Facebook’s founder and chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, says he expects the Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic will have a long-lasting impact on working practices.
Zuckerberg expects that in ten years, about half of the social network company’s employees will be working remotely, he said in an interview with technology news site The Verge.
He emphasised that the 50 per cent figure was his estimate and not an official announcement.
According to a survey of Facebook employees, one in five expressed strong support for working from home permanently, while a further 20 per cent expressed “some interest”.
However, 40 per cent said this would not be practical due to the nature of their jobs.
Zuckerberg expects that in the future, more employees will hired to work from home from the beginning of their contracts.
Other major tech firms, including Twitter, had previously announced their employees could continue to work from home even after social distancing restrictions brought in during the pandemic eased.
Prior to the pandemic, the focus of big U.S. tech companies had been to have all employees working together at huge headquarters, some including Facebook, offering employees bonuses to live nearby.
Facebook had expanded its Menlo Park headquarters with a huge hangar-style campus built by star architect Frank Gehry.