Tech giants who made remote working possible now turn their backs on it

In 2010, China’s largest travel agency did something unheard of. Trip.com, now worth $23bn (£17bn), launched an experiment to see if employees were as productive working from home as they were in its Shanghai call centre.

Of the 503 volunteers, Trip.com sent home 249 for nine months. By the end of the pilot, productivity had increased by 13.5pc, and time spent answering calls rose 9.2pc. The home workers felt more satisfied with their jobs, and sick days and churn decreased. Impressed with the results, it offered every employee the chance to work from home. Then something even stranger happened: two thirds of employees declined, and half of the home worker volunteers asked to return.

Despite initial satisfaction, “concerns over the loneliness of home working and the lower rates of promotion” began to play on the home workers’ minds, Trip.com said.

A decade later and the largest firms in the world have found themselves in a similar – albeit involuntary – mass experiment. Google was one of the first giants to send staff home in March last year ahead of government guidance caused by the pandemic. Twitter and Shopify told staff early on in the pandemic that they could continue to work from home permanently.

But last week some of the companies that make and sell products that make remote working possible – Microsoft, Amazon and Google – told employees that they will be expected to return to the office.

“What we had expected was that the technology industry would have a clear and consistent position on what workplace flexibility is like,” says David Wreford, a partner at consultancy firm Mercer. “That isn’t the case.”

Technology hardware companies are more open to remote working and are considering closing many of their offices, Wreford says. Their high percentage of sales employees means they are more open to continental hubs where people will go a few times a month for sales briefings.

In contrast, executives at software companies want to bring workers back in because they believe the office is key to their identity, differentiating them from other code warehouses.

Indeed, many of the most recognisable names in tech have invested in lavish offices. Their headquarters in Silicon Valley, London and Dublin stop short of being full-blown shopping centres. Many are crammed with hidden speakeasies, games rooms and hairdressers.

These perks separate Uber, Facebook, Google and Apple from competitors, even if the tedious coding work is often the same. Technology companies know that organic snacks and a free massage stop eyes wandering in a highly competitive technology market.

"Companies like Amazon may believe that since most of the workforce has to live with controlled work situations it would be difficult to strategically manage a hybrid model where some are fixed in place and others have much more freedom," says Gena Cox a human resources consultant and founder of Feels Human. But trust also plays a huge part.

"Some employers simply have not created cultures of trust; leaders who don’t trust employees don’t get trust in return. That limits their perspective; they think control is the only thing that works."

A hybrid working environment

Business software giant SAP is letting its 102,400 employees return to a more flexible job even as restrictions ease.

Dan Healey, HR chief at SAP, said: “We don’t want to say we’re going remote and never coming back, and then switch. We’re doing a lot of listening and analysing data so it will be a hybrid working environment.”

Healey says it is open to hearing what employees want as they slowly start to bring people back in – if they want, but adds that it is hypocritical for tech companies to flip-flop on flexible working, and some of the largest global employers should set an example.

“We have learnt that the link between social well-being and business is that engaged employees who are healthy and feel a sense of belonging are more innovative and take better care of their customers, while being better partners and spouses.”

A return to work will feel like returning to school after an extended summer holiday for younger employees. Many in the US have taken the opportunity to travel around the country and find warmer and cheaper places from where they can log on. Rentals in San Francisco and New York nosedived last year as a result.

A survey on Blind, an app used by technology workers to discuss work anonymously, found that 43pc of professionals want to work remotely indefinitely. The topic has divided opinion. “I just started enjoying WFH, but they want us back now,” says one anonymous Amazon worker.

But some are growing concerned about their career development. “When we all get called back into the office in summer, people working remotely will end up getting sidelined,” wrote a Facebook worker. Mercer research found that 83pc of employers found productivity was the same, if not better, as employees worked from home during the pandemic. But it also found that employees were working three hours longer each day, with 41pc reporting increased shoulder and neck pain.

‘I was finishing work at 1am’

Working from another country might not be as blissful as it seems. Michal Bloch Ron, product manager at Microsoft Teams, was forced to work remotely for her new job when she became stuck in her home country of Israel because of Covid-19 restrictions ahead of a relocation to San Francisco. That meant 10 months of working 10 hours ahead of her colleagues.

Bloch Ron would wake up and spend time with her three-year-old son before dropping him off at nursery – and squeezing in a pilates class – start working on tasks she set herself at 12pm. Then at 4pm she would pick her son up from nursery and start her evening shift at 6pm, finishing at one in the morning.

“I even joined a review at 2am because there was a unique opportunity to present something,” she says. “But it really wasn’t a good idea.” Even though her team was supportive, changing call times so she wouldn’t have to stay up so late, Bloch Ron felt the need to prove herself because she was not physically present. Now, three weeks into her new life in Mountain View, near her team, she says she would do it again but would make sure she was prepared for the reality of working strange hours.

“When I started the job my son was so small and I sometimes missed saying goodnight,” she says. “But that was my choice”.

That said, she believes companies should offer the option for remote working. “Even if you want to take six weeks to go and work in Barbados you should have the flexibility,” she says.

Microsoft is inviting workers back to the office but offering the option to work 50pc at home, or remotely.

A new way

Alexis Haselberger, a productivity coach for executives at Google, CapitalOne and Silicon Valley Bank and various start-ups, says that the pandemic has highlighted new issues. She works with “seasoned” executives who look successful externally but are dealing “with a lot of internal stress”.

They are able to get things done but through brute force or at the expense of their personal or family life, she says. Since the pandemic, this stress has not gone, it has just shifted.

“It’s funny. The two big things that come up with every single person I work with, regardless of their level in an organisation, is ‘too many meetings’ and ‘too much email’. And both of those things have increased over the pandemic.”

Even Haselberger, who has always run her productivity coaching and workshops remotely herself, is not convinced that workers will stay away from the office.

“I don’t think that this is the new way,” she says. “But I don’t think it will go back to how it was before.”