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.
SEMICONDUCTORS: The German laser and plasma generator company will expand its local services as its specialized offerings support Taiwan’s semiconductor industries Trumpf SE + Co KG, a global leader in supplying laser technology and plasma generators used in chip production, is expanding its investments in Taiwan in an effort to deeply integrate into the global semiconductor supply chain in the pursuit of growth. The company, headquartered in Ditzingen, Germany, has invested significantly in a newly inaugurated regional technical center for plasma generators in Taoyuan, its latest expansion in Taiwan after being engaged in various industries for more than 25 years. The center, the first of its kind Trumpf built outside Germany, aims to serve customers from Taiwan, Japan, Southeast Asia and South Korea,
Gasoline and diesel prices at domestic fuel stations are to fall NT$0.2 per liter this week, down for a second consecutive week, CPC Corp, Taiwan (台灣中油) and Formosa Petrochemical Corp (台塑石化) announced yesterday. Effective today, gasoline prices at CPC and Formosa stations are to drop to NT$26.4, NT$27.9 and NT$29.9 per liter for 92, 95 and 98-octane unleaded gasoline respectively, the companies said in separate statements. The price of premium diesel is to fall to NT$24.8 per liter at CPC stations and NT$24.6 at Formosa pumps, they said. The price adjustments came even as international crude oil prices rose last week, as traders
SIZE MATTERS: TSMC started phasing out 8-inch wafer production last year, while Samsung is more aggressively retiring 8-inch capacity, TrendForce said Chipmakers are expected to raise prices of 8-inch wafers by up to 20 percent this year on concern over supply constraints as major contract chipmakers Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) and Samsung Electronics Co gradually retire less advanced wafer capacity, TrendForce Corp (集邦科技) said yesterday. It is the first significant across-the-board price hike since a global semiconductor correction in 2023, the Taipei-based market researcher said in a report. Global 8-inch wafer capacity slid 0.3 percent year-on-year last year, although 8-inch wafer prices still hovered at relatively stable levels throughout the year, TrendForce said. The downward trend is expected to continue this year,
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), which supplies advanced chips to Nvidia Corp and Apple Inc, yesterday reported NT$1.046 trillion (US$33.1 billion) in revenue for last quarter, driven by constantly strong demand for artificial intelligence (AI) chips, falling in the upper end of its forecast. Based on TSMC’s financial guidance, revenue would expand about 22 percent sequentially to the range from US$32.2 billion to US$33.4 billion during the final quarter of 2024, it told investors in October last year. Last year in total, revenue jumped 31.61 percent to NT$3.81 trillion, compared with NT$2.89 trillion generated in the year before, according to
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