Facebook Will Allow Permanent Work From Home

Facebook co-founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg has confirmed he will allow staff to work from home permanently, if they so decide.

Zuckerberg told staff on Thursday in a live stream that he expects that about half of Facebook’s 48,000 workforce would work remotely over the next five to 10 years.

Facebook’s decision mirrors that of other tech firms. Yesterday Canadian e-commerce firm Shopify said that it will keep its offices closed until 2021, and after that will allow staff to work from home permanently.

Remote working

Last week Twitter and Square revealed that their respective staff can opt to work from home ‘forever’ if they want, or return or the office, post Coronavirus lockdown.

And now in an interview with The Verge, Zuckerberg said the social networking giant would use its open roles when hiring and recruiting for remote working.

Facebook has already pledged that any employee who can do their work from home, may continue to do so until year end.

Zuckerberg confirmed that from today, it will make the most of its US job openings eligible for remote hires and begin taking applications for permanent remote work among its workforce later this year.

“The next step of what we’re doing, starting tomorrow, is we’re unlocking remote hiring,” he told the Verge. “It just kind of makes sense because, right now, everyone is pretty much working remotely, but we’re still just constraining our hiring to people who live around an office which isn’t open. So we’re going to start remote hiring.”

“Then on the existing employees, we’re going to allow people to request to be a permanent remote worker at some point,” he said. “And they don’t have to make that decision right now, obviously. We already announced that people can remote work through the end of 2020 if they want.

“And if Covid is still prevalent, it’s possible that that extends beyond that,” he added. “But on a long-term basis, we’re going to let people request to work permanently remotely. We’re going to focus on experienced employees rather than new college grads, who I think need to be in the office more, for training.”

Salary adjustments

However, there will be some financial adjustments.

Until recently, Facebook paid new employees a bonus of up to $15,000 if they agreed to live within 10 miles of the office, in the Silicon Valley region where the cost of living and housing is high.

But those that choose to permanently remote work from less expensive areas in the mid west for example, will not be able to remain on the same salary.

Essentially Facebook will adjust the person’s salary in line with local living costs.

Facebook has more than 48,000 employees working in 70 offices worldwide.

Other firms

The Facebook decision comes after other big name tech firms indicated that staff can work from home for the rest of 2020, due to the global Coronavirus pandemic.

Indeed, as the Coronavirus began to impact the globe in March this year, many tech firms ordered all non-essential staff to work from home, including Google, Microsoft, Amazon and Facebook.

Earlier this month Google said their staff can work from home until the end of the year. Google previously said that Google staff could working from home until 1 June.

Amazon is known to have told staff who can work ‘effectively’ from home can do so until at least 2 October, however that does not include warehouse staff.

Meanwhile Microsoft is also reportedly allowing staff members to work from home until October.