Google Delays Return To Office and Eyes 'Flexible Work Week'

[DEAD7]

Google Delays Return To Office and Eyes 'Flexible Work Week'


But even as it extends the remote work period for most of its staff, Google is laying out a series of proposed changes that may substantially alter how its employees and people at other technology companies will work. In an email to the staff on Sunday night, Sundar Pichai, chief executive of Google's parent company, Alphabet, said the company was testing the idea of a "flexible workweek" once it is safe to return to the office. Under the pilot plan, employees would be expected to work at least three days a week in the office for "collaboration days" while working from home the other days. "We are testing a hypothesis that a flexible work model will lead to greater productivity, collaboration, and well-being," Mr. Pichai wrote in an email obtained by The New York Times. "No company at our scale has ever created a fully hybrid work force model -- though a few are starting to test it -- so it will be interesting to try."

 

[chineebai]

I hope every company does that. There's really no reason to be in the office 5x a week when everyone just stares at their computer screen all day.

 

[DJ Paul's Arm]

shyt, Japan already experimented with 4 days on, 3 days off and getting paid for a full 5 day work week. Productivity went up 40%.

 

[FAH1223]

My office is definitely going to be doing like half on, half off when things get semi normal. My boss already worked remote and traveled a lot before the pandemic and gave me a lot of leeway anyway.

Our building in DC shut down cause of a spike in cases right when I was gonna go in there to drop these packages off

 

[duckbutta]

 

[Shogun]

wonder how long before they cut salaries along with it.

 

[dora_da_destroyer]

wonder how long before they cut salaries along with it.

why would they cut salaries just because people aren't working in the office 5 days/wk?

 

[☑︎#VoteDemocrat]

All this cute shyt to avoid asking Americans to realize they lowkey need to abandon some of this goofy shyt to compete with China

 

[Shogun]

why would they cut salaries just because people aren't working in the office 5 days/wk?

corporations always find a way

 

[Hood Critic]

My division head recently "surveyed" everyone on their feelings about coming back to the office. Which is unusual for him and the leaders of my organization because they historically have been anti-remote work but with people literally working remotely for what will be a year in February at the same productivity level or higher, the writing is on the wall, very few people are going to want to go back.

 

[Baka's Weird Case]

shyt, Japan already experimented with 4 days on, 3 days off and getting paid for a full 5 day work week. Productivity went up 40%.

wait JAPAN did this? their corporate culture is supposed to be insane...like if you miss a day because a parent died its considered low key rude

 

[dora_da_destroyer]

corporations always find a way

ehh, that's not really the MO in SV, especially not with the company that basically pioneered the perk filled SV culture.

 

[the cac mamba]

corporations always find a way

my dad said theyll probably try to classify work from home as contract work. not a bad guess tbh

like yeah all your existing employees are "employees" but how many new hires do they keep extending that to

 

[DJ Paul's Arm]

wait JAPAN did this? their corporate culture is supposed to be insane...like if you miss a day because a parent died its considered low key rude

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BUSINESS
4-Day Workweek Boosted Workers' Productivity By 40%, Microsoft Japan Says

November 4, 20194:27 PM ET
Heard on All Things Considered
BILL CHAPPELL

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A sales clerk speaks with a customer in front of Microsoft Corp.'s display at an electronics store in Tokyo. Microsoft's division in Japan says it saw productivity grow by 40% after allowing employees to work for four days a week rather than five.

Kiyoshi Ota/Bloomberg via Getty Images
Workers at Microsoft Japan enjoyed an enviable perk this summer: working four days a week, enjoying a three-day weekend — and getting their normal, five-day paycheck. The result, the company says, was a productivity boost of 40%.

Microsoft Japan says it became more efficient in several areas, including lower electricity costs, which fell by 23%. And as its workers took five Fridays off in August, they printed nearly 60 percent fewer pages.

All of the employees who took Fridays off were given special paid leave, the company says. Encouraged by the results, it plans to hold a similar trial in the winter.

Because of the shorter workweek, the company also put its meetings on a diet. The standard duration for a meeting was slashed from 60 minutes to 30 — an approach that was adopted for nearly half of all meetings. In a related cut, standard attendance at those sessions was capped at five employees.

In a blog post announcing the plan in July, Microsoft Japan said there was often no reason for meetings to run an hour, or to tie up multiple people from the same team.

Sora News 24 ranges from "Here's to hoping my boss reads about this" to "So I guess me feeling like I'm ready to be done for the week by Wednesday is pretty natural."

Four-day workweeks made headlines around the world in the spring of 2018, when Perpetual Guardian, a New Zealand trust management company, announced a 20% gain in employee productivity and a 45% increase in employee work-life balance after a trial of paying people their regular salary for working four days. Last October, the company made the policy permanent.

The Microsoft trial roughly doubled Perpetual Guardian's productivity gain. But for now at least, the company isn't saying whether it will test the four-day workweek policy in other locations or consider making it permanent.

Noting that Microsoft Japan's "Work Life Choice Challenge 2019 Summer" was a pilot project, a Microsoft spokesperson tells NPR via email, "In the spirit of a growth mindset, we are always looking for new ways to innovate and leverage our own technology to improve the experience for our employees around the globe."

 

[Spatial Paradox]

corporations always find a way

my dad said theyll probably try to classify work from home as contract work. not a bad guess tbh

like yeah all your existing employees are "employees" but how many new hires do they keep extending that to

It'd harm their recruitment pipeline if they started slashing compensation simply because they start giving employees the option of working remote up to two days a week and probably have some current employees running for the door too. Like @dora_da_destroyer said, they pioneered a lot of the perks of working in a big tech company, so I can't see them leading the way with an employee hostile change like that.

That said, if anyone might have their salaries cut, it's employees working remote full time that live in locations where the COL is substantially lower than Silicon Valley or any of the other tech hubs these companies have offices in. IIRC, Facebook already said they were considering "adjusting" the compensation of employees that choose to remain remote and live in such places.