• The big American tech companies do not seem convinced by 100% teleworking, according to our partner DNA.

  • Google, Twitter, Facebook and others are therefore reviewing certain measures taken following the Covid-19 pandemic.

  • More and more of their employees are called upon to return to work face-to-face.

No one will have missed it, the Covid-19 pandemic has allowed teleworking to be implemented on a large scale.

From the start of the pandemic, Google was among the first companies to get started, followed by other big tech companies.

In May 2020, Twitter even announced that the company would allow “lifelong telecommuting”.

Yet after a year of pandemic and a well-advanced vaccination campaign in the United States, the giants of Silicon Valley are rather inclined to return to the office.

No more than two weeks away at Google

In May 2020, Alphabet, the parent company of Google, announced that its 200,000 employees would stay at home until the summer of 2021. At the time, the date was part of a future so distant that one even wondered. if the Googlers would ever find their way back to the office.

Well yes !

Fiona Cicconi, Chief People Officer of the company, announced a return to the premises from September 1, 2021. From that date, employees who wish to do more than 14 days of telework per year abroad will have to apply for a authorization.

In addition, the company specifies that its teleworking employees must stay at a reasonable distance from their desk.

Google headquarters, the Googleplex in California © The Pancake of Heaven!

/ Wikimedia CC BY-SA 4.0

A decade-long change for Facebook

On the Facebook side, the premises should gradually reopen from next month.

An occupancy of 10% initially, then less than 50% until September 2021 will be implemented as well as a strict health protocol.

In 2020, Mark Zuckerberg envisioned that 50% of Facebook's payroll will work remotely over the next decade.

Obviously, it is not for now.

The era of "flexible work"

At other giants of Silicon Valley, we can see a return to work in person.

In a blog post dated March 30, 2021, Amazon management stated its ambition for "a return to a corporate culture centered on the workplace."

And even Twitter, whose announcement of teleworking for life had made the headlines, qualifies its position.

Indeed, this possibility would only concern positions considered to be “teleworkable”.

Our “GAFA” file

The 100% teleworking and its meetings exclusively in video did not convince over time.

But the reopening of the offices does not mean “back to the life before”.

On the contrary, we have entered the era of flexible working.

A hybrid way of working that all Silicon Valley companies claim - no matter what they put behind the buzzword.

But one thing is certain: the

open space

has not said its last word.

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The original article was written by Alice Huot and published on the DNA website.

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