“Yandex” is asking employees to return to their offices from a remote location, The Bell has found. It will be possible to work remotely only part of the time, more days a week employees are invited to spend in the office. The good news is that for IT specialists this office doesn’t necessarily have to be in Russia.
Yandex management has urged employees to return to their offices. The ban on remote work will not be strict, but the company’s management has announced that it is switching to a hybrid work format: you can work remotely, but an employee has to spend several days in an office, Russian or one of the foreign ones . This was discussed at the Friday Khural, a general meeting for the company’s employees, The Bell found.
“A house in the country needs a house in the country. You can go there for the summer, but the summer won’t last forever. Our work involves joint activities. People should see each other, know each other, trust each other. So a house in the countryside will always be available to us, but in addition to the fact that people work together in offices. We need to unite our hubs in a few months, ”the former head of the group in Russia, Tigran Khudaverdyan, told al Khural (he left his post due to sanctions, but remained at the helm of Yandex).
“The state of worldwide distribution, where people are alone in different countries outside our offices, is not our default state,” said Daria Zolotukhina, director of human resources at Yandex. The norm for a company is a hybrid format, when an employee works from the office for a certain number of days and remotely for a certain number of days. The office from which it will be necessary to work is agreed with the boss. We are talking about all offices, including international ones, you specified.
Earlier this week, the heads of various divisions within Yandex had already started holding meetings with their employees, during which some of those who had previously left the country were asked to return to Russia. Two employees of an IT company who are aware of such meetings told The Bell.
In one of these meetings it was discussed that the efficiency of working remotely from abroad is decreasing and now more than ever the company needs to show excellent results, says an interlocutor. Work “by the sea” ceases to be perceived as work and begins to become a vacation, they explained at work to another. The leadership has actually made it clear that a long stay abroad for those whose work is directly related to Russia is becoming impossible.
Employees have been asked to either return to Russia or work from one of the hubs – overseas offices that are open, again this year after the exodus of IT staff from the country due to the war, another source confirmed to The Bell. Such offices of Yandex there is in Armenia, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Serbia. In the coming months, another hub will open in Turkey, say the interlocutors of The Bell. But it is recommended to work in hubs rather for those developing business in this country or IT specialists. People with other specializations, such as finance, HR or marketing, have been asked to return to Russia, says one of The Bell’s interlocutors.
The idea of returning people to the offices came personally from the former head of the group in Russia, Tigran Khudaverdyan, the interlocutors of The Bell in the company tell. He fears that the efficiency of teamwork where most employees work from different locations and don’t come to the office is declining, explains one of them. However, according to three interlocutors of The Bell within the company, there is no strict ban on remote work abroad in Yandex. “The conversation is about going to offices in general. Not necessarily in Moscow,” says one of them.
The question of what to do with remote work from abroad is not idle for Yandex – the company’s employees en masse left Russia after February 24 and after September 21, when Vladimir Putin announced a partial mobilization. Of valued in the spring of 2022, about 10% of 19 thousand people left for Yandex (the company did not disclose more recent data).
“We see that more and more people are starting to work from Yandex offices, which are available to employees in 20 cities both in Russia and in other countries. We want to find the most comfortable format for employees that helps the interaction of all teams. One of the options under discussion is a hybrid format,” Yandex replied to a request from The Bell. By agreement with the boss, it will be possible to choose any Yandex office for yourself, continue working remotely, or combine both options, explained the society.
For a long time, IT companies remained the last free men for “remote workers”: after the start of the war, many of them did not ban employees from leaving the country and continuing to work remotely, and during the first wave of mobilisation, some of them even behind the scenes supported their departure.
But the IT specialists of Russian state banks themselves could not afford this.
There how he wrote At Campana, even after the start of the mobilization, employees who left were forced to return or resign, because working from abroad is expressly prohibited by employment contracts. For example, in Sberbank, those who left Russia were given an unscheduled vacation for a month to “think”. But if the employee later refused to return to the country, they “peacefully parted” with him. Similar rules apply to other state-owned banks. “Some bosses cover their guys, someone immediately says that this is your responsibility, we are not in business,” his employee described the situation with remote work at Gazprombank, who, after mobilizing, took a vacation and left Russia.
