Work from home being offered as long-term option
MORE and more businesses which have adapted to working from home are rolling out the idea long-term.
Last month social media giant Twitter told staff they could stay home-based after measures it introduced during the lockdown proved a success.
Google and Facebook have also said their staff could work from home until the end of the year.
Concerns about health and safety in the workplace with the virus still out there, along with the realisation that some staff like the convenience of staying out of the office, has led other employers to consider the move.
One is Midlands accountancy firm Cooper Parry.
For years the business has prided itself on its Google-esque office on an industrial estate in the shadow of East Midlands Airport in Castle Donington.
The 327 people who work there can already dress down and choose how much holiday they take.
The £31.4 million turnover firm, which also has operations in Birmingham, London, Bristol, Farnborough and Oxford, has now introduced what it calls Working From Anywhere Forever.
Managers said the new policy gives staff even more choice and empowerment and shows they can be trusted.
The business already carries out remote audits, and the pandemic had simply “turbo-charged” the process.
Cooper Parry chief executive Ade Cheatham said: “We won’t get selfindulgent about this.
“Every business should not just be thinking about all this – they should be making it happen, too.
“Yes, we already have a winning workplace culture. Now, we need to reinvent one that works without one workplace, but with many of them.
“These are times like no other. This is another watershed moment for us – and many others – globally.
“We’ll all be judged on how we ‘WATERSHED MOMENT’: Ade Cheatham says many firms are adapting to new working practices lives and that they matter to us. And we want to spend more precious time with them. The mask we sometimes wear to work has disappeared. We are free to be ourselves and no longer wrestle with the work/home split personality”.