Facebook to let staf f stay home – for good

But critics say plan is a ‘bomb’ on property industry

FACEBOOK will allow some employees work from home permanently if they want to, the company announced yesterday.

The social media giant is currently building a new European headquarters in central Dublin with space for 9,000 staff. It employs 4,000 people in the country and the expansion would mean Ireland makes up around 20% of its global headcount of 45,000.

But economist David McWilliams has likened the decision regarding employees working from home to ‘a bomb dropping on Dublin’s commercial property sector’.

Facebook chief Mark Zuckerberg said the firm plans to ‘aggressively open up remote hiring’ starting immediately with the US, particularly for engineering talent. Based on internal employee surveys, he believes remote workers could make up as much as 50% of Facebook’s workforce in the next five to ten years. ‘We and a lot of other folks were very worried that productivity was going to really fall off a cliff,’ Mr Zuckerberg said.

‘It just hasn’t. We are at least as productive as we were before, and some people report being even more productive.’

However, some believe new social distancing rules will mean increased demand for extra office space to ensure employees have more space apart.

When some of Facebook’s US employees do return to work following the July 4 holiday, the firm plans to keep office capacity at just 25%, so will need as much room as possible.

Mr Zuckerberg added: ‘If anything we just don’t have enough office space. The virus is going to be with us for a while, so we really need to get good at this. I just don’t think there’s going to be a single day where it’s like, “OK, Covid is done”.’

David Fitzsimons, of Retail Excellence, said of the remote working plans: ‘It’s the same with Twitter. The concept of home working is here to stay for good.

‘Life-work balance is much better, there’s no commute and no traffic.

‘There are winners and losers. The winners are the commuter belt towns and provincial towns in Ireland where thousands of cars are not leaving every morning to go to urban areas to work. And those people are likely to go down to the local town at some point in the day to collect the kids, or go to the pharmacy, or the butcher’s, but they’ll also then obviously potentially shop in other stores.’

Mr Fitzsimons said potentially ‘the big brands online will do better because these customers aren’t passing the doors of Brown Thomas or Zara anymore’.

‘The losers are retailers and especially the convenience store and the cafés in urban areas: coffee, deli, food, cigarettes, newspapers, all that,’ he added.

‘So footfall with diminish significantly, potentially over 20%. It’s a monumental shift in consumer behaviour. Home working is here forever, definitely. We might next year start going back and enjoying shopping, touching products, having food, meeting friends, but home work seems to have worked.’

But Property Industry Ireland director David Duffy said: ‘The crisis does point to the feasibility of working from home, but how many take it up, whether it’s people permanently working from home but coming into the office one or two days a week... I think we will probably, at least until there’s a vaccine, see some change in work practice.

‘The extent to which these become embedded and change the office market, it’s a little early to say. Some staff will want to continue to work from home, but others will have found it challenging and will want to work in an office. There’s absolutely still going to be a commercial market for office space.’ christian.mccashin@dailymail.ie

‘Some report being more productive’