The concept of remote work gained momentum during the COVID-19 pandemic. Many organisations, even after the pandemic continued with remote jobs, allowing candidates to work from the comfort of their homes. Now, most companies are asking their workforce to rejoin offices, leaving them to either quit their jobs or look for alternative options. But if you have made it to a job interview and irrespective of the role advertised, if you want to check whether the company is open to remote roles, Stanford University lecturer and communication expert Matt Abrahams suggested a tip.
Abrahams highlighted that it is important to frame the question correctly to get your answer and not set off any alarms in your potential manager’s head. Abrahams suggested using the following script or a variation during the interview with the recruiter. “I want to be able to connect with all my colleagues and managers, so I was wondering how often people are in the office. Do some people work virtually, or is there a hybrid model?” he told CNBC Make It.
This way, you’re not actually asking to work remotely, but you can still get your answers from the recruiters, Abrahams added. “It’s in the context of you wanting to be the best employee you can and connect with your fellow employees,” the professor said, adding that this tip only works if you have some flexibility. If you know you want to work from home 100 per cent of the time, Abrahams suggested being straightforward about that expectation.
On the other hand, there are a few firms that have allowed their employees to continue their work from home. The founder and CEO of IT and software development company Globant, Martin Migoya has adopted a flexible approach. The CEO has allowed all of their 30,000 employees spread across 33 nations to continue working remotely if they wish to. This makes Globant one of the world’s largest tech companies by headcount to remain fully remote.
“We have been very flexible; we will continue being very flexible. The office must be an attraction point for the people to get together, rather than just the desk in which you do your job. It’s a connection engine for the company,” Migoya told Bloomberg in an interview.
Post-pandemic, Migoya said his initial desire was to make all his employees return to office. He, however, settled on a softer approach and decided to make the offices more flexible and welcoming. “We found that people come, they get together, they use our offices in a different way, and we’ve been modifying our offices to attend to that new reality,” he added.
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