Work from home is the future says Deloitte 

The pandemic has forced us to re-look at and redefine “normal”. How we eat, study, work, live, socialise, everything has had a complete overhaul and that too overnight! While most moving parts have found their groove in the new normal, a trend has come to light. Work from home is the new normal. 

Large multinational companies from Twitter to Shopify have given their employees discretion to permanently work from home. Following suit Deloitte has also decided to shut down offices.

Deloitte, one of the big four companies, has announced that four of its 50 offices will be closed. This will subsequently result in about 500 people from these offices to permanently work from their homes. “COVID-19 has fast-tracked our future of work programme, leading us to review our real estate portfolio. Any proposed change is to our ‘bricks and mortar,’ not our presence in these regions.” said Stephen Griggs, Deloitte’s UK managing partner.

Twitter was the first multi-national company to allow its employees to work from home permanently. Followed by this, Facebook also declared that as many as 50 per cent of it’s staff could work from home within the next five to ten years. Mark Zukerberg looked at this idea as a comprehensive approach to satisfy employee desires and also as an effort to create "more broad-based economic prosperity."

Tobi Lutke, CEO of e-commerce giant Shopify, tweeted saying, "Office centricity is over" heading towards work from the home approach. Bitcoin payment and wallet company BitPay has also decided to allow its employees to work-from-home permanently. Hindustan Coca-Cola Beverages (HCCB) has provided its employees with an option to work from home "forever".

As the lockdown is lifting gradually offices have started operations but not at their full capacity. The danger of a pandemic still looms. As a reason, corporate juggernauts from tech to E-commerce are opting to offer their employees to work from home. 

Even if the conditions become favourable many companies and their employees would still opt for permanent work from home. The work from home culture has worked well and many companies will continue with the system even after the coronavirus pandemic ends, billionaire philanthropist Bill Gates said on Wednesday. The corporate strict work hours and office culture are transitioning. People prefer to have flexible work hours in a cozy atmosphere in their homes. We are seeing a shift towards the work from culture and it is expected to sustain even after the end of the pandemic.

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