On Feb. 12, Spotify announced that it is permanently shifting to a “Work From Anywhere” model that will allow its 6,550 global employees to work from any location they choose, including an office, their homes, local coworking spaces and digital nomad villages around the globe.
The company said the new model, which also lets employees choose the country and city where they work, is a “new way of collaborating” that will inspire employees to “do their best thinking and creating.”
The policy will begin this summer, and employees can choose their work location after consulting with their manager and team members. Spotify will provide coworking memberships to employees who don’t live near a company office but want a dedicated workspace.
In a blog post, Spotify said it is rethinking its workplaces worldwide to increase “sustainability, flexibility, and well-being” for its employees.
“The ultimate goal of our new design approach is to ensure that employees have a place where they can focus, collaborate and create — whether that’s at a desk, in a conference room or in cafe spaces,” the company said.
In the blog, Spotify explained that the COVID-19 pandemic was “a litmus test of our culture and values” that accelerated its views on remote work. As a result, the company came to the following conclusions:
- Work is something employees do, not something they come to the office for
- Remote work options boost employee effectiveness
- Flexibility supports employee work-life balance, helps retain talent and expands recruiting pools
- Distributed employees are more productive and more collaborative than office-based workers
The company acknowledged that flexible working cultures require “trust, communication, collaboration and connection” and said it had considered the tax, insurance and labor law requirements needed to safely transition its workforce into such an arrangement.
Several other major companies are also embracing permanent remote work solutions for staff in the wake of the pandemic.
In early February, Salesforce proclaimed that “the 9-to-5 workday is dead” and said it will allow employees to choose if they want to work remotely or from an office. The cloud computing company also said it would give staff more flexibility in their daily schedules to attend to childcare and personal matters.
Last May, Twitter and Square announced that they were letting employees work remotely “forever.” Slack made a similar announcement in June, and Microsoft took the leap in October.
More companies will need to adopt permanent remote work policies if they want to compete in a post-pandemic world. A new study by remote work job hunting site Growmotely found that 97% of workers don’t want to return to the office full-time after the pandemic ends. It also found that 61% of employees want to work in a fully remote environment from now on.