Rightmove plans three days in office, two days at home in long-term

Rightmove has let all office-based employees know of a long-term plan for them to work three days rather than five days in the office, with the choice to be home-based for the remaining two days.

Those employees who would prefer to come into the offices in London and Milton Keynes more often than three days a week will be able to do so.

The plan is for the changes to start gradually from 21^st June, depending on government guidance on working from home.

Rightmove’s field-based employees will be working towards a hybrid model of video calls and face-to-face meetings with customers, giving agents and new homes developers the choice based on their own schedule.

Rightmove’s Chief Product & Technology Officer, Tarah Lourens, says: “I was really impressed with how quickly our people adjusted to working from home and we seamlessly adapted our ways of working to continue to operate effectively.  We’ve seen many benefits of working remotely, the ability to focus more and to save time that would usually have been spent commuting, to name but a few. That said, it has been challenging to replicate some of the more creative and cultural aspects of our company, as being together makes these interactions easier and more meaningful. We’re all looking forward to working towards a new blended approach.”

Rightmove’s Director of People & Development, Zoe Martin, added: “The past year has been tough in so many ways for so many people, and we think it’s going to take a bit of time for us all to feel comfortable coming back into the office regularly, but hopefully this will change when other parts of society start to open up again. Our long-term plan is to give people the flexibility to work two days at home, and we’ll be keeping the exact timings of starting the gradual return to the office under review depending what happens to restrictions over the next few months. We’ve been running a number of online wellbeing sessions throughout the year to help with the various lockdowns and uncertainty, and we hope to change this to continuing some online but also having some physical sessions when people do start coming back in.”

ENDS

Notes to editor

About Rightmove

• Rightmove is the UK’s biggest home-grown web brand and is a member of the FTSE 100
• Rightmove is the UK’s largest property website, advertising around 95% of all homes for sale via estate agents across the UK, with over one million properties for sale and to rent
• In 2020, home-hunters spent 15.9 billion minutes on Rightmove, there were 2.1 billion visits and people sent 1.6 enquiries to agents every second
• Rightmove was started in 2000 and the first Rightmove House Price Index was published in 2002, and comes out on the third Monday of every month