Other Square Enix's Permanent Work From Home Program

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Square Enix to make work from home permanent as of December 1 -Mostly home-based hybrid model to strike balancex between flexibility and manageability- | SQUARE ENIX

Tokyo, Japan (November 25, 2020) - Square Enix CO., LTD. (headquarters: Shinjuku-ku, Tokyo; President and Representative Director Yosuke Matsuda; here...
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Tokyo, Japan (November 25, 2020) - Square Enix CO., LTD. (headquarters: Shinjuku-ku, Tokyo; President and Representative Director Yosuke Matsuda; hereinafter the "Company") currently enables work from home and will officially offer a permanent work-from-home program to all executive officers and employees as of December 1, 2020.

Work-From-Home Program

Providing customers with unforgettable entertainment requires creativity and productivity. Moreover, the nature of the work involved demands consistent, robust security. As such, the Work-From-Home Program will combine “home-based” and “office-based” models.

Square Enix will designate each employee as either “home based” (working an average of at least three days per week from home) or “office based” (working an average of at least three days per week from the office). In general, all eligible employees will be designated as “home based.” Division heads will designate some positions or individual employees as “office based” as dictated by the nature of the work involved.

Status changes will be allowed on a monthly basis depending upon the intensity of an employee’s duties. Square Enix expects approximately 80% of employees to be home based in December, the first month of the program’s implementation.

  • Program Name: Work-From-Home Program
  • Eligible Companies:
    • Square Enix Co., Ltd.
    • Square Enix Holdings Co., Ltd.
    • Luminous Productions Co., Ltd.
  • Start Date: December 1, 2020
Reasons for Program Implementation

Square Enix had for some time been exploring options for enabling greater flexibility in working styles when the COVID-19 outbreak occurred. In response, Square Enix implemented a series of measures starting in February 2020 that included enabling work from home, staggered working hours, and online conferencing.

Following a sustained period with these measures in place, Square Enix conducted a survey in June that demonstrated that roughly 80 percent of employees had a positive view of work from home. Square Enix also carefully considered a wide range of opinions from businesses as diverse as games, publication, and music regarding the practicality of work from home. This program was finalized based on those considerations. By enabling the option of monthly status changes rather than establishing blanket rules regarding who works from home and who from the office, Square Enix has designed a program that should be highly satisfactory both to those performing duties and those managing them.
 
That's a pretty good move and I'm sure those that like working from home will appreciate it. My workplace is looking to allow more people to work from home after COVID as well which is nice!
 
I feel permanent work from home is also good news for workers who cant afford to buy a home close to SquareEnix's buildings, or they can't work for 8 to 10 hours in a row away from home because they occassionally need to take care of a sick family member, younger children who can't care for themselves, or the worker need to treat their own illnesses like the Flu, Diabetes, or a mental illness like Anxiety by going to a therapist.
 
I wonder how much this will actually cost though? VPN, extra databases, more security, all the equipment being relocated home, secured web chats. I bet when they get the final bill they will be like ha ha get back here now.
 
Demon_Skeith said:
I wonder how much this will actually cost though? VPN, extra databases, more security, all the equipment being relocated home, secured web chats. I bet when they get the final bill they will be like ha ha get back here now.
Click to expand...
Indeed, true enough.
 
cm2 said:
Indeed, true enough.
Click to expand...

I've been talking to my IT guy at work, who mad setup work from home earlier in the year for the employees, and he said his department went way over budget twofold for the year. And this is just a simple tech support company, a place like SE has to pay a lot extra for security so nothing leaks out.
 
Demon_Skeith said:
I've been talking to my IT guy at work, who mad setup work from home earlier in the year for the employees, and he said his department went way over budget twofold for the year. And this is just a simple tech support company, a place like SE has to pay a lot extra for security so nothing leaks out.
Click to expand...
And so Tifa's Bikini design could leak out easily, nice! lol
 
Demon_Skeith said:
I wonder how much this will actually cost though? VPN, extra databases, more security, all the equipment being relocated home, secured web chats. I bet when they get the final bill they will be like ha ha get back here now.
Click to expand...


