Microsoft to bring change in work culture, allows employees to work from home permanently

Technology giant Microsoft has decided to throw open an option to its employees to work from home permanently as the threat of the COVID-19 pandemic still looms large across the world. The company in its blog on Friday spoke about the offering flexibility to its employees.

"We have been working in ways we never thought possible, including managing necessary safety precautions, learning to connect with small or large teams while presenting to a screen, taking care of family and friends while being in the next room on calls, adjusting hours to address new demands and so much more," Microsoft said at the beginning of the blog.

The company said that moving forward it plans to offer "as much flexibility as possible to support individual workstyles, while balancing business needs and ensuring we live our culture."

Microsoft has provided guidance to employees, recognising that some employees will be required to be onsite and some roles and businesses are better suited for working away from the worksite than others.

Adding further, the company said, "For most roles, we view working from home part of the time (less than 50%) as now standard – assuming manager and team alignment."

This means the company will now allow employees to work from home for less than 50% of their working week or for managers to approve permanent option of work from home or some remote place.

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Work from home cost to be borne by company

Microsoft has not reopened its sites in the US, many of the offices of Microsoft have started functioning around the world. Although the company has allowed the option to work from home even after the offices have opened it also communicated that it is not committing to having every employee work from anywhere, as the company believes in building the relationship in the workplace too. 

The Verge report stated that Microsoft offices in the US are expected to remain closed until January 2021. It further mentioned that if the employees have relocated either domestically or internationally, Microsoft will even cover the work from home costs of the employees, however, relocation costs will have to be borne by the employee himself. 

Apart from Microsoft, Facebook has also allowed its employees to permanently work from home or remotely and according to Verge, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has said that nearly half of the Facebook employees could shift to remote working within five to ten years.

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