Nokia Oyj said that its employees can choose to work up to three days a week remotely with increased support for flexible working hours from January next year after its current work from home policy comes to an end in December.
The telecom equipment maker conducted a survey of its employees at the end of last year and a majority said they wanted to work two to three days per week remotely, up from an average of two days before the COVID-19 pandemic.
“The pandemic forced organizations to change. Technology gave people the tools to innovate. In many cases, the results have been too good to go back to the old way of doing things,” Nokia CEO Pekka Lundmark said.
The Finnish firm, which had about 92,000 employees in 130 countries at the end of last year, in March said it plans to cut up to 10,000 jobs within two years to trim costs and invest more in research capabilities.
Nokia plans to redesign offices to allocate up to 70 percent of the space in some sites to teamwork and meetings, with less area reserved for workspaces.
Offices in Dallas, Texas, Singapore and Budapest have already been reconfigured, with further sites expected to be completed by the end of the year, as Nokia follows companies worldwide in opting for more hybrid working in the wake of the pandemic.
Automaker Renault SA and Stellantis NV, the maker of Peugeot and Citroen vehicles, has made agreements with workers to allow employees to work from home for up to three days a week.
Bumble Inc, the dating and relationship app, temporarily closed its offices this week, giving its about 700 employees a “much needed break” to recover from COVID-19 burnout.
Corporations such as Goldman Sachs Group Inc and JPMorgan Chase & Co are requiring all vaccinated employees to come back to the office by the fall, whereas Apple Inc pursues a hybrid work-from-home strategy and Twitter Inc has said many employees would be able to work from home indefinitely.
With COVID-19 pandemic-induced restrictions now largely lifted across the nation, companies are taking different approaches to retain staff and boost productivity. Some expect a full return to office, while others are offering a more flexible approach.
Taiwan’s foreign exchange reserves hit a record high at the end of last month, surpassing the US$600 billion mark for the first time, the central bank said yesterday. Last month, the country’s foreign exchange reserves rose US$5.51 billion from a month earlier to reach US$602.94 billion due to an increase in returns from the central bank’s portfolio management, the movement of other foreign currencies in the portfolio against the US dollar and the bank’s efforts to smooth the volatility of the New Taiwan dollar. Department of Foreign Exchange Director-General Eugene Tsai (蔡炯民)said a rate cut cycle launched by the US Federal Reserve
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The US government on Wednesday sanctioned more than two dozen companies in China, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates, including offshoots of a US chip firm, accusing the businesses of providing illicit support to Iran’s military or proxies. The US Department of Commerce included two subsidiaries of US-based chip distributor Arrow Electronics Inc (艾睿電子) on its so-called entity list published on the federal register for facilitating purchases by Iran’s proxies of US tech. Arrow spokesman John Hourigan said that the subsidiaries have been operating in full compliance with US export control regulations and his company is discussing with the US Bureau of
Pegatron Corp (和碩), a key assembler of Apple Inc’s iPhones, on Thursday reported a 12.3 percent year-on-year decline in revenue for last quarter to NT$257.86 billion (US$8.44 billion), but it expects revenue to improve in the second half on traditional holiday demand. The fourth quarter is usually the peak season for its communications products, a company official said on condition of anonymity. As Apple released its new iPhone 17 series early last month, sales in the communications segment rose sequentially last month, the official said. Shipments to Apple have been stable and in line with earlier expectations, they said. Pegatron shipped 2.4 million notebook
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