Google CEO Says Work From Home Will Never Be 100%; Suggests Hybrid Model

To incorporate both remote and in-office working methods Google is set to develop a “hybrid” model in order to provide flexibility for its workers.

At the TIME100 Honorees: Visions for the Future event, Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai said that he agreed that his employees have different needs with respect to working styles and preferences. 

Read on to know more about Google’s hybrid model…

Google In Favor Of Working From Home!

Sundar Pichai has been encouraging remote working and working from the home model for quite some time now. 

In July, Google permitted its employees to continue working from home until June 2021. 

Pichai wrote an email to his employees, “To give employees the ability to plan ahead, we are extending our global voluntary work from home option through June 30, 2021, for roles that don’t need to be in the office. I hope this will offer the flexibility you need to balance work with taking care of yourselves and your loved ones over the next 12 months.”

This development made Google join the bandwagon of tech companies like Facebook, Twitter which are in favor of remote working in the foreseeable future.

This might have helped the organizations who were in a fix of whether to continue working from home make a decision.

Reasons for Working From Home?

“We firmly believe that in-person, being together, having a sense of community is super important when you have to solve hard problems and create something new, so we don’t see that changing. But we do think we need to create more flexibility and more hybrid models,” said Pichai on the work-friendly model. 

When Google conducted an interoffice survey the findings stated that 62% of Google’s employees feel the need to come to the office ‘some days’ whereas 20% don’t feel the need to come to the office at all. 

Pichai emphasized on the search engine behemoth’s philosophy — office should be fun and that friction should be reduced where possible.

On Silicon Valley’s long commute the tech giant’s CEO said, “It’s always made me wonder—when I see people commuting two hours and away from their family and friends on a Friday, you realize they can’t have plans.” “So, I think we could do better,” he added.

With corporate worrying about productivity, remote working, loss of work culture, and a sense of community, the younger generation anxious over the lack of social life and rise in the divorce rates in the COVID-19 pandemic induced lockdowns has made Google rethink about a ‘hybrid model’ suiting everyone’s needs. 

In other news, Alphabet recently announced its proposition of constructing a huge company-town project in Mountain View, California which will include a combination of houses, retail stores, parks and recreations, and a corporate campus spanning 40 acres.