US Reddit employees will have the option to work from home, in the office or a combination of both, without taking a hit to their salary.
Reddit has told its staff that they will now have “flexibility to explore where they work”. The forum site published a blog post yesterday (27 October) saying that working in the office, remotely or “a combination of the two” will be possible for most employees.
Some roles will still need to be carried out in the office or in specific locations, including IT support staff. Decisions about these exceptions, Reddit said, will fall to leaders and their teams.
The company also said that employees’ salaries will not be cut if they move away from a Reddit office location. A new HR policy will roll out standard pay ranges across the US that will be based on “high-cost areas” such as New York and San Francisco, even if employees don’t live in those cities.
Other tech companies led out of San Francisco have not afforded their staff the same option, according to Business Insider. It reported that the salaries of Twitter and Square employees who choose to work outside of the Bay Area will be cut, while Facebook will begin pay cuts for those who move away from the area in January, and Stripe will implement a 10pc cut but offer a one-off $20,000 incentive for employees to relocate from high-cost cities.
For the staff members who will continue to work in Reddit’s offices, things will change. There will be more casual seating areas, private spaces for work that requires focus, bookable resources and collaboration areas, and hot desks.
Its leaders will also develop “virtual and in-person interactions” to facilitate culture, collaboration and innovation across dispersed teams.
Reddit said that this change will benefit the company as it will be able to hire more people wherever they live, which will help it achieve better diversity and inclusion.
“There are some downsides, of course, like not being physically together as frequently,” it added. “But we’re confident that by leaning into creating meaningful moments of connection and doubling down on processes to support a more distributed workforce, the pros will greatly outweigh the cons.”
Employee perks at Reddit have included health benefits, free meals, unlimited annual leave, four months of parental leave, education and pet-care stipends and childcare support. The company has not commented on whether these offerings will change under its new policy.
Reddit is the latest tech company in a long line of others that have published permanent remote or hybrid working plans. The past few months have seen Siemens, Dropbox, Fujitsu and more announce new policies for the future.
