Gently returning to the office but hybrid working continues
Almost all of 50 of the UK’s biggest employers do not plan to bring staff back to the office full-time when the the pandemic now is calming down, according to a survey made by the BBC.
43 of them would go for a mix of home and office working, with staff encouraged to work from home two to three days a week. Four firms said they were keeping the idea of hybrid working, working from home some of the time, under review.
Currently, the UK advise is to work from home if your can. The government has said it hopes to end all social distancing restrictions in June.
Google sent close to all staff home to work from there in early March last year as Covid-19 was spreading all over the world. CEO Sundar Pichai has now sent an email to employees asking them to return to the office for at least three days per week as lockdowns are easing in many countries. The BBC made a survey showing that almost all of 50 of the UK’s biggest employers said they do not plan to bring staff back to the office full-time.
Twitter and Facebook have earlier indicted that that employees can continue working from home without any given time limit.
Google stared opening up offices in April and is now aiming at hybrid office-remote working. The company has said staff can continue to work remotely until September. In the email, seen by the BBC, Pichai writes about the benefits of being in an office:
“For more than 20 years, our employees have been coming to the office to solve interesting problems – in a cafe, around a whiteboard, or during a pick-up game of beach volleyball or cricket.”
He said that in locations where offices had already opened, “we’ve seen nearly 60% of Googlers choosing to come back”.
He added that he envisaged a workforce where 60% were office based, 20% were in “new office locations” and 20% were working from home.
Some teams though would “need to be on site more than three days a week due to the nature of the work”.
For employees living where the pandemic is not yet calming down like India and Brazil, India-born Pichai wrote: “Please focus on taking care of yourselves and your loved ones. We are here to support however we can.”
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