TikTok wants employees back in the office three days a week

Social media platform TikTok has told employees, and interns, that it expects them to come into the office three days a week in the future.

However, according to The Information, they won’t be required to continue work at the office they worked at prior to the pandemic.

Instead, they be able to choose to work at any convenient TikTok office, thereby suggesting that the social media company has embraced both hybrid and distributed working for the future.

TikTok employees will then be allowed to work remotely the other two days, but this will be based on manager approval, according to reporting by Reuters.

For now, this policy will apply to the US, UK and Ireland – but TikTok expects other markets to follow based on when local offices are able to re-open.

The memo announcing the policy to employees said: “There is no substitute for in-person collaboration.

“But it’s clear that many of us have adjusted well to working from home, and value the flexibility and balance.”

In making this announcement, the social media company has joined other tech companies, such as Apple and Amazon, in embracing a hybrid working model where it dictates how many days employees come into the office each week.

Apple’s decision to call its US employees back into the office for three days a week (Monday, Tuesday and Thursday) from September has been greeted with consternation from some of its workers.

Instead of being forced back into the office, a group of 2,800 US Apple employees want more flexibility about both where and when they work.

A memo sent to Apple management stated: “It feels like there is a disconnect between how the executive team thinks about remote / location-flexible work and the lived experiences of many of Apple’s employees.”

It is interesting that these tech companies have decided to go down this route for hybrid working, rather than letting employees the flexibility to choose how many and which days they want to work from the office.

This differs from other companies’ hybrid working policies – such as banking giant Standard Chartered – where employees and their managers agree between themselves where they will work week on week.

The aim of Standard Chartered’s approach to ensure that the decision suits both the needs of the business, as well as the preferences of the individual.