Father working in home office with young daughter
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In a Tweet, Parag Agrawal, the new CEO of Twitter, who took over from Jack Dorsey, announced that he’d continue the option of working remotely “forever,” as other tech companies are calling for workers to return to the office.
Twitter will reopen its offices starting the middle of March. Employees will still be allowed to work remotely or come into an office if they’d prefer that choice. In a tweet detailing the decision, Agrawal wrote, “Business travel is back effective immediately, and all global Twitter offices will open starting on March 15. Decisions about where you work, whether you feel safe traveling for business, and what events you attend, should be yours.”
He added, “Wherever you feel most productive and creative is where you will work and that includes WFH full-time forever.” Agrawal recognized that “distributed working will be challenging,” and employees and managers will “need to be proactive, intentional, learn, and adapt.”
Back in May, 2020, then CEO Dorsey told employees that they may work from home or remotely “forever.” Agrawal will continue with this policy, but warned that “distributed working will be much, much harder.”
In a note to employees, Agrawal said, “As we open back up, our approach remains the same. Wherever you feel most productive and creative is where you will work and that includes working from home full-time forever. Office every day? That works too. Some days in office, some days from home? Of course.”
The new CEO pointed out potential challenges as the policy isn’t remote-first, saying “In 2020 we adjusted quickly to working virtually with resilience and agility, but almost all of us were working from home. Distributed working will be much, much harder. Anyone who has joined a meeting remotely while others are in a conference room knows this pain. There will be lots of challenges in the coming months, and we’ll need to be proactive, intentional, learn, and adapt.”
Google CEO Sundar Pichai offered his thought process for asking people to leave the comfort of their homes to return to an office setting. Pichai said that he is most excited that the future of work will be flexible. He maintains that it’s important to get people together in an office environment for at least a few days a week.
Google will be open to all options. There will be some people who will completely work remotely; however, the vast majority of workers will be coming in about three days a week. Once they are in the office, it will be purposeful—and not just for facetime. This will include meetings, collaborating with colleagues in other divisions, conducting brainstorming sessions, meeting with clients and vendors and community building. The chief executive said he’s excited about the change and believes that as time goes on people and teams will figure out the best solutions.
In a company blog post to employees written by Chris Capossela, Executive Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer of Microsoft, he said that workers will be coming back to the office with a hybrid work model. “Effective Feb. 28, 2022,” Capossela wrote, “From this date, employees will have 30 days to make adjustments to their routines and adopt the working preferences they’ve agreed upon with their managers.”
Amazon CEO Andy Jassy, who replaced Jeff Bezos in July, previously made a potentially game-changing decision. Jassy said in a companywide memo, white-collar professional office workers could work remotely, choose to work in an office setting or come in two or three days a week via a hybrid model. The decision on work arrangement will be decentralized—made by team leaders and signed off by director-level executives.
In a corporate blog post, the online giant’s CEO said, “As we start to think about the future, we’ve all been asking questions like, ‘When are we really going back to the office, what will that really be like, how will I allocate my time between the office and home, how will others do it, do we need to be working in person together every day to collaborate and invent best, and how do we build connections and culture best?”
The chief executive reasonably said, “There is no one-size-fits-all approach for how every team works best. We’re going to be in a stage of experimenting, learning and adjusting for a while, as we emerge from this pandemic.” The decisions will be decentralized down to the team leaders. Remote, hybrid and other work styles will be left up to individual teams, with the final call made at the director level.
It’s anticipated that people will choose options that best fit their lifestyle. Some may desire to continue working remotely, others may seek out a hybrid of both in-office and at-home. There may be folks who are worn out from being home and would look forward to going into headquarters full time.