Employees at Apple are struggling to have work from home requests approved since the company rolled out a new hybrid working week.
As reported by The Verge, the new model will require employees to work from the office three days a week starting in September.
Working from home has become an integral part of workplaces since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, with many employers allowing this for the first time. Apple has been a historical denigrator of remote working, discouraging employees to work from home.
Some Apple employees communicated on Slack to voice their concerns regarding remote working. The group consists of 6,000 employees, however, this is only a small fraction of Apple’s 147,000 workforce.
“Out of a job”
In an internal survey of Apple employees via the Slack group, 36.7 per cent of respondents said they were worried they will have to resign over a lack of flexible work arrangements. Overall, nearly 90 per cent strongly agreed that location-flexible working options are very important to them.
One employee, who is on an Americans with Disabilities Act accommodation that allows them to work from home, has been told that accommodation will be denied once they return to the office. The Apple worker wrote in Slack that they will “be out of a job in September”
Some employees have reported that to get approval for remote work they must first provide documented medical conditions. However, the approval forms used to request this require individuals to release their records to the company.
I am absolutely irate that this remote policy is now affecting people with disabilities who have already disclosed their disability and previously been given accommodation to work remotely.
What kind of a message does that send to your disabled workforce?
— Cher Scarlett (@cherthedev) July 15, 2021
Apple’s senior vice president Deirdre O’Brien previously responded to employees’ concerns in a video saying that office working is “essential” and that the company will not change its stance on the new hybrid model.
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