Facebook Remote Working Plan Extended to All Staff for Long Term
At a time when most of the big tech giants are waiting for their workers back to their offices after the pandemic is over and even now when the incidence of the disease has decreased dramatically, Facebook will allow all employees who can work outside the office, that is, from home, to do so after the coronavirus pandemic will end.
With the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic in 2020, Facebook, like other tech companies, moved to a remote work model. Back then, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg said he expects the transition to work from home to be a long-term one. The company has also begun hiring workers who are capable of fulfilling their job responsibilities anywhere in the world where they live.
Facebook said it is much more important how people work than where they do their work. The company strives to become a place where people can perform their assigned tasks in the best possible way. The company also said it should strive to provide employees with a consistent experience, no matter where in the world they are performing their duties.
Position of Facebook’s Management
Tech giants rival Facebook such as Google and Apple recently released an updated list of working conditions during the pandemic, which states that workers should return to their jobs, that is, offices in the coming months. At the same time, the management of Facebook made a radically different statement. She informed all of her employees that anyone who can perform their job duties remotely can send a request to the company management about the opportunity to work remotely. Even founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg said he plans to work from his own home until the second half of 2022. He previously stated that more than half of the company's employees, approximately 60,000 people, can work remotely for 10 years.
Interestingly, the firm even offered its own employees assistance in relocating to other countries so that they could work from there. Facebook has launched a campaign to encourage the relocation of employees to other countries. So, they offer their employees to cross from the USA to Canada, as well as from all European countries to the United Kingdom.
To provide better control over the execution of tasks remotely, the company began to implement various methods, one of which is the use of a screen recorder for PC, with the help of which employees can report to their managers on the work they have done for a certain period: a day, a week or a month, in depending on the scope of the task or project.
When Offices Are Expected to Open Again?
The beginning of the opening of all offices of the company is associated with the start of mass vaccination of people, improvement in health status, as well as a decrease in the incidence rate. However, Facebook is still not returning perks for its workers, such as free meals and buses.
The work schedule of workers who have not been able to obtain permission to work remotely will be flexible enough. The company's management expects all employees to be on their campuses for about half of their entire working hours. The tech giant expects its offices to be 50% full by early September 2021. According to preliminary statements of the management of Facebook, the offices of the company will work at full capacity in October this year. Of course, all safety measures against the spread of coronavirus will be followed, such as wearing masks and keeping a distance indoors.
According to the Wall Street Journal, who spoke with a Facebook spokesperson, 90% of the requests that were submitted to switch to remote work were agreed upon. But at the same time, the interlocutor refused to name the exact number of employees who currently have permission to work remotely.
Contracted Out
It all started back in November 2020, when content moderators openly accused Facebook of forcing them to return to the office. Workers said in an open letter that the pressure to return to work was announced only after Facebook failed to succeed in implementing artificial intelligence technologies to find problematic posts. They also said that the company should value their contribution to the company, and therefore it is immoral to sacrifice health and safety for profit.
Perhaps this was the reason for the introduction of a new policy of remote work. But it should be noted that the new rules only apply to Facebook workers, and not to subcontractors, whose services the tech giant uses extensively for content moderation and other tasks.
CEO Mark Zuckerberg also shared his remote experience. He said that due to remote work, his productivity at work has increased significantly, and he also felt much happier than he was before. This gave him more time and space to think about the future and allowed him to spend more time with his family.
Note that Zuckerberg began to spend most of his time in a private house in Hawaii, which became a habitat for many programmers during the pandemic.
Other Tech Giants Also Support Remote Work
In response to similar trends, other tech companies also described their plans to open offices and get people back to work.
Amazon
Amazon has already told its employees that they will have to work in the office at least three days a week. Which days will have to be decided by the management of the company. Amazon employees in the US, UK, and some other countries are due to go to work in offices in early September this year.
Google CEO Sundar Pichai said in a letter to employees that the company will be moving to a hybrid work week soon. This means that most workers have to work three days a week from offices, and the other two days where they feel most comfortable and convenient to work. According to him, this should lead to the fact that most people will be in offices several days a week, and about a fifth of employees will perform their duties remotely on an ongoing basis. He also added that flexibility should be the basis for future work.
Apple
Apple CEO Temir Cook wrote in a memo to all employees last week that in September 2021, all employees must be in the office at least three days a week. He noted that Wednesday and Friday are the days when workers are allowed to stay at home and do their work from there. But such a statement caused discontent among some workers, who began circulating a letter stating that the company's policy was wrong and had already led several employees to write letters of resignation.