Nokia to redesign office spaces and allow 3 days a week of remote work post COVID

The Finnish telecommunications giant Nokia announced a new, more flexible policy regarding remote work and work hours. In a press release sent out this morning, Nokia says that from 1st January of 2022 employees will have more options how and from where they will work.

In a survey conducted in 2020 regarding post-pandemic work that 26,000 Nokia employees responded to, “91% of respondents felt that they had retained or increased their productivity during their time working from home. On average, respondents said they want to work two to three days per week remotely, up from an average of two days before the pandemic, with 81% still preferring to come into the office for at least some of the time during their working week to collaborate and connect with colleagues.”

The new policy will allow employees to work three days a week remotely and will come with increased support for flexible working hours and fully virtual working. Apart from that, Nokia has been redesigning the office spaces to accommodate the fact that an increased number of employees will be remote, thus there is less need for “concentrative workspaces” and more office space will be allocated to teamwork and meetings. Some pilots sites in Dallas, Singapore and Budapest have already been reconfigured this year, and it seems Nokia likes the results.

By the end of 2021, the company plans to launch a smart office solution that will allow employees to “book workspaces and office amenities, as well as toolkits and guides aimed at helping people managers and teams to establish better, more flexible and sustainable working models.” This move to this hybrid model will be on a country-by-country basis, taking into consideration local needs, legal requirements and the COVID-19 situation.