A couple of months into 2020, as the COVID-19 pandemic started becoming an immediate threat, Apple, like many other companies across the world, shifted to a work from home format. Months later, the company still hasn"t reverted to its previous format, with Apple CEO Tim Cook claiming that only 10% to 15% of Apple employees have gone back to the office. This is partly due to the fact the U.S. is the worst-hit country by the pandemic with over 6.8M confirmed cases.
Despite these unprecedented times, Cook believes that they have done well to operate remotely and foreshadowed that some new work habits are here to stay, even after the pandemic ceases to be a threat. Case in point, Apple has livestreamed two big conferences online during this time, announcing its shift to ARM processors at WWDC back in June and its new iPads on September 15 last week.
Apple is slowly opening its retail stores since April. But in an interview with the Atlantic Fantasy, Cook said, that even though remote work is “not like being together physically,” the Cupertino firm won"t “return to the way we were because we’ve found that there are some things that actually work really well virtually.”
This is in stark contrast with some other firms that have deemed work from home to be disruptive to productivity and workflows. Jamie Dimon of JPMorgan Chase & Co. warned of long-term damage if employees don’t get back to the office soon while Netflix CEO Reed Hastings, just recently dubbed remote work “a pure negative”.
Source: Bloomberg