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Tech companies like Apple were among the first to allow their employees to work from home at the start of the pandemic. Now tensions are mounting over when and if these employees will return to the office.
In a new letter, some Apple employees are asking the company to allow employees to work from home full time, with certain restrictions. Apple has only agreed to let employees work from home two days a week, with a few exceptions. The company did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
This is the second petition letter in two months from Apple employees writing about more flexible working conditions, and it’s a sign of continued grassroots dissent within the company. It’s a surprising departure from Apple’s traditionally hierarchical work culture.
The petition describes two different “pilot arrangements” that would allow employees to work from home full-time for at least a year, with no promise of an extension. These provisions would give employees the ability to work remotely from home five days a week – including in a location other than where they were hired – with the approval of their manager or manager, and in some cases , a cost-adjustment of the living remuneration. The letter was posted Monday morning on an internal Slack channel from an Apple employee to discuss remote work; the channel has over 6,000 members and is open to all Apple employees.
Other Silicon Valley tech giants like Google and Facebook have offered more flexibility to their employees, allowing workers in good standing to apply to work from home full time, though details of those plans are still out. in development. Amazon even reneged on plans to require company staff to return to the office full-time after a backlash from employees. But Apple (which, unlike Google and Facebook, is primarily a computer hardware company that makes physical goods) insisted it needed most of the office workers to run its notoriously secretive business. Management’s resistance to changing its work-from-home policy has caused open frustration among Apple’s traditionally headlong workforce and reflects greater tensions among white-collar workers in the United States as their employers begin calling them to return to the office in person.
“We continue to fear that this unique solution will cause many of our colleagues to question their future at Apple,” the letter said, which continued to say, “With COVID-19 numbers rising again around the world, with vaccines proving less effective against the Delta variant and the poorly understood long-term effects of the infection, it’s too early to force those with worries back into the office.
The letter cites an internal employee survey, first reported by The Verge, which found that 68% of those polled – totaling more than 1,100 employees – strongly agreed that the “lack of flexibility of Apple’s localization “would probably push them to leave Apple.”
In June, Apple CEO Tim Cook sent a note saying employees must return to the office at least three days a week starting in September. Many Apple employees – some of whom had already left the Bay Area permanently during the pandemic or had medical concerns about returning to the office – have pushed back the decision, with more than 1,700 Apple employees signing a letter of protest, as The Verge first reported. Management is committed to listening to employee concerns. But just two weeks later, company executives uploaded a video announcing that it was not changing its original position, with Apple Vice President Deirdre O’Brien saying “we believe the collaboration in no one is essential to our culture and our future “.
Over the past few weeks, Apple’s HR team (which it calls its People team) has been listening to personal stories from employees about why they want to work from home. Sources told Recode that Apple employees with disabilities, single parents, or those who have already left the office permanently were among the most affected by the return-to-office mandate.
“However, it was disappointing to see these personal stories unrecognized individually or by any change in policy,” the letter said.
Ultimately, the letter argues that the risks of the proposed policy changes to Apple’s business are “minimal, while their potential benefits are enormous.”
Apple employees voicing their grievances over the way the business is run – even internally – is a relatively new phenomenon. Unlike Google or even Facebook, Apple doesn’t have much of a history of employee debate on controversial topics. The floodgates appeared to have opened with a backlash to the hiring of Antonio Garcia Martinez, an engineering director who previously wrote what many considered to be sexist comments about women. Martinez was fired from the company shortly after employees published a petition calling for an investigation into his hiring.
The big question for the future is how Apple’s management will react to this continuing wave of activism in its workforce and whether it will listen to the concerns of its employees, or whether it will crack down on dissent like other companies like Google. did.
The full text of the letter is below (it’s not ours):
Dear Tim, Deirdre and team,
Thank you for all the work you and the team do to keep Apple’s culture so rich, vibrant and inclusive! We especially appreciate the efforts of the People’s team over the past few weeks to understand our personal situations. However, it was disappointing to see these personal stories unrecognized individually or by any change in policy. We continue to be concerned that this unique solution leaves many of our colleagues wondering about their future at Apple. About 68% of respondents to our informal survey somewhat or strongly agreed that the lack of localization flexibility would likely cause them to leave Apple; that’s over 1,100 members of our Apple family, and we care about each and every one of them.
As the number of COVID-19 rises again around the world, vaccines prove less effective against the Delta variant, and the long-term effects of the infection are not well understood, it is too early to force people concerned about returning to the office. Additionally, allowing more flexibility than the current 3/2 schedule would allow us to really validate whether some people working remotely, and not just everyone who occasionally works from home, is compatible with Apple’s collaborative culture.
We offer the following adaptations to the Flexible Work Arrangement (ATF) and Temporary Remote Work Arrangement (ART) programs to integrate them into the Hybrid work pilot. These new provisions would be limited to one year with no extension promise.
Local WFH temporary pilot agreement:
This proposal aims to accommodate employees who work better from home – or who don’t feel comfortable in the office while the pandemic is still not under control – by allowing them to continue working from home unless they are. Special needs of their role don’t require them to be in the office.
- Mandatory: approval of the direct manager.
- The default workplace is home, but the employee will always have an office assigned to the office.
- The location of the FMH must be within a switchable distance of the office assigned by the employer.
- A fixed WFH / in-office schedule may be part of this arrangement at the discretion of the manager.
Remote WFH temporary pilot agreement
This proposal is intended to accommodate employees whose living conditions are not compatible, or have become incompatible, with home-work trips to an Apple office.
- Required: approval of the head of department.
- The default workplace is the current permanent home address; the employee goes do not have an assigned desk in the office.
- Employee compensation can be adjusted based on location, similar to permanent remote employees.
We believe that these two proposals are essential to the success of the Hybrid Working Pilot. Together, they ensure the pilot encompasses the full range of in-office and out-of-office working arrangements, allow us to retain a large number of our colleagues, who have expressed a desire for localization flexibility in their current roles, and enable individuals and teams to respond more quickly to changing regional COVID-19 conditions without relying on previous company-wide guidance. We hope you will agree that the risks of these tailored policies are minimal while their potential benefits are huge and we look forward to hearing from you.
Truly,
The undersigned
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