The housing rental platform, which had generalized remote working of which its CEO Brian Chesky is a fervent defender, is abandoning the idea of a generalized return to the office.
The Airbnb company announced Thursday in an email sent to all its employees around the world that they would now have the possibility of working remotely on a permanent basis. The San Francisco-based housing rental platform told its 6,000 globally dispersed employees that they are now “free to move anywhere in the country in which they work» or continue to work from the premises of the company, without their remuneration being impacted. Airbnb also promises its employees “the flexibility to travel and work around the world“, saying however that they will have to meet regularly in person for team meetings or corporate events.
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With this announcement, Airbnb, which had generalized teleworking during the Covid-19 pandemic, is definitively abandoning its general return to the office plan in September 2022. On the contrary, the platform is in line with this new corporate policy in the club. technology companies that favor flexibility and remote working. In 2021, Google, Twitter and Facebook authorized part of their teams to work permanently from home. The CEO and co-founder of Airbnb, Brian Chesky, had already shown himself as a fervent defender of this way of life, announcing last January to become, in a personal capacity, a nomadic worker.
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Beyond its own initiative, Airbnb wants to encourage the practice of teleworking, in particular by welcoming teleworkers in its rentals. As the New York Times reports, the company launched a program in 2021 to allow a dozen people to travel the world for a year, while telecommuting from Airbnb rentals. The platform indicates that it is ready to “partner with governments and any organization that can support this trend towards flexible working“.