Work From Home Policies Will Make Tech Employees Leave or Stay

As the great reopening unfolds, companies have announced the new work from home and hybrid work policies. Companies like Twitter and Zillow went ahead and told that most of their employees could work from home forever last year. On the other hand, Apple, Amazon, and Uber have announced a return to office policy that will mandate employees to come in at least three days per week. 

Perhaps the biggest question lingering in the HR professional’s mind is how these policies would affect employee retention. Are employees satisfied with these policies, and if they are not satisfied would it lead to employees leaving?

We surveyed 5,680 US tech employees and asked the following two questions. 

1. Are you satisfied with your company’s new work from home/hybrid policy?
2. Did the new work from home/hybrid policy make you want to leave your company?

The results show a clear sign that the new work from home/hybrid policies will impact employee churn. 

• Overall, 51% of tech employees are satisfied with their companies’ new work-from-home policies.
• 36% of tech employees have said their companies’ new policy has made them want to leave.
• When employees are not satisfied with the new WFH/Hybrid policy, 66% said they want to leave their companies compared with only 6% of employees satisfied with the new policy.
• The companies that allow employees to either fully work from home or apply to do so are likely to retain most of their employees. In contrast, the companies that mandate employees to return to the office will risk losing their employees. 

Here is a breakdown of the results of some companies and their policies that shows a contrast of employee sentiment based on the flexibility of policies. 

The results tell us that the companies giving employees flexibility over their work setting instead of mandating a forced policy will likely retain their employees better. This emphasis on flexibility aligns with our previous post, where we found out that 64% of employees surveyed preferred working from home over a 30K raise.

On Blind, an anonymous professional network, professionals across companies have begun to share their companies’ work from home and hybrid policies. Take a look into how different companies are handling the great reopening by checking out this post: “WFH/Hybrid/Back to office companies Master thread”

Here is the comprehensive list of survey results of the companies we surveyed.