Spotify Will Allow Its Staff to Work From Anywhere Permanently
By Chava Gourarie February 12, 2021 1:56 pm
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Music streaming company Spotify (SPOT) will offer its employees an option to work from home, or anywhere, permanently, the company announced Friday.
Spotify, which anchors 4 World Trade Center and has offices in 16 countries worldwide, had previously told employees that they would not be required to return to the office until at least the end of 2021.
Now, it follows companies like Salesforce and Slack, who have also announced that they would allow their workforce to remain remote permanently. Spotify’s 6,500 employees will be able to choose their geographic location, and whether they prefer to work primarily in the office or from home, the company wrote in a blog post.
“There’s no better time than now to transition into a distributed-first model — a workplace that isn’t built on the premise that employees need to gather in an office with traditional desk setups,” per the post.
Spotify occupies close to 500,000 square feet at Silverstein Properties’ 72-story 4 WTC, where it is the anchor tenant. Spotify first took 378,000 square feet at the building in early 2017, then added an additional 100,000 square feet later that year to bring the 2.3 million-square-foot property to 100 percent occupancy.
Spotify’s head of design and build, Sonya Simmonds, said the move would not immediately impact Spotify’s existing footprint. “At this time, we have no plans to give up any of our existing real estate; instead, we are re-evaluating what our existing spaces can offer,” Simmonds said in a statement to Commercial Observer. “We will of course take into account that people working from home still will come into the office and that people might change their choice down the line.”
Other technology companies, such as Google, Twitter and Facebook, have extended their timeline for return to the office until fall of 2021 or later, but have not announced any permanent changes. Facebook has previously said that it expects to have half of its workforce remote over the course of the next decade, while also inking the biggest office deal in Manhattan of 2020.
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