Monumental anger among the staff of Farmers Group, an American insurance giant with about 21,000 employees on the payroll. Over the last few days, its managers have seen how a significant part of these workers have dedicated themselves to launching furious criticism on the company’s channels or even threatening to resign or unionize. The reason: a swerve in the teleworking policy that has ended up becoming a real life trap for some, one that they have already branded as “disgusting”.
To understand what has happened at Farmers, you have to go back to March 2020, to the beginnings of the pandemic, when like many other companies —in the US and the rest of the planet shaken by COVID-19— it chose to embrace teleworking. The experience was good enough that remote employment was maintained beyond the health crisis and many interpreted that it was already part of Farmers’ corporate culture.
Not only that.
“About 60% will be hybrids”
According to The New York Post, last year company employees were told they could continue working from home. Even then-CEO Jeff Dailey would have assured them that most would continue to perform their duties virtually. The problem is that for months Dailey no longer serving as CEO. And the perspective with which the company now seems to face teleworking is quite another… and of the opposite sign.
After a change in the leadership of the company that elevated Raúl Vargas to the position of executive director, the guidelines on remote work seem to have changed substantially. The company now wants a hybrid model that forces a good part of its employees to go to the office for at least three days.
“Following the pandemic, Farmers management has decided that the organization will move to a hybrid work environment starting in September, a mixed approach that we believe will allow us to continue to offer flexibility while taking advantage of the office environment,” explains a spokesperson.
How does that translate into practice? In which those employees who live in the 50 mile radius —about 50 miles— from a Farmers office will have to come to work in person at least three days a week. The remaining two will be offered “flexibility” to work remotely.
“Depending on business needs and the different types of positions, about 60% of Farmers employees will be hybrid, while the other roles will be virtual or in the office,” the group abounds, stressing that their goal is to adapt to a change of scenery: “The decision to go virtual at the start of the pandemic, in March 2020, made sense then. Going to a hybrid approach in September 2023 makes sense for our organization now.”
The problem is that the new ad – no matter how much it was launched three months in advance – has caught more than one Farmers employee with the wrong foot and after having adapted their lives to a teleworking scenario. And the criticism, of course, has surfaced in a cascade. The Wall Street Journal has been able to consult them and ensures that they have been registered on the company’s internal platform more than 2,000 comments critical of the decision of the new CEO.
Some threaten to resign.
There are those who already talk about organizing themselves in a union.
And there are those who simply share their frustration at a change that they consider unfair and contrary to the discourse that the company has maintained up to now. “They hired me as a remote worker and promised me that this would be the company’s culture from now on,” explains one of the employees quoted by TWSJ. For him the decision supposes “a frankly disgusting movement of power.”
Other comments are more dramatic, such as an employee who claims to have given his life a 180º turn by trusting that he could work remotely. “I sold my house and moved closer to my grandchildren,” lamented one worker. “I’m sorry I made such an important decision based on a lie.”
“As business conditions change, such as the pandemic emergency, approaches must also change,” the company stresses.
Farmers is by no means the only one in maintaining a similar philosophy and applying a change of course in its teleworking policy. Other large firms have done it before. Including benchmarks in the sector, such as Meta, Apple, Amazon or Tesla, whose CEO, Elon Musk, has come to speak out strongly against remote work, which he sees as a “morally incorrect” option.
Cover image: Alex Kotliarskyi (Unsplash)
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