Twitter wants to make work-from-home permanent. Here’s why it won’t be the last

Twitter is allowing employees to work from home permanently, the social media company announced Tuesday.

“If our employees are in a role and situation that enables them to work from home and they want to continue to do so forever, we will make that happen,” a company blog post said, adding that offices will still be available to those who prefer to commute to work.

Twitter said its offices will open September at the earliest, and it will manage the situation slowly.

“When we do decide to open offices, it also won’t be a snap back to the way it was before,” the statement read. “It will be careful, intentional, office by office and gradual.”

Twitter is the latest U.S. company to allow employees to work from home forever, and according to experts, it’s likely far from the last.

Insurance company Nationwide — ranked #75 on 2019’s Fortune 500 — is also sprinting in that direction, CEO Kirt Walker told Fortune magazine.

After moving 98% of its workforce home to comply with social distancing measures, the company said it quickly discovered it could operate just as efficiently without everybody being in the same building.

“We keep hearing from members, ‘if you hadn’t announced you were all working from home, we never would have known,’” Walker said.

Nationwide now sees a way to run leaner, and plans to cut the number of offices down from 20 to just 4, Fortune reported.

Twitter and Nationwide are early adopters of an inevitable corporate trend, according to experts, but they may also be extreme examples.

A majority of CFOs, three out of four, said they plan to keep at least 5% of employees home after the coronavirus has subsided, according to an April survey by research firm Gartner, and nearly a quarter of CFOs said 20% of their workforce won’t be returning to the office.

“This data is an example of the lasting impact the current coronavirus crisis will have on the way companies do business,” according to Gartner researcher Alexander Bant. “CFOs, already under pressure to tightly manage costs, clearly sense an opportunity to realize the cost benefits of a remote workforce.”

This story was originally published May 12, 2020 at 4:03 PM with the headline "Twitter wants to make work-from-home permanent. Here’s why it won’t be the last."