The chief executive officer (CEO) of Microsoft, Satya Nadella, has said that making remote work permanent can have a deteriorating impact on social interactions and mental health of the workers, whereas virtual conferences cannot replace in-person meetings.
“Those who are used to traditional office setting and appreciate social interactions that take place at the office, a sudden shift to remote work will impact their mental health due to isolation and burnout.”
After the outbreak of coronavirus, companies around the world made work from home mandatory as a safety measure but according to Nadella, this step is not good for the wellbeing of workers.
Speaking to a private media outlet, Nadella said that remote setup would be “replacing one dogma with another dogma”.
“What does burnout look like? What does mental health look like? What do connectivity and community building look like? One of the things I feel is, hey, maybe we are burning some of the social capital we built up in this phase where we are all working remotely. What’s the measure for that?,” Nadella added.
His remarks come after Twitter allowed its staff to work from home “forever” even after the end of COVID-19 pandemic.
Twitter has become the first company to allow employees to work from home indefinitely as the pandemic changes work culture around the world.
Tech giants like Facebook and Google have also allowed most of their employees to work remotely until the end of this year.
Microsoft has also extended its work-from-home policy until October at least, besides, nothing will hinder the operations and progress of Microsoft as the CEO clearly stated, “We’re going to boldly allocate and acquire, build, innovate, partner, whatever.”
“We are also going to make sure that we have the ability to do credit for small businesses and other organisations that need that help.”
