Apple employees unhappy with ‘3 days a week office’ hybrid work policy: Report – Times of India

In an internal survey of 1,749 employees at Apple, 90% of them are unhappy with Apple‘s new hybrid work policy that is set to start from September. The new work policy mandates employees to be physically present at office three days a week. Most employees want to work from home indefinitely, as per a report by The Verge.
“Nearly 90 percent of respondents (in the survey) said they “strongly agree” with the statement “location-flexible working options are a very important issue to me.” Employees defined “location-flexible” as the option to work from home indefinitely,” the report by The Verge said.
What could be concerning for Apple is that if employees are forced to come to the office or not allowed to work from home whenever they want, some employees may quit. This internal survey was not “sanctioned” by Apple’s executives and it was a small survey sent over Slack to talk about the company’s new hybrid policy. While 1,749 employees may sound like a big figure, it is actually quite a small percentage when considering Apple’s workforce of over 1.47 lakh.
As per the report by The Verge: In response to the statement “I am worried that some of my colleagues will have to leave Apple due to LACK of location-flexible work options,” 58.5% said they “strongly agree.” A total of 1,743 people answered the question. Around 36.7% are “worried they’ll have to resign due to the lack of flexibility.”
The results of the survey were sent to Apple CEO Tim Cook and Deirdre O’Brien, senior vice president of retail and people.
Cook, in a memo written to employees in June, talked about the company’s plans of getting back to ‘normal’. He said that most employees will be asked to report to the office for three days a week — Mondays, Tuesdays and Thursdays. “Video conference calling has narrowed the distance between us, to be sure, but there are things it simply cannot replicate,” he said.
The memo also said that Apple will give employees the chance to work from home or remotely on Wednesdays and Fridays if they wish to do so. However, some teams will be asked to work from office for 4-5 days per week.