Farmers Insurance workers blast return-to-office mandate

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Employees at insurance giant Farmers Group who sold their houses and moved after they were told they would be allowed to remain remote last year are furious over the company’s requirement that they return to the office at least three days per week, according to a report.

Farmers Group CEO Raul Vargas, who recently took over the California-based company, reversed his predecessor’s policy of allowing most employees to work from home.

Vargas’ about-face on remote workers sparked a deluge of angry responses from Farmers employees, who took to the firm’s internal social media platform and posted messages filled with angry and crying emojis, according to the Wall Street Journal.

“I sold my house and moved closer to my grandkids,” one employee in the claims division wrote on the message board.

“So sad that I made a huge financial decision based on a lie.”

The Journal cited another employee in the medical claims division who wrote: “I was hired as a remote worker and was promised that was the company culture moving forward.”

“This is seemingly a power move that is frankly disgusting,” the employee wrote.

A Farmers spokesperson told The Post: “Emerging from the pandemic, the Farmers leadership team has decided the organization will move to a hybrid work environment beginning in September — a blended approach we believe will allow us to continue offering the flexibility that we all value while reaping the benefits of the office environment.”

The spokesperson said that “employees within a 50-mile radius of a Farmers office will work from their respective office location at least three days per week while having the flexibility to work remotely two days per week.”

“Based on business need and different types of positions, roughly 60 percent of Farmers employees will be hybrid, while other roles will be either virtual or in-office,” the spokesperson said.

“As business conditions — such as emerging from the pandemic — change, so must business approaches,” the company spokesperson said.

“We are regularly evaluating and adapting our ways of working to align with business needs.”

“To that end, the decision to embrace virtual work at the beginning of the pandemic in March 2020 was one that made sense at the time, and adopting a hybrid approach in September 2023 is what makes sense for our organization now,” the company said.

“While many employees are excited about the opportunities ahead, we recognize that not all business decisions will be supported by all employees.”

“However, we have approached this with a great deal of thoughtfulness, including giving employees three months advance notice so they have time to adjust and make arrangements.”

In internal communications with staffers, Vargas said the decision to bring employees back into the office would boost “collaboration, creativity, and innovation,” according to the Journal.

The CEO said the firm would have “the opportunity to combine the best of both worlds — all that we’ve gained from flexible and virtual work with all the teamwork and collaboration we get when we work together in the office.”

Former CEO Jeff Dailey had told employees last year that most of them would be allowed to remain virtual.

Employees told the Journal that the company had said it would either lease out or sell some of its office space in various locations, including Michigan, Kansas, Oklahoma and Arizona.

Last week, employees at Seattle-based e-commerce giant Amazon walked off the job in protest of management’s edict to return to the office, among other complaints.

Employees at the Walt Disney Company also pushed back against management’s directive that they report to the office four days per week.

Meta, Salesforce, JPMorgan Chase, Apple, Citigroup, Google, and Goldman Sachs are among the blue-chip firms that have either partially or wholly done away with hybrid work.

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