On this morning’s WJR Business Beat, Jeff discusses Google’s announcement that it will keep its employees working from home for at least the next year, until July of 2021.
While Google is the first major U.S. corporation to announce such a long-term plan, it certainly will not be the last.
Tune in to this morning’s WJR Business Beat to hear more!
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“Now, as leaders from companies big and small search for answers about if, when and how they will have their own workforces return to the offices, this Google benchmark will no doubt be a factor in their decision-making.”
– Jeff Sloan
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Good morning, Paul.
As a further sign that we have a long way to go to get beyond this crisis, Google has just announced that it will be keeping its employees working from home for at least the next year, all the way until July of 2021.
This is the first major U.S. corporation to announce such a long-term plan, but it certainly will not be the last.
On the one hand, now you have to applaud Google leadership for focusing on the wellbeing of its employee base first. But this is indeed a sign that we have a long way to go before we have any shot of returning to normal.
The move will affect nearly all of the roughly 200,000 Alphabet employees, that’s the Google parent company, but certainly it will ripple much further across both the entire business sector, affecting other companies in their decision making about whether to have employees work from home and society broadly, as well.
Up until this announcement was made, Google had planned for its workforce to return to work in January. But as coronavirus cases surge, Google felt that it was only fair to not only keep their employees healthy by keeping them working from home, but also to give them the flexibility they need to make longer term decisions about schooling for their children, where they want to live, and simply to know with a better sense of certainty, what their futures may hold at least for the next 12 months or so.
Now as company leaders from companies, big and small search for answers about if, when and how they will have their own workforces return to the offices, this Google benchmark will no doubt be a factor in their decision-making.
And then when the new normal becomes working from home, then what?
Facebook has even announced that it may have as much as half of its workforce work from home for the next decade.
We all know both at the executive leadership level, as well as at the employee ranks, working from home is proving to be much more productive generally than anyone ever imagined that it could be. And now tools to aid work from home collaboration, efficiency, and productivity continue to roll out, even further streamlining and facilitating remote work is at hand.
So, now while we all, no doubt, look forward to a return to normalcy, we’re going to need to be looking much further into the future and planning accordingly.
I’m Jeff Sloan, founder and CEO of StartupNation.com, and that’s today’s Business Beat on the Great Voice of the Great Lakes, WJR.
