After years of working partly from home, about 3,000 Wix employees in Israel are returning to a full in-office schedule, five days a week. Until recently, the company allowed employees to work from home one day a week.
Wix employees were informed of the move in an email sent Tuesday morning by company President Nir Zohar. According to Zohar, the decision stems in part from realities created in the AI era, which require rapid responses and shared decision-making. “We need to move fast,” he wrote to employees, “and the best way to do that is together.”
Zohar added in the letter, which he also posted on LinkedIn, that “we have always done our best work side by side. We learned, built and tackled tough problems as a team. We are returning to a full workweek in the office while preserving what is foundational to Wix: real flexibility for real life, based on trust, clarity and people’s needs.”
Wix is not alone. If 2020 and 2021 were the years of remote work because of the coronavirus pandemic, since 2023 more and more high-tech companies in Israel and around the world have been gradually returning to offices under various models: five full days in the office, three days in the office and two from home or the reverse, among others.
Most company managements view shared work and physical presence as part of organizational culture that also drives professional achievement. Remote work has left many offices empty, while companies continue to pay high rents for prestigious buildings that are partly deserted. From employees’ perspective, the advantages of working from home include flexible hours, relief from traffic congestion and the ability to combine work obligations with family responsibilities.
Microsoft, which for years took the most flexible approach and left the decision to employees as long as they “remained engaged and productive,” decided last September to require them, starting this February, to come to the office at least three days a week, similar to Google. Amazon, by contrast, has returned its U.S. employees to offices for five full workdays. Efforts to impose a full and immediate return, however, met resistance, forcing some tech giants first to delay the move and later to compromise and show flexibility in its implementation.
In Israel, the return to offices was delayed even further, mainly due to repeated rounds of the Swords of Iron war, and the conflict with Iran. Until recently, at many multinational companies in Israel the standard arrangement required employees to come to the office at least three days a week, usually out of a five-day workweek. Among startups, the situation is different: a recent survey by high-tech recruitment firm GotFriends of 1,000 startups found that 88% allow hybrid work, while only 12% require employees to be in the office all week.