Dropbox Goes 'Virtual First': Employees To Get Permanent Work From Home Through Summer 2021

Cloud services company Dropbox is allowing its employees to work from home permanently, as part of its new ‘virtual first’ approach, it announced Tuesday in a blog post.

All employees of Dropbox have been working from home since March when the pandemic triggered lockdowns. This mandatory work-from-home policy has now been extended until June 2021. The change comes after an internal survey by the company suggested that nearly 90% of employees feel productive at home and don’t want to return to a rigid five-day in-office workweek.

Dropbox is the latest to join technology companies including Microsoft, Twitter, Slack, and Facebook to announce permanent work-from-home policies.

“Remote work will be the primary experience for all employees and the day-to-day default for individual work,” Dropbox said in the blog post.

With the coronavirus pandemic upsetting the conventional work culture around the world, Dropbox is using the opportunity to introduce changes to its internal working.

In the blog post, the company said it would be changing its current offices into flexible co-working spaces — Dropbox Studios — designed especially for collaboration rather than solo work. The utilization of the co-working spaces in San Francisco, Seattle and Austin, and Dublin in Ireland, will depend on the teams’ needs. More co-working spaces could be set up if they turn out to be successful.

The company is also introducing ‘non-linear workdays,’ allowing employees to make their own schedules between time zones beyond Dropbox’s core collaboration hours. Dropbox will also facilitate employees’ relocation to other cities where it has offices.

“As our workforce grows more distributed, this will help balance collaboration with needs for individual focus. We want to prioritize impact and results instead of hours worked,” the post read.

Other companies to implement remote working extensions through summer 2021 are Google, Ford, American Express, and Uber. JPMorgan Chase announced last week that up to 30% of its staff will work from home on a rotational basis.