These 7 Companies Announce Permanent Work From Home For All Employees

It appears that the pandemic is here to stay with new variants popping up every few months, Omicron being the latest. 

Companies have been forced to adapt and have experimented with all sorts of work models and practices, from hybrid, to completely remote or partially at office. 

Some have gone a mile further and have simply declared that their employees will have to make their abode their office permanently. 

Here are a few that did just that. 

Slack

Slack is a communication platform for businesses and their employees to communicate with each other internally.

The company quickly switched to work from home when the pandemic broke out and decided to make the change permanent.

Employees will have the option to permanently work remotely.

The company will also ramp up its hiring of employees who are permanently remote.

Twitter

The social media giant also made the switch to work from home in the early stages of the pandemic.

In May 2020, co-founder Jack Dorsey told employees that they can continue to work from home even after the situation improves.

Those who need to attend office in person due to the nature of their job are free to do so.

The company was also on the lookout for remote positions outside San Francisco where it is headquartered.

Spotify

Back in February 2021, the music streaming company announced that it will “start transitioning into becoming a flexible/distributed-first company”.

To that end, it introduced its Work From Anywhere program for all employees.

Employees will be given the freedom to work from home or office or anywhere even as the pandemic situation settles.

However, the decision should be made between the employees and their managers and there should be a consensus.

Tata Steel

The steel manufacturing company formulated a work from home policy called the ‘Agile Working Model’.

The model allows employees to opt for WFH for up to 365 days a year.

Even officers who had to report to a particular location were granted the flexibility to WFH for an unlimited number of days per year.

Meta

Formerly known as Facebook, Meta rolled out its ‘office deferral program’ earlier this December. 

The company said that its US offices will fully reopen on January 31 next year.

The program gives the employees a choice to delay their scheduled return by three to five months.

It also maintained that employees working remotely can request for full-time remote work.

Microsoft

The software giant will allow its employees in the US to continue working from home until further notice.

Staff will be able to keep working from home for less than 50% of their working week, and managers will be empowered to approve permanent remote work.

Flexible working hours will be available without manager approval as well.

Kathleen Hogan, Microsoft’s chief people officer, said that the company wants to offer flexibility to accommodate “individual work styles, while balancing business needs”.

Shopify

Shopify provides budding entrepreneurs and small businesses tools to create their own digital stores.

Like all others, it was forced to adopt work from home in 2020, and has now made it permanent.

According to its website’s Careers page, it lets people set their own schedule and also offers the option to work from anywhere in the world.