When Microsoft, Google and beyond will reopen their offices
Here's how and when the American giants will reopen their offices according to an in-depth study by the Wall Street Journal
Microsoft, one of the first American companies to ask staff to switch to remote work more than a year ago when the coronavirus pandemic began, is ready to welcome employees back to the office.
The Microsoft headquarters in Redmond, and campus neighbors begin to move to a hybrid approach to work on March 29, with some employees that they will return to office desks while others work from home, said Monday the company – reports the WSJ .
"Our goal is to give employees additional flexibility by enabling people to work where they feel most productive and comfortable, while also encouraging employees to work from home while the virus and related variants remain of concern," Microsoft said in a statement. blog post.
The software company's office locations in 21 countries will be ready to welcome additional workers in accordance with directions from local authorities, the company said. The initial guide affects about 20 percent of Microsoft's more than 160,000 employees, the company said.
Microsoft said it doesn't expect to call back all employees anytime soon. Once the pandemic is no longer a significant threat to communities, the company expects a partial work-from-home schedule to be routine for many of its jobs. The company previously said it would allow some workers to work remotely on a permanent basis with their manager's approval.
With the rollout of the Covid-19 vaccine progressing, the shift to hybrid work looms as a critical challenge for companies this year, not unlike last year's race to figure out how to keep business with employees at home. Like last year, stocks are not uniform.
Many companies are still waiting to bring workers back to the office. Google's parent company, Alphabet Inc. is keeping most of its staff working remotely until at least September. Social media company Twitter said most of its staff will be able to continue working remotely after the pandemic ends. Facebook has moved towards having a substantially larger portion of employees working remotely.
The number of Americans working from home increased during the pandemic, and many business leaders expect this to continue. According to a global survey from Microsoft that was released on Monday, 73% of workers said they wanted permanent flexible work-from-home policies, and 65% of employees said they wanted more in-person time with their teams after the pandemic. . About 66% of companies were considering redesigning offices to accommodate hybrid work environments.
Microsoft is betting that the era of hybrid work will generate a new wave of requirements for welcoming employees. The company has experienced a year of strong growth amid the pandemic as companies have adapted to navigate the remote work environment and embraced the type of cloud-computing services and collaboration tools that the company sells.
Its video game business has enjoyed significant success among people stuck at home, and its Teams workplace collaboration software has also experienced great growth in user numbers.
Half or more of the company's workforce could benefit from flexible work arrangements, Microsoft chief executive Satya Nadella said at the Wall Street Journal Board of CEO Summit.
Not all companies are willing to allow their employees to work remotely for an extended period. Netflix founder and co-chief executive Reed Hastings said he saw no benefit from the work-from-home trend and predicted work weeks will see employees in offices four days a week, with one day of remote work. . Executives at other companies cited challenges with training, integrating new employees, and completing projects with workers working away from their homes.
(Extract from the press review of Eprcomunicazione)
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/mondo/uffici-google-microsoft/ on Sun, 28 Mar 2021 06:00:54 +0000.