Forget Amazon and to hell with Dell. Microsoft has decided that – for the time being at least – it does not intend to instill a mandatory five day per week return to office (RTO) policy.
The tech giant’s reassurances to staff that it isn’t about to end the option for hybrid working flies in the face of decisions made by a number of the industry’s biggest players, with Amazon ending hybrid working and demanding staff return to office in a decision announced two weeks ago.
Microsoft has stopped short of guaranteeing that it won’t take more drastic steps in future, however, saying that hybrid working will remain in place all the while productivity levels remain.
No Full-Time RTO at Microsoft
According to a report from by Business Insider (paywall), an executive-level member of the Microsoft staff made the reassurances during an internal meeting.
Anonymous sources within the organization told Business Insider that Scott Guthrie, Executive Vice President of the Microsoft Cloud + AI Group, let company employees know that the company would only remove the right to hybrid working if productivity levels fall.
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Further follow-up from the website with Microsoft resulted in a spokesperson confirming that its flexible work policy remained in tact.
“More Engaged, More Productive, More Connected”
Microsoft’s continued commitment doubles down on previous rhetoric coming out of the company in relation to hybrid, remote and other flexible working arrangements.
Only last month we saw that there was a total of 530 fully remote jobs that you could apply for at Microsoft. That’s significantly more than the likes of Google and Apple, and included roles as wide and varied as Product Marketing Manager, Senior Software Engineer and Healthcare Data & AI Technical Specialist.
And in August Keith Boyd, Senior Director in Microsoft Digital, published a post on the company’s Inside Track blog titled “Reinventing Microsoft’s employee experience for a hybrid world”.
In it he talks about how the shift to hybrid work during and after the COVID pandemic “served as an accelerant to our efforts to revolutionize the employee experience for our employees and customers”, while acknowledging the risks posed by the lack of in-person collaboration.
“The change isn’t easy, but it’s worth it. If you make the time to do it right, your employees will be more engaged, more productive, and more connected, even when they’re miles away.”
Ultimately, however, he reinforced the idea of hybrid working as a necessary step for companies like Microsoft to take to prevent good employees from wanting to “leave for a competitor who has a more sophisticated and flexible model than you do”.
The Big Return to Office
In the years since the COVID pandemic, many tech companies have ended fully remote work and some major players are now even beginning to bring an end to hybrid working arrangements.
Amazon was one of the most recent example of this. From January, its workers will be expected to go into the office full time.
Dell followed suit last week, but with a shorter deadline. The computing manufacturer has demanded that staff return to the office five days a week beginning yesterday (September 30th).
Smartphone brand Nothing and video game company Rockstar are other examples where employees have been forced into a full time RTO.
