramifications for people who are not honest about this.” In the BBC piece, Harrington said, “We pay based on the local cost of labor in a market. So, there will be variability in terms of pay for remote workers, based on where they work.”
Source: Forbes
