Our take: Have Google and Amazon killed off flexible working for the channel?

With Amazon and Google moving to put limits on remote working, will tech’s most emulated companies cause partners to follow suit? Asks CRN editor Josh Budd

What will the "new normal" look like? Well, if you ask Amazon and Google, it will look very much like the old normal, with a limit on flexible working and a return to an "office-centric" work culture.

Amazon and Google have just about the most respected and emulated work cultures in not just the technology sector but for any business on the planet.

Everyone knows about Amazons 14 leadership principles, and everyone knows that Googlers spend their lunch breaks lounging on bean bags and playing ping pong.

Countless companies look up to these tech giants as a bastion of workplace culture and values. They try and copycat the "Googlesque" culture and borrow from Amazon's leadership principles in an attempt to attract and retain the best talent possible.

12 months ago a consensus began to form that the Covid pandemic had proven the effectiveness of remote working and there was no going back. Tech visionaries including Oracle's Larry Ellison, Dell's Jeff Clarke and Apple's Tim Cook have both said that the pandemic has fundamentally changed how we work.

We envisioned a "new normal" where we were saved from a gruelling commute into the office - with traffic jams, train delays, tube closures and the rest - and where we were afforded the freedom to build our working lives around non-work commitments such as childcare, Amazon deliveries and walking your dog.

But Amazon and Google have effectively killed off any notion of remote working becoming a permanent fixture for their employees.

From 1 September, Googlers will only be entitled to 14 days of remote working per year and will have to apply if they want to work from home more often.

Meanwhile Amazon has said that it will return to an "office-centric culture as our baseline" claiming that the office enables it to innovate, collaborate and learn most effectively.

While Amazon and Google have made their positions clear on the office/remote working debate, other tech and outsourcing firms have gone in a completely different direction.

Capita last month announced that it would let 35,000 of its 55,000 employees work remotely permanently. Meanwhile PwC said that it would allow its 22,00 staff to work remotely 40 to 60 per cent of the time.

PwC also said it would introduce a half-day on Fridays during July and August under what its CEO Kevin Ellis refers to as "the Deal" with employees.

Other tech vendors such as Salesforce, Microsoft and Twitter have meanwhile openly committed to embrace remote working, but some have left their definition of the phrase up to interpretation. That may be deliberate; they too might want to revert back to an office-based approach if they come to believe it to be a more effective way of working.

The conundrum trickles down to the channel, too. Resellers and vendors have a symbiotic relationship. Their sales and technical staff work with their counterparts on the vendor side on a day-to-day basis, so resellers could begin to observe and emulate the working patterns and behaviours of their vendors.

There's no doubt that more than a year of remote working has taken its toll on employees and working from home five days a week may have lost its shine. For many, the thought of joining your work colleagues for an after-work drink on a sunny Friday afternoon might now sound like your idea of bliss.

Resellers may be looking to gradually ease their employees back to the office over the coming months as the vaccine rollout continues, confidence in taking public transport grows and the economy reopens. But how the channel does this will be very interesting.

The flexible working decisions reseller and MSP bosses make now will inevitably have a lasting impact on their company culture and identity as a whole.

Flexible working throws up some interesting questions that could reshape the channel as we knew it pre-pandemic.

Many resellers have invested heavily in hiring staff in high-salary locations such as London and the South East so they can regularly meet with clients in the city. If this is no longer deemed a necessity, then will resellers begin to hire in less costly parts of the country?

Will the likes of PwC and Capita be more successful in hiring the best talent because they have embraced a remote working policy? And will our perceptions of Amazon and Google as forward-looking companies change now that they've shunned the idea of remote working?

It will be interesting to see where the channel will eventually land on the office/remote working spectrum.