XBOX To Begin Mandating Four-Day Work Week Next Year
".Working together in person makes it easier to review work, resolve issues, and make decisions."
Remember back when the lockdowns were going on and countless businesses decided they didn't need physical office spaces anymore? That everything could be done via Zoom meetings and emails, no need to actually get up and go anywhere anymore? Yeah, that didn't work out so good in many cases, with productivity cratering as people wiggled their mouse cursors around the screens of their work computers to convince big brother that they were laboring away, not scrolling Instagram in their pajamas at three in the afternoon. Outside of some pampered city government workers and the most posh of tech startups, everyday people have been trudging back into work for the past few years as life returned to normal.
Such is the impending fate of the folks who work for XBOX over in Washington, as CEO Asha Sharma has dictated that anyone within a 50-mile radius of their Puget Sound campus in Redmond will need to come in (gasp!) four days per week. Here's the quote from an internal memorandum sent out by XBOX's chief people officer Jacinda Chislum Pearson:
Starting February 1st, 2027, Xbox employees in Puget Sound who live within 50 commuting miles of Studio D are required to work from the office a minimum of four days a week.
We have thousands of Xbox employees within commuting distance of Redmond. Taking advantage of that proximity and working together in person makes it easier to review work, resolve issues, and make decisions without the burden of scheduling another meeting.
As the memo makes clear, it's a heck of a lot easier to do collaborative, especially creative, work in person. With XBOX trying to make a comeback after spiraling for the past few years, it makes sense that the people in charge would take a stance like this. XBOX needs its best workers in the same room, riffing off one another, talking, debating, and not sitting on a couch watching MeTV all day.
Source: The Verge
