Mark Zuckerberg’s latest overview of Facebook’s plan of action includes pioneering moves over the next decade. The tech giant plans to embrace remote working even when COVID-19 is no longer a threat to its employees. To add on, Facebook is looking to diversify working spaces beyond its current headquarters in Silicon Valley.
The company’s new set of plans comes days after the company decided to begin work in San Francisco Bay Area in a limited fashion. Facebook will have 25% of its employees working while the pandemic-related restrictions are still in place. In a live-streamed town hall late yesterday, Zuckerberg revealed the tech giant’s plans to set up new working hubs across Denver, Dallas and Atlanta.
In addition, Facebook wants to ramp up employment from places surrounding its existing offices including cities like San Diego, Portland, Philadelphia and Pittsburgh. The CEO’s planned endeavours seem to be directed at diversifying ideas and outlooks within the company through a broader reach within its hiring mechanism.
As Zuckerberg phrased it, “When you limit to hiring a small number of people in a few big cities, or are willing to move there, you cut out a lot of people who live in different communities, have different backgrounds, and have different perspectives”. In addition, Facebook plans to have a more localised system with regard to employee salaries. The figures will be determined while keeping the cost of living in the particular area in mind.
The CEO’s other set of plans includes the adoption of remote working for half the company as a permanent mode of working. Zuckerberg went on to elaborate on the sections of employees that can transition to working from home and the sections that would necessarily be required to use company offices.
People working in areas such as policy and partnerships, data centres, recruiting and hardware development fall in the latter section. Zuckerberg pointed out that employees will have to meet other criteria as well to be allowed to work from home permanently. This includes a level of seniority and strong performance among other things. Moreover, a significant amount of workers seem to be leaning towards this mode of work.
Zuckerberg said that an employee survey conducted revealed that 20% of Facebook’s workforce was “extremely or very interested” in switching to remote working completely once the virus-related restrictions are lifted. Plans to permanently switch to teleworking may not limit to Facebook alone.
A multitude of tech giants were quick to send their employees home and it is beginning to look like a significant portion of the workforce may never come back to the empty offices of Silicon Valley. Last week, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey announced that some company workers may permanently work from home.
