Is Google going to kill remote work? This is what the experts say

In July of last year, Google CEO, Sundar Pichai officially extended work-from-home privileges to June 30 2021 in an email sent to the corporation’s 200,000-odd employees.

Now, in the midst of companies like Twitter and Spotify committing to telework indefinitely, Google appears to be leaning toward a hybrid model a little earlier than internal communication suggested.

“To give employees the ability to plan ahead, we are extending our global voluntary work from home option through June 30, 2021, for roles that don’t need to be in the office. I hope this will offer the flexibility you need to balance work with taking care of yourselves and your loved ones over the next 12 months,” Pichai informed staff last summer.

Although this decision was met with concurrence among both US workers and executives—with some company leaders following directly in Google’s footsteps, Pichai is asking some employees to consider returning to on-location operations sooner rather than later.

“We firmly believe that in-person, being together, having a sense of community is super important when you have to solve hard problems and create something new so we don’t see that changing. But we do think we need to create more flexibility and more hybrid models,” Pichai explained last week in a company post.

Google employees who want to work remotely (after the Sept. 1 deadline) for more than 14 days per year, will have to formally apply for it. Employees can apply for up to 12 months but only those deemed to be in “exceptional circumstances,” will have their request fulfilled.

Various companies, including Google, are allowing coronavirus case numbers to dictate the pace of their route back to normalcy. Fiona Cicconi, Google’s chief people officer, reportedly explained the following in a company email:

“Offices will operate at a limited capacity, and reopenings will vary state by state, based on the number of coronavirus cases in the area. Permanent moves for personal reasons are still on hold.”

Salesforce, Facebook and Amazon, are looking into similar methods.

CEOs over at Facebook say that assuming COVID-19 numbers surrounding its California headquarters continue to decline, they will allow up to 10% of its workforce to return back to the office on May 10.

Microsoft and Uber welcomed their workers back to their headquarter offices (Redmond, Washington, and San Francisco respectively) on March 29th of this year.

“Our goal is to give employees further flexibility, allowing people to work where they feel most productive and comfortable, while also encouraging employees to work from home as the virus and related variants remain concerning,” Microsoft said in a blog post.

Uber is moving up a back-to-the-office plan from Sept. 13 to April 12th.

“Employees returning to the workplace need to take a virtual training, sign a COVID-19 Precautions & Acknowledgement form, and take a daily health screening (including temperature check) at home to qualify for a return,” the Ride Share company said in a release.

There doesn’t seem to be a national consensus on an appropriate time for firms to revoke work from home options.

The telework movement may have been energized by COVID-19, but not all of its advantages are relevant to the pandemic.

On balance, US employees are spending more time in meetings and sending emails, but recent polling supports a lingering affinity for the current mode of working.

The vast majority of the 1,500 people polled in a new Harvard Business School Online survey said that they excelled and grew in their professions after a year of working remotely. 

Another 81% surveyed said that they either don’t ever want to go back to their office or they would prefer a hybrid schedule, like the one proposed by Google executives, going forward. Twenty-seven percent of employees surveyed would rather work remotely full-time, and another 61% would like to work remotely two or three days out of the week.

“I think it’s a combination of factors, like a Jekyll and Hyde, so to speak,”  Harvard executive director, Patrick Mullane says.“We love working remotely in some ways; it gives us more time to focus, spend time with our families, and no long commutes back and forth to work. We found out that we can do a lot without having to be face-to-face as COVID really forced that issue. “

According to a recent IBM survey, 54% of the 25,000 adults surveyed said that they would like to be able to primarily work from home and an additional 75% would like the option to do it occasionally. Forty percent of respondents said that they feel strongly that their employer should offer opt-in remote work options once businesses are permitted to reopen to full capacity.

Before COVID, work-life. balance was the most reported affliction among the working class. It may be that our one-time solution to workaround the most sophisticated pathogen of recent memory will provide instructive insights into employee retention and output.

 FlexJobs reports that the average remote worker saves roughly $4,000 a year not spending money on gas, coffee, lunches, and more clothes for their wardrobe. These savings are likely exponentially higher for the managerial class, that may be able to cut corners by nixing all the costs that attend hosting a large staff.

“A number of Big Tech bellwether companies also expedited their plans for workers to start returning to the officeahead of previously announced schedules,” CEO, founder at WeCruitr, Jack Kelly writes.

“We need some leadership to make the tough call. Google may be the one, as it’s admired and emulated by other companies. The search giant was one of the first businesses to tell its people to work from home. Now, the company has called for people to return to the office. This, however, maybe a blow to the hopes of many for a new standard of remote work.”