Hopefully, SquareEnix is well prepared for work at home.

SquareEnix probably can get a good deal for VPN, databases, and security software, so it would be more affordable.
 
Read this article on WFH from gamesindustry biz:

Many employees will be happy to see game companies starting to take this kind of flexible working arrangement seriously. In truth, remote working has been popular with enough staff that it was always going to be extremely hard to go entirely back to the old way of working. The cat's out of the bag; it's clear that the industry's business doesn't entirely fall apart when people work remotely, and thus convincing everyone to go back to their old style of work was never going to fly.

Moreover, having been forced to do so by COVID-19, a lot of companies are actually seeing benefits from certain aspects of remote work. A certain degree of cruft and overhead has been cut out of working practices -- as someone at a major studio told me recently, "after spending years complaining about meetings that could have been emails, we're actually finding out which meetings really do work as emails" -- and while it's too early to make any sweeping pronouncements about productivity yet, it's not terribly controversial to suggest that employees who are happy about getting to spend more time with family and relaxing will also be more focused during working hours as a consequence.

These are good reasons to integrate remote working as a key part of how a studio or publishing business functions -- employee satisfaction and work-life balance, and improvements to process and productivity. Unfortunately, however, there are also bad reasons out there; and as companies try to figure out how to shift gears from remote work being a crisis response to remote work being a long-term change in workplace policy, the reasons underlying that decision-making process are going to be make-or-break for the medium- to long-term viability of those workplaces.

The worst reason is, unfortunately, one that I hear pretty often: cost-saving. Lots of executives -- not just in the games industry but in every other industry you can mention -- are starry-eyed at the prospect of downsizing their office space and staffing overheads by moving to a largely remote working style. Some companies have already begun the process, cutting back on office floor-space and shifting what remains over to a hot-desk environment; the notion being that employees largely work from home and just take an available desk to pop their laptop onto when they come into the office.

Here's the thing; there's almost certainly no actual cost saving to moving to a remote work paradigm. In fact, if a company is taking this seriously, it should be budgeting a slightly higher per-employee cost for remote workers than for in-office workers, because keeping staff together in an office effectively combines and discounts a lot of costs that will now be distributed across individual staff members.

Oh, what, you thought that employees would just pay for their own broadband, lighting, heating, in-home office space and high-quality office furniture and equipment? Sure, many staff have been doing just that this year, but this year was a crisis -- a one-off, hopefully. If remote work becomes a default way of working, that grace period will quickly expire.

Freelancers get tax deductions to help cover those costs, which they then spread across multiple clients; salaried employees do not, and in many if not most jurisdictions it's likely that the courts will back them to the hilt when they demand that their employer cover their home office costs. As this kind of working rolls out across many industries, we'll also likely start to see legislation being proposed in many countries that forces companies to properly pony up for safe, healthy and suitable work environments for their remote employees -- and I guarantee that's going to work out more costly per-head than a regular office.

Teams working on long-running projects with well-established goals do pretty well; teams trying to start new projects grind to a halt as the technology for online collaboration slows or entirely stops effective brainstorming. Combine this with the cost aspects -- it won't be cheap, let alone being a saving -- and the trickiness of managing social relationships within a company where some staff are remote and some maintain in-person contact, and you've got a very major challenge ahead for this industry and others like it.

Yet in the end, it will be worth doing -- and it's probably unavoidable, because those staff who have had a taste of how effective remote working can be aren't going to willingly go back to the old paradigm. Remote work will, and must, find a place alongside other styles of work as an established, accepted and well-considered part of how companies function. Those that succeed will be those who approach remote work policies with the right objectives in mind, a sense of flexibility, and a willingness to put in the elbow grease to get these policies and systems to work well for everyone involved.
 
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