Permanent Work-From-Home Plans Expand - Square Enix Is Next
Throughout the year 2020, a wide variety of companies announced that they'd be testing work-from-home strategies. In the last few months, several companies announced that they'd be initiating permanent or semi-permanent work-from-home options for their workers. The latest major company to deliver an announcement on this sort of future-ready strategy heavily reliant on the connectivity delivered by the internet is Square Enix.
This morning Square Enix made note that they'll be offering a permanent work-from-home program starting on December 1, 2020. This program is available to all executive officers and employees of the brand. This change should allow the company to "recruit more diverse human resources, as well as to establish an organization capable of adapting to unexpected developments such as disasters and changes in employment models."
Square Enix suggested that they'll designate each employee as "home based" or "office based" starting on December 1, 2020. The "home based" designation means a worker is working "an average of at least three days per week from home." The "office based" designation requires working an average of at least three days per week from the office.
The most interesting bit of the release from Square Enix was the following: "In general, all eligible employees will be designated as 'home based.'" The company expects that "approximately 80% of employees" will be home based in December of 2020. They'll be allowing monthly status changes "depending upon the intensity of an employee's duties."
Other companies that've announced work-from-home strategies since the start of our current global pandemic thanks to COVID-19 include Google, Microsoft, Uber, REI, Zillow, Reuters, Twitter, Square, Facebook, and Salesforce. This is only a very small cross-section of big-name brands that've made the switch.
Companies that've extended their work-from-home rules toward an "indefinite" timeline include Google, Zillow, Microsoft, Twitter, Square, Slack, Shopify, Facebook, Dropbox, Coinbase, Fujitsu, Quora, Plex, Synchrony Financial, VMWare, and a whole lot more. Is this the high water mark, or will the future be largely work-at-home by default?