As ‘work from anywhere’ appears here to stay, how will workplaces change?
Before the pandemic, software engineer Allen Dantes commuted four miles every day from his apartment to the headquarters of ChowNow in Los Angeles.
The online food ordering platform sent employees home in March until further notice, leaving Dantes, 27, to work from the small two-bedroom apartment he shared with his girlfriend. A few weeks ago, they moved into a 1,500-squarefoot three-bedroom, twobathroom Craftsman they bought for $415,000.
Dantes’ new commute: 390 miles or zero, depending on how you look at it.
The house is in Sacramento. Both have kept their jobs, even though neither of their companies has offices there.
Working from home was intended to be a temporary measure for millions of workers in the early days of COVID-19. With no clear end in sight eight months later, employers are offering a perk that would have been unthinkable at the start of the year: Live and work from wherever you want — permanently.
It is a monumental shift for corporate America, one that’s forcing companies to rethink the ways they conduct business, manage employees and shape their corporate cultures. And it has major implications for workers, who are now free to untether themselves from city centers and move to places better suited for their budgets and personal situations.
But there is often a catch.
Many employers are reducing pay when workers decide to move to less-expensive cities, a controversial measure that has sparked discussion about what it means to be fairly compensated. In some cases, employees have seen their salaries cut by more than 10%.
Tech companies are leading the way, reversing years of heavy investment in lavish Silicon Valley campuses designed to lure workers and keep them there well beyond the usual 9-to-5 workday.
Facebook, Twitter, VMware, Stripe and ChowNow are among those that have rolled out permanent work-from-anywhere policies and salary adjustments, and are preparing for a wave of employees to distance themselves from headquarters and other main offices. In May, Mark Zuckerberg predicted up to half of Facebook’s employees would work from home within five to 10 years.
“Opening offices will be our decision,” Jennifer Christie, Twitter’s chief human resources officer, said in a May memo. “When and if our employees come back will be theirs.”
“We’ve told everyone: If you’re not comfortable, no problem, stay put,” said Rich Lang, senior vice president of human resources at VMware.
The benefits for workers are clear: less time stuck in traffic, more time at home, greater freedom to set and manage one’s own schedule, and the possibility of relocating to a more affordable city or to be closer to extended family.
For employers, that means happier workforces, higher retention rates and reduced real estate and office expenses. But they say the greatest upside is the ability to attract new employees who live in places they would not have hired from in the past, giving them a competitive edge over rivals who insist on in-office workers.
“All of a sudden, the entire U.S. is open to us hiring people,” Lang said. “It opens up a whole X factor.”
U.S. mobility rates have been falling for years as people stay put and move less, said Greg Lindsay, director of applied research at NewCities, a think tank focused on urbanization. “It’ll be significant if the pandemic reverses that,” he said.