Lyft rolls out ‘fully flexible’ work policy for staff

Lyft said it will offer a permanent “fully flexible” policy, allowing employees to choose where to work and live, becoming the latest technology company to respond to staff’s calls for a more accommodating stance.

Almost all employees will have the option to “work from the office, at home, or any combination of the two,” the ride-hailing company said in a blog post. In December, Lyft reversed plans for calling staff back to the office in February, due to the rampaging omicron variant, and said employees could work remotely for the entirety of 2022.

With its latest shift, Lyft wants staff to know they could still have “an extraordinary office experience,” if they choose to come in.

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“It’s not a remote-first policy because we still intend to use our offices to gather when it makes sense and to foster collaboration, creativity and culture,” Kristin Sverchek, president of business affairs, said in an interview. “Our big focus is on impact” team members have, or the quality of work they’re getting done, not where they’re doing it, she said.

Most big tech companies are starting to bring workers back to the office with varying degrees of flexibility. Microsoft has begun calling staff back to its Redmond, Washington, headquarters in recent weeks but has said it will remain a flexible workplace where employees can work up to half the week from home. Apple has set an April 11 deadline for corporate employees to begin returning to in-person work and by late May employees will be expected to be in the office three days a week. Other companies, such as Meta Platforms and Twitter, have said they’ll let some employees work from home indefinitely despite having corporate offices. In June, Uber Technologies announced a hybrid policy that allows staff to work from anywhere as much as half the time.

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Lyft’s flexible work decision was informed by a series of companywide surveys beginning in the fall of 2020 and again last December, Sverchek said. “What we found is that people’s preferences had greatly shifted to really desiring the ability to determine for themselves where they were able to have the most impact.”

Employees of San Francisco-based Lyft, and there are about 4,453 of them, won’t need permission to relocate across the country.

Sverchek said Lyft doesn’t have plans to shrink its current offices at this time. “As time shifts, we might decide we need less space, but our intention is to foster a great workplace, not an anti-office perspective.”