Apple to adopt hybrid work model despite worker pleas for more flexibility
Apple will move forward with plans to hold in-office work hours starting in September despite some employees' pleas for a more flexible arrangement.
Apple SVP of retail and people Deirdre O'Brien, addressing employees in an internal video viewed by The Verge on Tuesday, said the company will adopt a hybrid work model announced earlier this month.
"We believe that in-person collaboration is essential to our culture and our future," O'Brien said. "If we take a moment to reflect on our unbelievable product launches this past year, the products and the launch execution were built upon the base of years of work that we did when we were all together in-person."
In early June, CEO Tim Cook in a note to employees said the company would return to office work for at least three days a week starting in September. While there would be a few exceptions, most staff are expected to be in the office on Monday, Tuesday and Thursday, leaving Wednesday and Friday as optional work from home days. Further, employees can remote in for up to two weeks a year, pending approval from management.
Members of corporate teams that require face-to-face time were asked to come in for four to five days a week.
Days later, a group of roughly 2,800 employees penned a long-winded response, saying there was "growing concern" about the proposed hybrid work schedule. The group, which claimed that an unspecified number of staff members were forced to quit due to Apple's new work policy, made a number of formal requests pushing for remote work over in-person attendance.
In the letter, Apple employees said working from home delivers five key benefits: diversity and inclusion in retention and hiring; tearing down previously existing communication barriers; better work life balance; better integration of existing remote / location-flexible workers; and reduced spread of pathogens.
"For many of us at Apple, we have succeeded not despite working from home, but in large part because of being able to work outside the office."
It appears that Apple has denied the group's requests, saying future decisions related to the matter will be made "on a case-by-case basis with any new remote positions requiring executive approval," today's report said.
Cook and other senior executives have maintained that remote work is no substitute for face-to-face meetings. The company has long believed that employee commingling is a vital ingredient to innovation, so much so that late Apple cofounder Steve Jobs helped design Apple Park's main building -- effectively a large ring -- to facilitate serendipitous encounters.
Keep up with everything Apple in the weekly AppleInsider Podcast -- and get a fast news update from AppleInsider Daily. Just say, "Hey, Siri," to your HomePod mini and ask for these podcasts, and our latest HomeKit Insider episode too.If you want an ad-free main AppleInsider Podcast experience, you can support the AppleInsider podcast by subscribing for $5 per month through Apple's Podcasts app, or via Patreon if you prefer any other podcast player.
Apple SVP of retail and people Deirdre O'Brien, addressing employees in an internal video viewed by The Verge on Tuesday, said the company will adopt a hybrid work model announced earlier this month.
"We believe that in-person collaboration is essential to our culture and our future," O'Brien said. "If we take a moment to reflect on our unbelievable product launches this past year, the products and the launch execution were built upon the base of years of work that we did when we were all together in-person."
In early June, CEO Tim Cook in a note to employees said the company would return to office work for at least three days a week starting in September. While there would be a few exceptions, most staff are expected to be in the office on Monday, Tuesday and Thursday, leaving Wednesday and Friday as optional work from home days. Further, employees can remote in for up to two weeks a year, pending approval from management.
Members of corporate teams that require face-to-face time were asked to come in for four to five days a week.
Days later, a group of roughly 2,800 employees penned a long-winded response, saying there was "growing concern" about the proposed hybrid work schedule. The group, which claimed that an unspecified number of staff members were forced to quit due to Apple's new work policy, made a number of formal requests pushing for remote work over in-person attendance.
In the letter, Apple employees said working from home delivers five key benefits: diversity and inclusion in retention and hiring; tearing down previously existing communication barriers; better work life balance; better integration of existing remote / location-flexible workers; and reduced spread of pathogens.
"For many of us at Apple, we have succeeded not despite working from home, but in large part because of being able to work outside the office."
It appears that Apple has denied the group's requests, saying future decisions related to the matter will be made "on a case-by-case basis with any new remote positions requiring executive approval," today's report said.
Cook and other senior executives have maintained that remote work is no substitute for face-to-face meetings. The company has long believed that employee commingling is a vital ingredient to innovation, so much so that late Apple cofounder Steve Jobs helped design Apple Park's main building -- effectively a large ring -- to facilitate serendipitous encounters.
Keep up with everything Apple in the weekly AppleInsider Podcast -- and get a fast news update from AppleInsider Daily. Just say, "Hey, Siri," to your HomePod mini and ask for these podcasts, and our latest HomeKit Insider episode too.If you want an ad-free main AppleInsider Podcast experience, you can support the AppleInsider podcast by subscribing for $5 per month through Apple's Podcasts app, or via Patreon if you prefer any other podcast player.
Comments
I’m holding out for two days a week at most, but… we’ll see.
I paid homage The Ring at the Apple Park Visitor Center last week and spoke with several fruit stand employees who said that Apple was now actively incentivizing employees to return to work on campus. They did not specify what those incentives were, but said that the company was struggling to convince a good number of employees to return to in-person work.
As I have said before, remote work may be acceptable for some types of jobs. But those who choose remote work shouldn’t be surprised if they find their careers have stalled a few years from now.
Those who’d rather stay home will have plenty of time to do just that when they’re looking for another job.
Tens of thousands of employees still work in their more traditional office space:
Apparently some employees didn't like the spaceship:
https://www.inc.com/geoffrey-james/apple-employees-hate-apples-5-billion-open-plan-o.html
The hybrid working model that Apple offers is fair and they said they would assess it on a case-by-case basis. Collaborative work spaces is something Steve Jobs was really into and they described it at the Pixar offices:
https://officesnapshots.com/2012/07/16/pixar-headquarters-and-the-legacy-of-steve-jobs/
https://www.wired.com/2011/10/the-steve-jobs-approach-to-teamwork/
https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/steve-jobs-technology-alone-is-not-enough
"Pixar’s campus design originally separated different employee disciplines into different buildings – one for computer scientists, another for animators, and a third building for everybody else. But because Jobs was fanatic about these unplanned collaborations, he envisioned a campus where these encounters could take place, and his design included a great atrium space that acts as a central hub for the campus.
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"In November 2000, Jobs purchased an abandoned Del Monte canning factory on sixteen acres in Emeryille, just north of Oakland. The original architectural plan called for three buildings, with separate offices for the computer scientists, animators and Pixar executives. Jobs immediately scrapped it. (“We used to joke that the building was Steve’s movie,” Ed Catmull, the President of Pixar, told me last year.)
Instead of three buildings, there was going to be a single vast space, with an airy atrium at its center. “The philosophy behind this design is that it’s good to put the most important function at the heart of the building,” Catmull said. “Well, what’s our most important function? It’s the interaction of our employees. That’s why Steve put a big empty space there. He wanted to create an open area for people to always be talking to each other.”
As he saw it, the main challenge for Pixar was getting its different cultures to work together, forcing the computer geeks and cartoonists to collaborate. (John Lasseter, the chief creative office at Pixar, describes the equation this way: “Technology inspires art, and art challenges the technology.”) In typical fashion, Jobs saw this as a design problem.
He began with the mailboxes, which he shifted to the atrium. Then, he moved the meeting rooms to the center of the building, followed by the cafeteria and coffee bar and gift shop. But that still wasn’t enough; Jobs insisted that the architects locate the only set of bathrooms in the atrium. (He was later forced to compromise on this detail.) In a 2008 conversation, Brad Bird, the director of The Incredibles and Ratatouille, said, “The atrium initially might seem like a waste of space...But Steve realized that when people run into each other, when they make eye contact, things happen.”
The biggest problem with the office is getting there and back. For most, the commute is the bane of office work.