‘Symbol’ of remote work in the pandemic, Zoom asks employees to return to their offices

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Company said it believes a ‘structured hybrid approach’ is more effective. Remote work gained traction during the Covid-19 pandemic Getty Images Zoom, the video communications company whose name has become synonymous with remote work during the pandemic, ordered its employees to return to the office. The company said it believes a “structured hybrid approach” is more effective and that people who live within 50 miles of an office should work face-to-face at least twice a week. This is the latest effort by a major company to roll back some of its flexible working policies. Amazon and Disney are among the companies that have reduced remote work days. Surveys suggest that workers are still retaining the ability to work from home to some extent. About 12% of workers in the United States, where Zoom is headquartered, were working fully remote in July, while another 29% had hybrid policies, according to a Stanford University survey. This is similar to patterns recorded by the UK Office for National Statistics earlier this year. Previous research by the Stanford team found that remote work is more common in English-speaking countries and much less common in Asia and Europe. Before the pandemic, the share of days worked from home in the United States was just 5%. Globally, workers want more flexible working arrangements than employers consider ideal. At one point, Zoom said the team could work remotely indefinitely. The tech company said it will continue to “hire the best talent regardless of location”. At the end of January, the company employed about 8,400 people, more than half of them in the United States. Around 200 people currently work for Zoom in the UK, where it has just opened a new London office. Zoom said the new policy would put the company in “a better position to use our own technologies, continue to innovate and support our global customers.” “We will continue to leverage the full Zoom platform to keep our employees and dispersed teams connected and working efficiently,” the company said. Home office work income rises 53% since the beginning of the pandemic – and beats face-to-face Only about 1% of the company’s workers had “regular presence in the office” in September 2022, while 75% worked remotely and the rest had hybrid arrangements, the Wall Street Journal reported at the time. But Zoom is under increasing pressure as the expansion of remote work prompts rivals such as Microsoft to update their video offerings. Growth has slowed sharply since the pandemic. Earlier this year, Zoom announced that it would cut 15% of its staff and that top executives would take big pay cuts. Their shares are worth about $68 each today, down from over $500 at their October 2020 peak.

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