Microsoft Employees Return to Work on Flex Schedule

Microsoft plans to reopen its Redmond headquarters in the coming days with a cautious return by workers who will be on a permanent flex schedule. The tech giant was among the first to keep its employees home when the pandemic began to spread in the US and its careful re-opening is instrumental to other companies planning to take this step as well. “What we’re learning and understanding has led us to use this period in time to grow and evolve our hybrid workplace, building additional capabilities to help our employees, customers and businesses continue to thrive,” writes Microsoft Executive Vice President Kurt DelBene in a blog post. He added that one of the company’s goals is to allow employees to work where they feel most productive and encourage them to work from home, as COVID remains a concern.

The company made its decision to reopen based on local health data and will be making similar decisions for its global operations depending on conditions on the ground. 

Microsoft’s hybrid model will provide limited additional services for employees that return while also supporting those that work remotely. 

Microsoft has been guided by what it calls a Hybrid Workplace Dial that anchors six defined stages, which depend on local health data and government guidance. Each step has prescribed policies and actions.

In the future, Microsoft thinks the workplace of the future will require companies to connect a more distributed workforce and provide tools to work together to solve business problems. Once COVID-19 is mainly in the rearview mirror, Microsoft will view working from time (less than 50%) as standard for most roles. It will continue to reevaluate how specific jobs apply to particular settings.

Microsoft also pulled together researchers, engineers and real estate and facilities experts to develop hybrid meeting spaces at its Redmond and UK campuses. The group is looking at things like multiple screens, cameras and mixed reality scenarios to find the most effective set-up for hybrid work.

To gain insight into what workers want coming out of the pandemic, Microsoft produced its first Work Trend Index, which surveyed 30,000 people from 31 countries.

The Work Trend Index indicated 73% of workers want their employers to continue providing flexible remote work options once things look more normal. Also, 67% of workers want to spend more in-person time with their coworkers.

DelBene said Microsoft still believes there is value in bringing people together in the workplace to share ideas, perspectives and local viewpoints. Additionally, he said being near customers and having more touchpoints helps the company better understand partner and customer needs.

Still, the overall economy appears to be shifting to remote work. By 2025, 36.2 million Americans will be remote, an increase of 16.8 million people from pre-pandemic rates, according to Upwork’s Future Workforce Pulse Report.

Hiring managers predict that people will gradually continue to return to the office, with only 26.7% of the workforce fully remote in one year. In five years, hiring managers expect that 22.9% of workers will be remote. One-third of workers will be working at least some of the time remotely in the long-run. By comparison, only 12.3% were working remotely before the pandemic.