Facebook has announced it has extended its plan to allow staff to work remotely on a long-term basis.
Facebook moved to a remote work model following the COVID-19 pandemic outbreak, with founder, Mark Zuckerberg, stating he expects the transition to work from home to be a long-term one in 2020 when the outbreak occurred.
Google and Apple recently released an updated list of working conditions during the pandemic, which states that workers should return to offices in the coming months.
At the same time, Facebook U-turned on the subject and asked workers to send a request to work remotely to management for a review. The company backtracked again and offered their employees a relocation programme to help them work in other countries.
They also provided better control over the execution of tasks remotely, by implementing various methods including the use of a screen recorder for PC to help employees report to their managers on the work they have done for a certain period.
The work schedule of workers who have not been able to obtain permission to work remotely will be flexible, with management expecting 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 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 company refused to name the exact number of employees who currently have permission to work remotely.
The news comes after content moderators openly accused Facebook of forcing them to return to the office in November last year.
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.
Research from Metrigy has found 60% of business leaders are now open to allowing staff to work remotely.
Robin Gareiss, Metrigy CEO, said: “For years, many business leaders have been hesitant about allowing employees to work from home. In some cases, they didn’t trust that they would do their work–or at least not as productively as they do in the office. In other cases, they did not understand how collaboration technology would work.
“In fact, many doubted the effectiveness of video conferencing, the quality of home-office connectivity and security, and the value of team collaboration channels. If it weren’t for the pandemic, the work-from-home naysayers likely would never have experienced it.
“Once they did, however, the majority became convinced that work-from-home can, in fact, improve employee productivity. And they were in many cases blown away by how effective collaboration applications were at bringing teams together and enabling effective management.”
