Smart working, all the plans of Amazon, Apple, Google, Facebook and more
What are Amazon, Apple, Google, Facebook and not just about smart working
Although the teleworking (or improperly smart working) revolution had been predicted intermittently for over four decades, it never really materialized. Indeed, data from representative labor force surveys show that until the advent of the Covid-19 crisis, only one in twenty people employed in the EU27 routinely worked from home in 2019, a share that had remained fairly constant since 2009. The outbreak of the Covid pandemic and the consequent lockdown measures put in place to slow the spread of the virus have suddenly changed everything, out of necessity. During the first half of 2020, working from home in smart working has become the usual way for millions of workers in the EU and around the world.
WHO WANTS TO GO TO THE OFFICE AND WHO WANTS TO STAY AT HOME IN SMART WORKING
In this situation there are those who have discovered that they have more time using teleworking, those who have moved home by moving to the countryside and those who would like to return to the office instead. A recent internal survey by the asset management firm Schroders has determined that employees will be able to work flexibly all week on a permanent basis. If before there was an obligation to go to the office at least four days out of five, the rules – according to an internal circular read by the Telegraph – have been revised, and those in the City who manage shops, bars, restaurants, barbers and hairdressers fear that Schroders' decision will pave the way for other large organizations. According to research by Morgan Stanley, British workers are in fact more reluctant than their French, German and Italian colleagues to come back to the office ”, reads the Corriere della Sera .
TELEWORK IS NOT FOR EVERYONE
“However, telework is not for everyone, increasing the possibility of a new division between those who can telework and those who cannot. In this context, identifying how many and which jobs can be carried out remotely has become a key factor in understanding the economic and distributional consequences of the pandemic ”, underlines the World Economic Forum in an article .
In a recent report prepared jointly by the Joint Research Center of the European Commission and Eurofound (Sostero et al. 2020), the WEF discussed the large differences in the prevalence of smart working between jobs in Europe before and during the epidemic of COVID-19. Applying the classification from the Italian Occupational Sampling Survey to professional employment data, “we estimate that 37% of employee work in the EU-27 can technically be done remotely. This estimate is very close to those indicated in the real-time surveys conducted during the Covid-19 crisis, in particular Eurofound's 'Living, Working and Covid-19' electronic survey. Our estimates of the fraction of teleworking employment range from 35% to 41% in two thirds of EU countries, with the highest value in Luxembourg (54%) and the lowest in Romania (27%) ”.
ONLY 13% OF THE EMPLOYMENT IN EUROPE IS IN REMOTE WORKABLE EMPLOYMENT
Overall, however, “these estimates probably provide an 'upper limit' to the percentage of jobs that can be done remotely efficiently. Most teleworking requires extensive social interaction, which often makes remote working less than optimal. Even the most sophisticated video conferencing systems are unlikely to match the quality of face-to-face interactions, be it medical advice, counseling, teaching, and so on. On this basis, we estimate that only 13% of employment in Europe is in teleworkable occupations which do not involve limited social tasks (e.g. selling, teaching, caring for others, working with the public) and can in principle be carried out at distance without or limited quality loss. The remaining 24% of technically teleworkable jobs involve extensive social interaction and therefore can only be partially provided remotely (for example, for some but not all tasks) without a significant loss of service quality ”.
AMAZON BETS ON RETURNING TO OFFICE
Unlike other companies, Amazon seems to want to bet on office work and has recently presented a plan to expand its physical offices in six cities in the United States, going against the grain of many rivals. The giant led by Jeff Bezos said it is preparing to add 3,500 corporate jobs in hubs in New York, Phoenix, San Diego, Denver, Detroit and Dallas. The floors include 2,000 jobs in the historic Manhattan building that once housed the Lord & Taylor department store. Amazon allegedly bought the Fifth Avenue building from worksharing company WeWork, a We Co. subsidiary, for more than $ 1 billion.
HOW GOOGLE, FACEBOOK, APPLE AND SNAPCHAT MOVE AT WORK FROM HOME
The technology sector was the first to adopt remote working, especially in the United States. It is also the most cautious sector in wanting to return its employees to company headquarters, so much so that many companies are realizing that the reopening plans announced a few weeks ago have proved too optimistic.
Google, according to Forbes , will allow most of its employees to work from home until mid-2021, and "joins the growing list of the industry's biggest companies, such as Twitter, Square and Facebook, which previously announced they would continue remote work for the foreseeable future. Jack Dorsey, CEO of Twitter and Square, pushed the boundaries and said he is open to letting his employees work from home 'forever'. "
In May, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, in a move inspired by COVID-19, informed his employees that they could continue working from home "forever." Dorsey then added that he would leave the decision to work in smart working or in the office in the hands of his employees.
Immediately following Dorsey's announcement, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said he would allow his employees to work remotely by informing their bosses of any relocation to other cities.
Snapchat, which had told its employees it could work from home until September 1, informed workers this week that that possibility is extended until at least January 4, due to the resumption of Covid-19 in many parts of the United States. At the same time, Snapchat said it wanted to offer as much flexibility as possible, recognizing the possibility for some workers to be able to return to the office when there are safe conditions to do so.
Apple, meanwhile, was forced to re-close many of the U.S. retail stores that had reopened. According to Forbes, the company is also slowing down plans to return workers to its offices while a large number of companies, including Morgan Stanley, JPMorgan, Capital One, Microsoft, Zillow, Shopify, Coinbase, Upwork, Lambda Schools, PayPal, Salesforce, Box and others have all announced that they will be extending work from home in one way or another. And it's not just an American trend: Germany's Siemens, the largest manufacturing company in Europe, has announced that 140,000 of its employees can work wherever they want for two or three days a week, Forbes recalled.
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/innovazione/smart-working-tutti-i-piani-di-amazon-apple-google-facebook-e-non-solo/ on Sat, 22 Aug 2020 06:04:15 +0000.