Mark Zuckerberg announced on May 21 that 50% of workers will take to work from home over the next 5 to 10 years. He says outright: Facebook will “actively” hire employees who can work from home.
Twitter announced that employees could work from home permanently, Google, Microsoft, and Amazon also announced that they would continue to implement the work-from-home model; it’s clear that the office culture that used to concentrate the workforce is moving toward a teleworking model that decentralizes the workforce. According to Forbes magazine, these changes "Will be the biggest reformer of the job market since the epidemic.
As a top 5 global tech company with offices in 70 cities around the world, why is Facebook announcing a move towards a permanent work from the home form while the epidemic is slowing? What new changes will this bring to the workplace you and I find ourselves in?
Corporate: Competition for talent
The main objective that Mark Zuckerberg wanted to create was: decentralization of the office revolution.
The New York Times analyzes that in the past, these tech giants have kept their employees from thinking about going home and staying in the office by creating giant office parks with free bus connections, delicious buffets and dry cleaning services; precisely because senior executives have long believed that by creating more frequent human interaction in the office, more creativity can be sparked.
However, as the epidemic opens the world’s largest experiment in telework, the Wall Street Journal notes that businesses are moving from being forced to accepting that a dispersed workforce can lead to flexible and efficient ways of working.
According to a Facebook survey, 50% of employees consider themselves as efficient as working from home and coming to work, and 40% want to continue to work remotely.
Mark Zuckerberg said, "There are some obvious benefits to working remotely, it allows us to reach into the talent pool outside the traditional tech hubs of big cities.
Ostensibly, teleworking can reduce operating costs for businesses, including office rent, and employees can take a break from long commutes.
However, the point behind it is that teleworking also allows talent acquisition to be less restricted and talent acquisition to be launched nationally and even globally. This will bring about a chain of changes. When the office is no longer important and officers can work from anywhere, the pay structure will change next.
Staff: When it comes to salary, it depends on where you live first.
Once talent chooses to telecommute, Facebook will adjust salaries depending on where the person is located, companies will of course tend to hire people who live at a lower cost of living but have the same excellent expertise in order to reduce costs, which leads to changes in job market salaries, job seekers can no longer compare to the high salary levels in Silicon Valley and must face the threat of being forced to take a pay cut because of the lower cost of living where they live, and other companies will start to swarm to follow suit. The cost structure of a business is bound to be reorganized.
In the past, Silicon Valley has been known for providing great working conditions for its employees, such as three free meals, or a 24-hour snack bar and fitness facility, and in the future, these expenses can be eliminated.
Digital communication, collaboration become key functions
Many businesses are now changing their next step in spending to digital spending that helps employees work remotely, such as VR and AR technologies that allow people to engage with customers and colleagues through virtual screens.
This change will also force people to grow new abilities.
For employees, Mark Zuckerberg takes a stand: Facebook wants to “proactively” hire people who can work remotely, meaning the latter must not only have the ability to make good use of digital communication tools, but also be proactive and collaborate with teams to not be marginalized.
Remote work will change the workplace culture: for example, it is no longer appropriate to work in the office to make good friends or work overtime to gain recognition, and it is no longer possible to work hard.
For managers, companies also have to learn to manage decentralized, and leaders have to try to come up with a vision that everyone agrees on in order to keep people moving toward a common goal even when they don’t see each other.
Mark Zuckerberg is also pondering: "How can we encourage creativity and maintain a corporate culture when we see each other less often? How do you design career development for employees who are ambitious in an office environment?
Facebook has actually thought about the fact that junior employees may still need to go to the physical office to grasp the workplace ethics, so now there are conditions for employees applying for telework: employees must have certain qualifications and excellent performance before they can apply for full telework.
However, in the midst of this trend, there is a discussion that if teleworking requires mature self-management skills, should companies still hire fresh graduates? This is what leading Silicon Valley companies are thinking about.
As Mark Zuckerberg says, "The world will go in important directions after the epidemic. In the future, companies will open up to telecommuting, facing a competition for talent. In the same way, your supervisor may also be looking for talent around the world.
Source Article from: Office decentralization, talent needs to be more proactive and visionary