STOCKHOLM (Reuters) – Nokia said its employees can choose to work up to three days a week remotely with increased support for flexible working hours from January after its current work from home policy comes to an end in December.
The Finnish telecom equipment maker conducted a survey of its employees at the end of last year and a majority said they wanted to work two to three days per week remotely, up from an average of two days before the coronavirus pandemic.
“The pandemic forced organisations to change. Technology gave people the tools to innovate. In many cases, the results have been too good to go back to the old way of doing things,” Chief Executive Pekka Lundmark said.
The company, which had about 92,000 employees in 130 countries at the end of 2020, said in March it plans to cut up to 10,000 jobs within two years to trim costs and invest more in research capabilities.
Nokia plans to redesign offices to allocate up to 70% of the space in some sites to teamwork and meetings, with less area reserved for workspaces.
Offices in Dallas, Singapore and Budapest have already been reconfigured, with further sites expected to be completed by the end of the year as Nokia follows companies worldwide in opting for more hybrid working in the wake of the pandemic.
Carmaker Renault and Stellantis, the maker of Peugeot and Citroen cars, has made agreements with workers to allow employees to work from home for up to three days a week.
(Reporting by Supantha Mukherjee, European Technology & Telecoms Correspondent, based in Stockholm; Editing by Alison Williams)
